SIGIA-L Mail Archives: Re: [Sigia-l] Open-source IA tool in the making
Re: [Sigia-l] Open-source IA tool in the making
Hi All,
I'll try to answer most stuff in this one email, but so far I'm really
happy with what's being said. From the top ;
Some have asked about the financial aspect of this. I have thought
about that in the past, to create a cool IA tool, charge money and
laugh all the way to the bank. But, hey, who am I kidding? I don't
think the market is big enough, the customers are scary (!!), and
there are already lots of similar tools out there. I just want to
create an IA tool that I want to use. The advantage I'm bringing to
the table is that we all can contribute instead of relying on a vendor
to have the foresight and hindsight and strata to make the right tool
for you, and that it is free; you've got nothing to lose if it sounds
interesting.
Stewart ; good thoughts, although I don't want to make it various
applications, but more like one web application with a Wiki style for
most things and especially for content (I don't want to fiddle with
content *management*). Just click a field, type some stuff, and Voila!
the site is different.
Listera wants a demo, and I'm sure many more would like that. Um,
sure, of course, whenever I have some time, I'll do just that. I want
to make at least wo nice looking default styles first, otherwise it
will go from "features" to "visual impression" in two seconds flat. :)
Betsy wants technical info ; I've used BSD in the past, but there is
no reason not to go with either GPL 2 (not sure about 3) or Apache
License. Others that suits should be considered.
Still Betsy ; As to other technical tidbits, I use PHP classes that I
think myself are pretty good, and I will indeed put AJAX into this. If
people would point me to nifty and *small* widgets that could be used
(like a small tree-editor with XML support, for example), please do.
Jacco has gone the Visio way ; I'm going to stay right clear of that,
I think. It brings too much baggage, IMNSHO, besides IA is more about
structure and content than about how much like Visio it is. :) He asks
"I'm curious about the model you are planning to use to create
screenflows from XML" and the answer is, I don't; I want the thing to
be a site, almost like a prototype tool, only closer to reality. Once
you've specified how a page works, what links its got and some
validation info, you can generate flowcharts based on it if you need
that extra info. I don't believe in making a lot of work to prove a
little point, nor do I think workflow diagrams add much value to the
development cycle, except perhaps to the people who are creating it. I
think that's what makes Visio popular; you can think while drawing,
but after that fact, I shun it.
And about the summit ; if someone is willing to sponsor me, I'm happy
to go. :) *hehe*
Jonathan ; "Do you see this [the IA IDE] as being something this tool
could incorporate naturally, or is it essentially page-based?" It is
in essense a site / project tool that can view the whole shebang,
parts of it, a page in it, or a widget within a page. I don't want to
make it *too* IDE as that would add complexity that I don't feel is
needed. We need to *quickly* put up prototypes, sitemaps and skins,
overviews and such, but an IDE (would) offer more features than the
above needs to be. I want to design it so that you define and focus
from one angle, and other angles are created automagically based on
that.
About Axure ; looks good. Not sure I can nor want to compete with
that. :) Where Axure seems to be more like an IDE for IA/UX/design
people, I aim more to have a real-time website you extend and fiddle
with using AJAX until you're happy, flipping between different views
of the site as you go. (For example, Axure *generates* sites and
reports, while my tool would be more WYSIWYG in a browser)
Peter (the Topic Maps abandonista :) asks "You might wanna study some
of the other attempts that've been made at this and why they haven't
really taken off." I have, and especially my own efforts. :)
Satisfying the IA is a hard one; they are scary people *because* you
can't give them crap, they will see through your bluff, and generally
poke at the inabilities of any given thing. I hope the open-source
part of the project would take away most of that sting.
Further ; no it isn't just a prototyping tool. In fact, I can run
production websites with it, no problem. It is a fully functional
website in itself, depending on how much data you feed into it. The
framework is fast enough to run heavy-traffic websites, but it hasn't
been designed specifically for that, no. Also, I don't (at least, not
at this stage) have any management of content and publishing, nor do I
think I want to do that. (I don't want to create a CMS)
Ok, I think that's where were up to, and please, keep it coming. For
example, how would people like the interface to be? Application? Web
browser based? Do you *want* external people to participate with the
tool (so you can hire a greasemonkey to add content, for example)?
Regards,
Alex
--
"Ultimately, all things are known because you want to believe you know."
- Frank Herbert
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