I agree re: Dreamweaver. It seems the least offensive in terms of code, but after 6 years using it, I still can't use its WYSYWIG design editor for anything predictable. Its best features are the ability to expand and collapse chunks of HTML (or any container) to copy and move them around, its recognition of many (not all) common accessibility gaps (no ALTs, etc) and file management.
As far as "production-ready prototypes", I agree that no matter how finished my prototypes are, the code is merely a suggestion and cheats at all sorts of things to illustrate flow. Occasionally I'll deliver small snippets that solve a problem the developer can't manage, but that's rare. I know I'm late to the "scriptaculous" bandwagon, but I just realized the other day it has several VERY convenient tools for DHTML prototyping that emulate data entry behaviors that otherwise take awhile to "fake". It doesn't do everything, and much of what I do doesn't require sliding boxes and drag & drop, but I'm a fan of it for easing some tedious prototyping tasks (showing/hiding stuff & emulating form field editing). Bryan http://www.bryanminihan.com -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Vishal Iyer HTML/ CSS / JS will be your best bet for production ready code. Even a tool like Dreamweaver tends to add unnecessary code. As far as your second Q is concerned- there is space for a prototype only tool. If you're building a small 10 page website (or a simple tool), maybe not so much...but for complicated ones its a different story. The trade-off here is that of complexity & domain expertise. Production ready code is not easy to automate and I'd rather not be pixel pushing when I'm working on a design problem. One approach would be to have the front-end developers within the design team as opposed to the dev. Dunno how they would feel about it, but its great from a UX perspective because of better control of the product (esp when the UX & dev don't report into the same manager, as is common in most large orgs) -Vishal http://www.vishaliyer.com ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
