March 21, 2008
Lazyweb Request: An RIA Wireframing Service
Something just struck me–something that I’d really like to have. Can someone create an RIA that allows me to quickly create a low-fidelity sketch of a site, along with a service that allows these to be published, annotated, and shared online? Off the cuff, my base requirements for this would be:
- Multiple pages, with the ability to onion-skin them.
- Basic tools: shapes, lines, text. Of course, they need to remain editable constantly and, oh what the heck, allow me to push and pull them in front of one another.
- Online publishing — something like “share this site”
- Hyperlinks between pages
- Multiple authors and reviewers
- Secure login
- Site tree navigator
- Annotations, like callouts and speech bubbles
- Collapsible notes pane
Some really nice-to-have’s include:
- Multiple sites, with reusable components across them
- Multiple master pages
- A desktop client that can sync up to the site
- Versioning
- Export site to PDF
Maybe there’s something already out there that does the task? Adobe Version Cue has some collaboration tools that I haven’t yet explored. Gliffy does some of this too. Denim is close, but lacks a service to map up to.
Some of the tools that I think do a great job, and would serve as inspiration for this tool include:
- Skitch, because it seamlessly posts images to the web
- Gliffy, for its versioning, collaboration and nice drawing tools
Finally, while I’m at it (and since there’s still lots of time before Christmas), I want a image thumbnail web service. Basically, I send it an image and tell it what size and type of thumbnails I want. Perhaps I even supply it with the crop coordinates. It sends me back a gzipped file with my images. Oh I can wish.