NETWORK WORLD, 4 March 2009: Designing Web applications is complicated and one area in particular where painstaking, expensive, iterative development occurs is user interface design. Get it right and your Web application will stand or fall due to its underlying functionality. Get it wrong and it doesn't matter how good the underlying service is, the chances of success will be seriously reduced if not short-circuited altogether.
In Web design circles they talk of “wireframing” or as it is sometimes called “Web wireframing” – that’s the technique of graphically depicting a user interface layout so that those involved in approving the design can reach agreement on direction and style.
Typically, the wireframing process begins on a white board for the initial “blue sky” thinking and then gets formalized using an application such as Microsoft Visio (if you’re looking for a Web wireframing stencil library for Visio check out the Visio Wireframe Toolkit for Download). Note that the wireframes you create with this toolkit will have a Microsoft Internet Explorer “look.”
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