[Sigia-l] Site maps for web apps, vs for content sites?

[Listera]

Stewart Dean:

> One of these days we wont' have to touch paper to do IA work

Some have been doing that for years.

> and we instead work in the CMS directly.

If by that you mean the packaged CMS apps, I'm afraid the effective future
of IA lies elsewhere: working against the data. CMS apps, in many instances,
are an unnecessary and often limiting architectural layer between the
interface and the content/data/info.

An interesting phenomenon that I've noticed is a new generation of
designers/developers who are now discovering this principle by using Ruby on
Rails and similar frameworks where online apps/sites become data-driven
engines, mostly because these frameworks make it so much easier to get at
the data and manipulate it live. As long as the data is structured or
structurable (an XML file, a database or some other persistent layer) and
there's a lightweight framework for manipulating it, CMS is redundant.

Indeed, much of the authentication, validation, workflow management,
relationality, etc offered by CMS packages are integrated parts of these
frameworks, as opposed to standalone code silos. One doesn't make complex
SQL statements as much as describe object hierarchies through simple
notations. Like DOM, one begins to reveal app/site structure through object
notations in the language. Coupled with powerful transformation tools
between namespaces and data structures, these free us from the CMS chains.

What also helps here, as Jonathan mentioned, is the withering notion of a
"page." Once you go from website -> online application, page is an
anachronism. Data drives the interaction and the architecture reflects this
compression of the distance between data and interface, rendering
paper/printing as road kill.

----
Ziya

"Worldly wisdom teaches us that it is better for reputation
to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally."