[Sigia-l] Useful tools

[Listera]

I get a lot of email asking for advice on various tools central/peripheral
to IA work. So a few items of note:

> Objects

People ask if they should learn how to create objects, which they can then
hand off to developers. I'm of two minds about this.

Especially for enterprise apps understanding objects is pretty central for
architecture and general app design. If there are multiple apps/sites that
interact, factoring stuff into reusable/shared objects/components is often a
good idea. Login, primary navigation, cc authentication, internal/external
search, breadcrumbs, etc., are all good examples. So, in this sense, knowing
how to translate requirements into objects is a good skill to have.

However going from a general, conceptual understanding of objects to
something that can be used at the code-level by developers is not as easy as
it sounds. And unless you feel very comfortable, as an IA, you shouldn't
attempt it. But there's help :-)

Here's a fairly recent book that takes a different approach in teaching
objects and Java. It's quite accessible to non-programmers and scripters,
very visual, chunked and easily digestible. Articles have been written about
how it might change computer how-to books. Some might find it a little over
the top, but if you're in a bookstore definitely check it out:

Head First Java 
by Bert Bates ,Kathy Sierra
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596004656/qid%3D1058388859/sr%3D11-
1/ref%3Dsr%5F11%5F1/002-4484404-7944864>

> Colors

A nifty standalone app for creating color sets and discovering relationships
among colors is ColorDesigner:

<http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/20175>
<http://macosx.narcissisme.dk/>

It's a little rough but freeware and runs on OS X only.

> Mail lists

If you want to follow various (technical) Apple mail lists without having to
subscribe, there's a great front-end (a la Watson) that allows you to view,
search, organize, bookmark and download messages.

iList
<http://www.macupdate.com/dev.php?id=10807>

It too is a little rough around the edges (it's from France :-) but freeware
and OS X only.

Enjoy.

Ziya
Nullius in Verba