Introduction
Adobe Dreamweaver is one
of the many web development tools available on the market today, and is
a familiar name in many businesses and educational
institutions. It contains a variety of features suitable to
both experienced web designers and beginners. It is a WYSIWYG (What You
See Is What You Get) editor, which allows users with little knowledge
of web coding to create, edit and maintain websites and
webpages. It is subsequently useful to information architects
as a web development tool, but is also commonly used as a prototyping
application.
Morville and Rosenfeld (2007, p. 360) describe prototyping tools as web
development software that enables the user “to create
interactive wireframes and clickable prototypes”.
Further information from the w-edge website (1999) defines a prototype
as either a paper based or online “’mini’
Web site, including content (or content ideas), graphics, multi-media
etc., on a smaller scale than the final site.”
Dreamweaver obviously has the capacity to fulfill this function from an
information architecture perspective.
While the Adobe website concentrates on selling the product through an
interestingly designed and possibly over-stylized interface, going into
the developers section of the “communities” link
yields good results on exactly how Dreamweaver can be used to create
prototyping applications. (Carr, n.d.) The instructions may
be somewhat technical for the average beginner, but the article proves
that the company is aware of this particular use of their product.
Julie Stanton (2006) in her article “HTML wireframes and
prototypes” emphasizes the importance of being able to use
software such as Dreamweaver to create interactive
prototypes. She maintains that there are definite advantages
to information architects using such software, including the ability to
increase user testing capabilities, improved client communication,
simplified implementation, and creating visible client value.
Most importantly, she points out that “HTML wireframing and
prototyping is for more than just web projects.”
Uses of Dreamweaver in Information Architecture
A 2006 survey by the
Information Architecture Institute (2006) found that 20 % of the 70.9 %
of the respondents used Dreamweaver as prototyping software.
Julie Stanton’s “HTML wireframes and
prototypes” (2006) supports these figures, a previous survey
that she quotes found that only 28 % of information architects used
interactive HTML tools for prototyping.
Interestingly, Stanton (2006) states that the reason that HTML tools
usage was so low was mainly that a lot of the survey participants
declared that they were happy with the prototyping tool that they were
currently using. It would appear that Dreamweaver is
definitely a tool recognised by the information architecture field for
prototyping, but that personal choice dictates whether it is used or
not.
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