Wireframing
December 28th, 2009
In creating this new design I actually took a risk and wireframed the entire site before mocking it up. Some people are very much against wireframing, instead they only mock up a web page in code. While others love to wireframe their website for unity and clarity before actually coding or designing anything.
So what is ‘wireframing’ and does Photoshop count as wireframing?
According to Wikipedia the definition of wireframing is:
A website wireframe… is a basic visual guide used in interface design to suggest the structure of a website and relationships between its pages.
My definition is anything that is created to show the interface of each page the site before the coding. What I mean by this is that Photoshop (unless using tons of layer comps, or multiple documents) is not really designed to layout every page of a website, instead it allows you to create just one general design. Fireworks on the other hand though allows you to use the pages pane to layout changes to ever page.
So to the point, should or shouldn’t I use a wireframe?
It is really up to you, personally I am for it, but as i have learned over the years is each designer has his own set of tools and opinions on each one of those tools. Personally I would highly recommend using a wireframe tool for your site but in the end it is really up to you.