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Making Website Mock-Ups in Linux?
The Ubiquitous Web Designer asks: "I am trying to design a rather complex web page and am wondering if there are any tools which will allow me to make non-functioning mock-ups of each page so that a programmer can work from them. Obviously, it's hard to use the GIMP to make radio buttons, check-boxes, data entry fields, and so on. Can something help me design a page without much knowledge of HTML, or am I better off just doing it with paper and pencil by hand?"
In short, no.
You can technically find a tool that will let you place checkboxes + radio buttons, etc pretty easily, but you'll find that the visual design of those elements are what require the HTML and CSS skills. You're better off just drawing them how you want them to look and letting the HTMK/CSS gurus actually do all the coding, otherwise all the work you do making them look how you want will have to be redone anyway in code.
No it's not. WYSIWIG editors are horrible, and produce nasty, unmanigable code that in the end will cause more headaches and time trying to fix it than it would have had you you written it by hand. Learning XHTML/CSS is a must and it's not that complicated.
Good. Cheap. Fast. Pick Two.
1. Rough sketch on paper
2. Draw the complete layout in Inkscape
3. Export elements into the Gimp for final touch up and optimization
4. Link to images in stylesheet
Inkscape is an excellent tool becuase you can scale you're elements as much as you like without losing quality.
If you're just making a non-functioning mockup, who cares how lousy the code is? I agree completely if you're talking about production source, writing it by hand is the *only* way to go. But if you're just trying to put together visual mockups, and your alternatives are GIMP or pencil and paper, then clearly it doesn't matter what shape the source is in.
[Z?]
His point was that you use the WYSIWYG editor to create the initial mockup, see how it looks and feels, and then code it from hand - you throw out the WYSIWYG editors code entirely, all you are after is the visual 'OK' before starting the actual coding yourself.
Personally, I *always* mockup in Fireworks prior to doing anything. Get the look and feel of the site perfect, then handcode the html. Its significantly easier to move around something in a graphics package or WYSIWYG editor than it is in handcoded html, especially if you are doing it a dozen times an hour.
Seconded. HTML mockups, whether hand-coded or bastardised together in something like Dreamweaver, are too much like hard work. I've also found that if you email them, or put them up on a site for users to look at, people forget that these are mockups and bitch about the things that don't work yet. As long as whatever you use is obviously not a web page, and a programmer can make sense of it, it doesn't matter what you choose.
I would say paper prototype, and use the chance to get some user feedback before you've poured heart and soul into a full-blown mock-up (or, worse, application). You'll probably find it easier to accept when these crude user tests show up problems - once you've got too much emotional investment in your design, it's far harder not to come up with reasons not to change it.
Of course, some people won't believe in paper prototypes. (I have one or two of those around here.) The compromise that works best here is to use - ick - PowerPoint. You might want to use whatever the OpenOffice equivalent is. As long as whatever you use is obviously not a web page, and a programmer can make sense of it, it probably doesn't matter what you choose.
Paper-making is not a closed source process. You won't be betraying the ideals of the open source movement if you pick up a pen or pencil and just start doodling.
You can probably do a couple iterations on your design in the time it takes you to install and boot up any software package. Hand the best one to the programmer, or scan it and e-mail it to her.
egypt urnash minimal art.
I was just about to say the same thing. Inkscape (or any vector editing software) is perfect for this sort of thing. You won't draw perfect radio buttons per se, but draw circles with as much or as little similarity to radio buttons as you want. This is what I do for all of my sites after I've created an initial idea.
My Method:
1) Paper and Pen
2) Inkscape / Vector editor
3) HTML
-dave
http://millionnumbers.com/ - own the number of your dreams
That's not what a web designer does. You can only get it right down to the pixel for users running a single browser at a single screen resolution with a single set of browser settings. A good web designer has to understand what a web page is and design to its strengths and weaknesses, not pretend that he's doing design for television or print media.
A designer's job is to design to the medium. This requires that they have a working knowledge of HTML/CSS/related technologies. Just like a print designer must have a working understanding of paper. You don't expect the print-press operator have the designer's animated GIF run on paper.
I start like this: Pen/Pencil -> Image Mockup in Photoshop -> XHTML/CSS mockup with real structure. The last step is the dove tail into the real thing. It gives me the basic starting point and gives the client a chance to see the real deal and interact with the page elements before I plug it into a back end or start replacing bits of it with server side scripting. I don't start with an xhtml page, I start on pape then move into. I probably did communicate that well in my first post.
At any rate this means I can plan out the semantic structure, and how I'm going to marry this with the CSS and design side of it. I just thought that using NVU or another WYSIWYG editor to do an XHTML mockup wasn't a good idea, especially if you're going to rewrite it by hand later. By writing it all by hand to start with most of the "code" and graphics can recycled for later use.
The problem with WYSIWYG editors is that they rarely can give you exactly what you want. I wasn't worried about code soup or ugly code, I was worried that using NVU would produce oddities in a document that can take any professionalism out of it. They can introduce spaces by creating extra line breaks, by not setting margins and padding properly, they generally are only built with a certain browser in mind (though not NVU I suppose) and generally use tags that have odd defaults in some browsers. If you copy and paste text from other programs they introduce the formatting from that application, often poorly (EG they don't just copy the ASCII text). Deleting the text in the WYSIWYG editor most often only deletes the text and not the tags or CSS, which will cause all sorts of strange text problems, spacing, lines and other garbage that can't be easily fixed. A lot of WYSIWYG editors will even introduce plenty of proprietary tags and other rubbish which might not be treated friendly by your browser(s).
The mockup stage is important to the customer/client. If it's not right and isn't professional they'll go elsewhere. In effect it does matter what shape the source is in if the source effects the visual elements in a negative way.
Good. Cheap. Fast. Pick Two.
Find a real web designer. And not I am not being mean.
CSS/XHTML imposes limit on what fonts you can use and what is possible and what isn't
Not only that but you have to make sure it runs on standards compliant browsers and hunk of trash that Microsoft calls IE.
it is the height of arrogance to think that you can design a web page and no nothing about HTML. Kind of like someone that can't change their oil thinking they can design a car.
Find a web designer and tell him what your page needs to do. Then work with them until you like it.
Do not give him a pretty picture and expect him to get it to render on every browser and resolution on the planet.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.