Do you draw your windows before constructing them? What do you use?
I've tried the Pencil plugin for FF. I've tried MS Visio. I've tried paper & pencil. I've tried Designer Vista. etc. etc. etc.
I'm currently leaning toward paper & pencil, but what about you; what's your preference?
I've had some success with pencil/paper, but mostly I use Adobe Photoshop.
It depends.
If I'm communicating to the team or the customer in an informal setting, I'll often whiteboard the windows. But if things need to be a little more clean looking, something I could throw in a doc to pass around or something like that, I'll open up the designer (Visual Studio, typically) and throw them together. It is quick and efficient.
When working with customers I use Visio for pretties and Excel to show general layouts. The joy of Excel is the ability to include calculations, images and diagrams and simple functionality demonstrations using recorded macros. The spreadsheet is also generally viewable by all using Excel or the Excel Viewer and can be used during development to check functionality.
One sheet per screen, data set or flow diagram works well in Excel.
I've done paper prototyping with 11 X 17 sheets with colored sticky notes, with yellow representing a widget/webpart and pink representing and error dialog box. The sticky notes worked well because I could move the webparts and their actions right on spot.
We had numerous sessions with all members of the business units moving the pieces of paper around. They really got into it and we quickly fleshed out the interactions we needed to model.
Pad of paper and pencil, though lately I've started using balsamiq mockup, a pretty neat design tool.
FWIW I don't use GUI builders at all, so it's design on paper then write the code that implements that design.
Have a look at this: http://www.balsamiq.com/demos/mockups/Mockups.html
I always start with pencil and paper but it usually takes 4 or 5 binned pages before I'm happy.
Then I'll mock it up in an MsWord drawing but I'm thinking of switching to a more decent drawing package.
I usually go for pencil and paper, though sometimes I'll just create a big form in Visual Studio and start dragging controls around until I come up with what I want.
Paper, whiteboards, PowerPoint and Photoshop. They all have their uses. Remember to study before hand and collection notes on good and bad ideas you've seen in other applications, as well as design guidelines. And showing your designs to others for review before you code is of cause vital.
:)
//W