[Sigia-l] Life after Visio

[Stewart Dean]

At 18:17 05/08/2003 -0400, you wrote:
>"Stewart Dean" wrote:
>
> > Can we talk about Visio instead?
>
>And don't you find that there's an inverse proportionality  between the
>number of books written on a particular app and its ease of use?

Yes.

I think Visio is a truly awful tool that too many IAs have got into the 
habit of using. You can work with layers but it's a nightmare to use 
without writing a macro. In terms of usability it is awful.

But I have to use it because other IAs use it.

The alternative?

The true IA tool I don't think exists yet (I hope someone is building it or 
better still built it). I've yet to see an IA friendly tool even built into 
a CMS or page creation tool. I am open to suggestions I quickly add. But 
there is one program that not only allows you to quickly sketch site maps 
and wireframes but also allows you to make them interactive and publish 
them to the web quickly. It allows you to build up templates, libraries of 
items, work with multiple pages and has intuitive drawing tools. You can 
span one item across many pages, can lock, group and have multiple levels. 
You can even script it. Many are put off because they think it's hard to 
learn, but no harder than visio and if you only want to use it as a drawing 
package it's very very simple. Best of all, all new media companies already 
have it. What is it?

Flash MX.

Set your stage up for A3 and away you go.  The only thing missing is a 
spell checker.

Stewart Dean