[Sigia-l] Fireworks MX 2004 as a prototyping tool

[CD Evans]

Hiya Ziya et al,

(I've always wanted to write that, now that I've seen it in print.)

Fireworks is splendid for prototyping, and I'm glad to see discussion 
on graphical tools for cognitive purposes. mTropolis was even more 
lovely, especially in it's day. For those who don't know mTropolis, 
or it's sad history, it was a killer app designed to take the 
laborious process of coding simple 'behaviors' and turing them into a 
few dialog boxes with pulldowns nested within actions alongside 
graphics, palettes and sounds and nested again. Simply speaking, 
Visual Code. There was of course more in-depth coding available to 
those who wanted to enlarge the product by adding additional 
'modifiers' and such, as well as an internal scripting system. But I 
digress..

The best part about it was that it allowed for easy prototyping. 
Think of it as a bit like having wheels, boards, shovels, pillows and 
such in the garage if you were into go-karts. "One day you could make 
a real car..." Again I digress...

The point is that it allowed for immersion and function to be happily 
married. "What, you want a big random colored thing that opens every 
screen?" No problem. "You need a small little sound that reminds 
people when they haven't done office ergonomic exercise?" No Problem. 
"What about a system for shopping represented in a few different 
personalized ways?" Well, not with versions 1 or 2 as they were. 
Sorry, the product was stunted.

But that was 8 years ago, and now that we "know what people want", 
perhaps it's time to bring back the features that will keep them 
interested. I don't know, maybe a free cd with your favorite home 
fashion magazine, linked directly to the online store, of course. 
Curtain Movies and Furniture Sounds optional.

If anyone happens to work at quark.... perhaps we should have 
barbeque fund-raiser and buy back our garage space?

Clifton Evans
Interface Planning


http://www.infostyling.com


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Message: 6
Date: Mon, 03 Nov 2003 19:11:24 -0500
Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] Fireworks MX 2004 as a prototyping tool
From: Listera <listera at rcn.com>
To: 'sigia l' <sigia-l at mail.asis.org>

"David Heller" wrote:

>  ... the only thing missing from making fireworks a viable prototyping tool
>  is that it doesn't have libraries that I have seen. Am I wrong?

You mean share a Flash library? I don't think so, although FW can directly
read/write Flash PNG files w/o import/export. The problem is with
interactivity, since FW behaviors are JavaScript-based (external) but Flash
uses ActionScript (internal) to do the same.

>  The real question is, why not just prototype directly in Flash. ;)

Don't get me started on Flash UI issues. :-)

For anything complex, the 'timeline' workflow/UI falls apart completely. If
you ever worked in an OO authoring tool like mTropolis, iShell or, even,
Norpath, you quickly realize just how much the timeline metaphor sucks.

Fortunately, I'm not the only who thinks so, Macromedia essentially hides
the timeline UI in Flash MX 2004 with the introduction of Slides/Forms
editors. But it's a kludge. They ought to ditch the darn approach and move
to event-based, OO foundation. Actually, they are going even further with
Royale, which is in beta, that gives you a traditional IDE and a textual
approach to define the UI programmatically. (Lot of great opportunities with
the latter.) Unfortunately, all this will take time to mature. I think Flash
will become a great tool in about two more revs.

>  The only thing I like photoshop for over Fireworks is photomanipulation.
>  Seriously that's it.

Well, that's an ocean-size area. :-) There *are* lots of stuff in raster
format that PS does that FW can't come close to. But, again, we are talking
about web production here, so it's a subset and FW does great.

Ziya
Nullius in Verba