Aquila Sunrise

I missed this neat video last year talking about placement targeting in the “web clips” bit in the Gmail interface.

I’d be interested to see what results anyone gets using this. Personally I don’t think I’ve ever clicked on these web clips. I know I’ve only ever clicked once on an Adwords ad on Gmail and that was a competitor (yes I’m very sorry for what I’ve done, but it was only one click, honest)

Anyway, I liked the video:

I often have to specify web development tasks and I’ve always struggled when it comes to producing decent wireframes that developers can use to code and designers can use to design.

Here is my shortlist of tools I considered using.  It’s purely a personal choice and the ones I selected for further study appear to suit my needs, namely helping me to quickly produce mock-ups of the ideas in my head that I can pass to designers and developers for beautification and programming.

1. http://www.mgitsolutions.com/blog/2009/01/23/powerpoint-wireframe-stencils-as-free-download/
A set of powerpoint shapes.  Really neat and the quickest and cheapest way for me to make wireframes.

2. http://www.balsamiq.com
This is the one I’ve decided to trial. I believe it will have the easiest learning curve, there are several add-ons available and it seems to have a vibrant support community.

3. http://www.mockupscreens.com

4. http://wireframesketcher.com

5. http://www.foreui.com
I really like the look of this tool but feel it might be a bit more complex (I mean have a steeper learning curve!) than I need.

For more tools and some analysis:
http://www.dexodesign.com/2008/11/07/review-16-user-interface-prototyping-tools
http://www.cmswire.com/cms/featured-articles/web-design-top-5-wireframing-tools-002922.php