[Sigia-l] Why does not real IA tool exist? was Re: Where's the reality?

[Alexander Johannesen]

Stweart,

On 3/13/06, Stewart Dean <stew8dean at hotmail.com> wrote:
> In essence i'm looking for a way to creating hriachical strucutres,
> application flows and possibly other form of strutures of web site in
> diagram form that then get translated into web based prototypes that can
> seamlessly be used to develope the final version of the application.  This
> is somewhat ambitious a aim I know but I consider possible.   In short by
> drawing site maps and wireframes and providing all the correct rules, error
> trapping etc you can produce a grey version of the final site.
>
> I've got rough specs for such a system which, once more rounded, may be
> worhwhile positing online to get critique.

I would love to see that spec; I am rolling my own IA framework which
I plan to make as an open-source tool. It's basically a system where
you specify complex data structures in XML (a site definition file and
various templates), and the system spits out in 1.0 Strict XHTML;
overview maps, wireframes of pages (browsable, printable and
explorable), various menu templates and so forth. I guess a key piece
to this would be a nifty and simple-to-use GUI to edit those XML
definition files (perhaps even a Flash app).

I'd like to see specs for what people want the overview maps to
represent, what info to go in the wireframes, and so forth. The idea
is also that you can skin the wireframe and create full-working sites
(for super-fast prototyping and even for actual site implementation).

Anyway, I'm sick of having to worry about aligning boxes and their
colors more than about what the boxes represent and how to shuffle
them about. :)


Regards,

Alex
--
"Ultimately, all things are known because you want to believe you know."
                                                         - Frank Herbert
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