We don't all agree about Visio WAS RE: [Sigia-l] Sitemapping and Macs

[David Heller]

I don't get it.
What's so bad? What's so different?

Grab a tool, drag mouse to draw.
It's the same in Adobe, Macromedia and MS.
Yes there are subtlties, but is it really that different?
I go back and forth between the 3 environments all the time (actually 2 now,
I've knocked Adobe from my life). 

Visio has better components
Macromedia has better layering
Visio is better at page level design, programming components
Macromedia is better at detailed level design
Visio is better for flow diagrams w/ snaping and anchoring
Macromedia is better as an integrated suite
Visio integrates quite well into office as an active X control
Visio has  free viewer
Macromedia has better screen frame and layer management
Visio has a neat way of exporting to HTML
Macromedia has flash (need we say more)

To me the whole thing is a crap shoot.

There was something said that is incorrect. Visio was not a tool made w/o an
audience in mind. It was first and formost a flow diagramming tool. This is
what it was intended to do and was later expanded into new features. It is
also a tool that is definitely targeted to technical people. Yes we
designers have snared it up, but it was originally targeted for techies and
for flow, not for GUI. This has changed w/ the addition of the software
stencils which in 2003 are amazing!!!!! In about 5 minutes I can sketch out
a basic gui app w/ a tree navigation, datagrid, windowing, etc. and it looks
exactly as I want it to look in Windows XP. 

Macromedia has the advantage of not being platform specific, if that is an
advantage you require, which is where this all started, no? What will work
for Mac, right?