[IxDA Discuss] True or False: In a perfect world we'd all create html clickable wireframes after the static ones have been don

[davewalker at interfacevisuals.com]

I haven't had time to respond properly with everything I've learned about doing a XAML project with Blend and a little C#. But I echo Dave Malouf's comments here; Blend 1.0 does not have the maturity to deliver what I want to deliver as a designer. I find myself explaining to the dev lead: "Okay, I had to do a lateral transform on this object in order to get it to look the way I wanted, but Blend isn't smart enough to also transform the height and width properties, so we can't use auto-sizing: we'll have to write a little sizing code."
The dev lead doesn't want to write this kind of code, but he likes how I've made it look, so he caves a little. But I do find that I end up losing a lot of control with Blend 1.0. I am playing with tools that were designed to create software within certain constraints, which is just not ever going to work for our trade.
I am looking forward to the soon-to-be-released 2.0 version of Blend, along with the soon-to-be-released Visual Studio 2008. Because VS2005 also has trouble interpreting XAML properly - another symtom of XAML immaturity. But the idea has real promise and I don't want to give up on it quite yet. This model will advance our trade. We will truly be in charge of "how it works", not just how it looks.
Cheers all,
Dave W 

>-----Original Message-----
>From: dave malouf [mailto:dave at ixda.org]
>Sent: Monday, October 1, 2007 06:17 AM
>To: discuss at lists.interactiondesigners.com
>Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] True or False: In a perfect world we'd all create html clickable wireframes after the static ones have been don
>
>I see in Jim's email the piece about the level of detail in his
>specifications. Detail is important indeed. 
>
>But I wonder if we had tools that were good enough so that the time
>and energy it took to do that level of specification is the same
>amount of time it would take to just build it, then we wouldn't need
>to specify it?
>
>Like the other David, I'm doing a project in Blend right now and our
>goal is to really concentrate more energy on building usable code than
>for creating documentation. Now since this is a 1.0 product, we'll
>see how it all pans out, but we already know that a standard designer
>with even basic Flash level programming skills isn't enough to get
>the level of code we need to truly do this hand-off the way we want
>(& now) need to.
>
>The tools themselves REALLY aren't good enough. Better visual or
>human language programming tools are really needed here. 
>
>I should be able to create a state transition on click on a specific
>hot spot as easily in Flash or Blend as I could in powerpoint.
>Anything short of that and IMHO the tools fail.
>
>-- dave
>
>
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