Archive for the ‘XHTML’ Category
How Do You Prototype Your Apps?
I’ve seen more ways to create application prototypes than I can count, from PowerPoint (I’m look at you Chuck) to FileMaker Pro (and you, Bob) and everything in-between. Often, I see folks skip prototypes entirely and just using good ol’ OmniGraffle / Illustrator / Photoshop / hand-drawn wireframes with sticky notes. Never have any of the mechanisms I’ve seen or used felt quite right.
A recent post on Boxes and Arrows, Prototyping with XHTML, got me thinking about this again. In the article Anders Ramsay and Leah Buley write towards a design audience to advocate what the title implies: using XHTML to create prototypes. (The comment thread goes on to provide links to several prototypes and the discussion turns to Protonotes, which we covered sometime ago, and PolyPage for jQuery, which we have not yet covered.)
Is hand-coded semantic mark-up with applied styles really the state-of-the-art for prototyping? Shouldn’t a primarily visual medium be used in the prototype stage? Or is semantic mark-up the way to go because it frees you to change the design of the same content quickly? How do you prototype your user interfaces? Or do you skip prototypes entirely?
(Via Ajaxian ยป Front Page.)