[IxDA Discuss] Axure RP Pro prototyping tool

[George Schneiderman]

Regarding Axure:

In practice, I haven't found the "generate functional spec" feature to be useful.  It simply produces a document that is so unwieldy as to be rather unusable.  Maybe this would be less of an issue for something that was a bit simpler, or more of a web site versus a transactional web application.  I fundamentally quite like its ability to generate prototypes, and in particular its ability to attach widget-level annotations those prototypes.  We are treating those prototypes as part of our spec.  But Axure's actual "generate spec" feature we gave up on after a couple of tries.  

My biggest issue with its prototyping capability is the inability to set state when you enter a page.  Basically, Axure has a rather powerful tool set for manipulating the state of any given page--when someone presses a button, for instance, you can display or hide particular interface elements, or set the state of an element.  As a very simple example, you might have a element that displays a different text message depending upon what action a user takes.  The problem, however, is that when you use define a link to another page in the Axure prototype, that page will always load in its default state.  For instance, suppose that you have an Account Detail page, which gets used for user account types A, B, and C, which share certain features but vary on others.  There is no way to have one link take you to the Account Detail page for a type A user, and another take you to the Account Detail page for a type B user.  All you can have is links that will take you to the Account Detail page, in whatever its default state happens to be.  

The other noteworthy issue I have had is is with the annotations.  Fundamentally, this is a great feature.  You can define your own custom categories of annotations, which can be text, number, date, or customizable "select" fields, and then annotate just about anything.  The annotation shows up in the prototype in the form of a little question mark button, and when you click on it you get the content of the annotation.  The issue I have had is that sometimes annotations are visible even when the widget they are annotating is hidden.  This seems like it is probably a bug, and it doesn't happen all the time, but it does happen often enough to materially hamper the utility of this feature.  

--George

-----Original Message-----
>From: Jessica Grann <JMGrann at daktronics.com>
>Sent: May 10, 2006 4:03 PM
>To: discuss at ixda.org
>Subject: [IxDA Discuss] Axure RP Pro prototyping tool
>
>[Please voluntarily trim replies to include only relevant quoted material.]
>
>Anyone using Axure RP Pro to generate prototypes? I'm evaluating the
>program and curious if it's worth the money. I'm really like that you
>can generate your functional specs and html prototypes from it with just
>a click of a button.  Are there any tools that are better for this?
> 
>http://axure.com/
> 
> 
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