The wrong variable type

Why use Protopie?

There are many prototyping tools out there, so what makes Protopie special – how is it different?

Use Components

It will often seem as though it will be faster to use individual elements than to use components, but in the end the time saving almost always goes the other way.

How to inspect variables inside a component

Even all-Scenes variables are not accessible inside a component. And this can lead to hard to find errors when a variable with the same name is used in a component, but its value is not sync'd with the scenes.

Viewing variables within Components

The variable debugger doesn't work when the variable that needs to be viewed is inside a component. There are two relatively easy ways to deal with this.

Sending messages to two places

Whilst it is important to be careful in sending messages to the right places, it is also very powerful to send a message to two different places at the same time (or maybe with a small delay).

Origami Studio, Figma and others

How do these other popular platforms compare?

Arrays and multiple parameters

Protopie seems limited since a message can be sent using only one value as a parameter. However, arrays (written as text strings and manipulated by parseJson) can be used for contexts where multiple parameters need to be passed.

Sending a message to another scene

This is a very easy mistake to make – sending a message to be picked up by a component, but one that you have in fact placed into a different scene. Although you can send to a different pie, you can't send to a different scene.

Distinctive initial variable values

Origami Studio, Figma and others

parseJson gives no error message

Arrays and multiple parameters

Use Components

Use overridable variables in components