[Sigia-l] Intelligent signs at Microsoft

[Stew Dean]

At 19:56 15/08/2005, you wrote:
>This is a perennial quest here: how does one turn wireframes, UI prototypes,
>etc., done in a drawing app like Illustrator directly into functional
>markup, thereby eliminating the step where programmers essentially recreate
>the drawings.
>
>Behold:
>
><http://blogs.msdn.com/mswanson/archive/2005/07/12/438178.aspx>
>
>Michael Swanson at Microsoft (OK, on his own at nights) figured out a way to
>output XAML from Illustrator. XAML is MSFT's declarative markup language
>(like XUL in Moz and MXML in Flash/Flex) that'll drive graphics in the
>upcoming Longhorn/Vista.
>
>So if MSFT actually figures out the next intelligent step and can plug in
>Illustrator output into XAML coding/authoring IDE, things would be
>interesting, to say the least.
>
>Ziya
>Nullius in Verba

Why use illustrator when you can use InDesign and have multiple pages and 
better handling for blocks of text. You can happily build a functional 
specification in Indesign with all the written content, wireframes and site 
maps. I can't think of any other program quite as able to do all those 
three jobs in such a dedicated way. Other wise it's a mixture of Visio, 
Illustrator and Word.

As for the future of IA tools - well there is a huge gap in the market here 
for a rapid prototyping / cms tool.  I am positive Visio is a dead end in 
that quest, as are all the other tools we currently use. It's going to take 
something new - although I could be wrong.

Stew Dean