UI Prototyping Tools

[ARJWright]

Are there any UI/UX Prototyping tools which are used by any of you seasoned Maemo developers? I'll use everything from MS Paint, to PowerPoint/Visio, to even coding something with HTML/CSS3 if it would make the point. But, am just looking for something that would be easy enough for a developer to take and pretty much craft the functionality in a straightforward manner.

I do realize that Maemo is not the primary development environment for many of you, and so other platform specific tools might be recommended here - and that's ok.

It would be nice if there is a tool (or two, three...) that are used which can be further refined for Maemo 5 and beyond use. And it would make it a heck of a lot easier when doing those initial brainstorming topics to be able to have an application that one can use to better detail aspects of an idea that is more on the GUI or user-process level.

[joppu]

Well, there is the GUI template with some of the most common elements that can be used with Photoshop or your favorite Image editor. http://wiki.maemo.org/GUI_Design_Template

[Bundyo]

Pencil (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8487)
Glade (http://glade.gnome.org/) (Not exactly prototyping)
QT Creator (http://qt.nokia.com/products/appdev/developer-tools/developer-tools#qt-tools-at-a) (Not exactly prototyping)

[ARJWright]

Pencil (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8487)


Dang. That's really tight. I wonder what this extension would look like in MircoB or Fennec?

[avel]

I wonder what this extension would look like in MircoB or Fennec?

Slow.

:D

[ciroip]

imo designing and prototyping should be a too basic and seminal task to have a dedicated tool... it is just not possible to standardize a creative flow. Any program that put less limit as possible is a must, the rest have to came from the blend of the designer technical and artistic background... any bitmap program can do all the tricks a designer need but nothing can beat in flexibility a vector based program... sadly most are pretty dull (illustrator/freehand, coreldraw...) but Xara prodducts really stand out for the quality of the engine, the speed and the ability to export in flash (pretty standard solution in creating semi functional demos)

[ARJWright]

@ciroip - good point. I was looking for something to bridge the creative gap. For instance, I can use Xournal quite easily to brainstorm and sketch concepts, but to make sure that I'm respecting the enablements/limitations of the platform, I'd rather prototype interactions as close as possible to the developer's tools, so that a better product results.

[pamadio]

qtcreator is a full IDE. The design tool within is "qt designer":

http://qt.nokia.com/doc/4.0/designer-manual.html

I am not sure if it is already possible to use it for maemo specific widgets.