Lots of good arguments, I'm a bit on the JQ Tivadar side.
The wireframe tool that Hal came up with is great for getting a client to
brainstorm, getting direction, figure out what to do, and get the client to
finalize before actually coding. And thats what it does. A good sales
person can then hand it over to a developer and most of the questions will
be answered.
As it is, the only thing I want is menus and perhaps submenus so that you
can quickly go to the section you want so that you can start figuring
things out and to give some sort of sense of location. ie. I clicked on
the about us and now I'm there analyzing actions and behaviors. Hal, this
is your baby, perhaps a standard for the menu? I've made one and also seen
several suggestions.
Or, if you want to improve radically, lets realize that its a whole
different application. Lets draw the line now before we make it too
complicated and someone has to reinvent wireframes. (I can just see the
post on a mailing list - "Hey fellas I got this great new application. Its
called skeletalframewires and it will help us figure out what the client
wants").
So Lets hear suggestions!
I suggest that once you're finished wireframing and get the clients
approval (and money!), you then select which wires get their own folders or
what fuseacitons they are called. Then you click go and it writes out at
least the skeleton of a complete website. And if you go nuts! that it
imports applications into those correct directories and creates a database
and does all the queries to populate it and that it (If youre really good
with coldfusion) solves world hunger. All on Wap. (I think it can be done
though cold fusion might not be the best tool for the hunger part) So. . .
what else should it do? Version Control?
Am I on a tangent?
DRE
At 12:12 PM 2/22/2001 -0500, you wrote:
>Wow, what a well-reasoned argument! That was fun to read. OK, I'm game. How
>do we make it more powerful without sacrificing the simplicity? Can we agree
>that we want the final product to require no more than, say , 30 minutes of
>training so that a non-programmer can use it?
>
>Hal Helms
>== See ColdFusionTraining.com for info on "Best Practices with ColdFusion &
>Fusebox" training ==
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Patrick McElhaney [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
>Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2001 10:11 AM
>To: Fusebox
>Subject: RE: WireFrame Demo Online
>
>
>
>
> > Further in my role as DA, let me argue that it's important to realize that
> > things tend towards complexity until the point they are no longer
> > useful, at
> > which someone looks for something simple until...and the whole
> > cycle begins
> > ever anew. The wireframe simply gives the prototype people something to
> > start from. Its virtue is its simplicity and speed--not power and
> > extensibility.
>
>Thanks Hal. That makes a lot of sense. But still I can't help but wonder:
>What if we can have all four of those virtues?
>
>I think the real problem is that as things get more complex, they tend
>to get bloated. The learning curve and development time grow with every
>new feature. But I don't believe it necessarily has to be that way. I
>think new features can be added transparently, so that the existence of
>new features won't have any impact on the way we do things. We don't
>even have to know about them.
>
>For example: There are hundreds of elements and attributes in
>HTML 4.0, but anyone can learn to use it within a few hours. Some of
>the people on this list have done fantastic things with advanced
>features such as layers, but we can all still hammer out a functional
>page in a matter of seconds.
>
>What I'm afraid of is I'll be presenting a wireframe to a client and
>he'll say, "Can you make that a pop-up window?" or "Can you add a
>marker that shows which pages are have access restrictions?"
>Simple little things like that could make the wireframe a much more
>effective communication tool. It would be nice to be able to show
>up with a toolbox full of little goodies like that. Besides we'd
>get bonus points for being able to say, "As a matter of fact, I
>can do that. And.... here it is!"
>
>The danger of course is that there would be tremendous opportunity to get
>carried away with all of the added features. Again, HTML is a perfect
>example. Remember the first site you ever did? Now, remember the
>*second* site you did, once you discovered the marvels of the BLINK and
>FONT tags? As long as we're responsible about how we use the added
>features, the format should remain very simple, legible, and
>easy to manipulate in the middle of a meeting.
>
>I think we *can* have power and extensibility (and diuturnity!) without
>sacrificing simplicity and speed.
>
>And if I can get you to bite on that idea, I'll let you in on how I
>think wireframes could be used as a tool during development -- not as
>some complex Rational-esque code generator but as a simple
>communication tool.
>
>Patrick
>
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