[Sigia-l] Open-source IA tool in the making

[Alexander Johannesen]

On 3/13/06, Donna Maurer <donna at maadmob.net> wrote:
> I'm going to ask a big, stupid question ;)

Wouldn't expect anything less from you. :)

> If you stick XML & templates in, and a site appears out (you
> describe it in wireframe, but if CSS styled, you could style it nicely),
> how is this different from a little CMS?

The big thing is that the tool is content centric instead of
management centric as a lot of the CMS'es usually are. I work with
what I get; I don't delve into authorship, content creation,
workflows, user management, processes, publishing rules and all that
jazz. Some off the top thoughts ;

- Less work ; simple XML that is the minimum you feel you need
(usually means you can mock up a brand new site in 5 minutes)

- Multiple views ; wireframes, prototypes, overviews, sitemaps,
reports, graphs, all from the same data source, flip through them with
tabs (or whatever other control we might think of)

- Semantically rich XML input files ; you can test faceted, tagged,
bold, brass, fiddle, simple or complex nagivation schemes with a click
(basically, you can test each page/site/project with different
navigation schemes; "test this site using facets. Now try normal 1/2
and 3 level. Now try without breadcrumbs. Now try with only level 2's"
and so forth)

- Easy to change fundamentally ; move your XML bits around, change
their type, add some stuff and hit the browser refresh; your sitemap
and all viewed pages change on the fly, good for rapid development and
testing

- Mockup of data ; if you've got some data in XML, link it in and use
it as data. Great for testing news, databases, tagging, taxonomies,
etc in a flash

- Full control of everything ; open-source, smaller framework than
most CMS'es (even the smaller ones; current code-base is about 2Kb of
code)

That's just off the top of my head based on what I've got right now.
It really is designed so that I can test out if a navigation type /
design / feel / IA / oomph! works for my given site, how it looks in
wireframe, what the sitemap looks like while adding new pages or if I
move them about or change what type of page it is, how to test how
widgets display my test data, and so forth.

It's not as fancy as it sounds, perhaps, but it is there, albeit
mostly for people who know a bit about XML. This is one of those
things I'd like more input on; how would they see the GUI into such a
tool? AJAX and simple? RESTful and complex? (dumb question, but hey,
I'm running out of steam here ... :)

Hope that clears up a little?


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