Design a new web site or a new application

 

I was looking for best practices to create a web site or in my specific case a facebook apps design.

This is for our MyNewResolutions Facebook applications. See this blog post for more information about it.

It seems that the most common way is to use Photoshop and then to create the XHTML/CSS from there. This is most common for graphic designer.

For HTML hackers, it is easier to start directly the mockup in XHTML/CSS.

If you are neither a photoshop guru (or an artist) nor a HTML hackers, you need to use a Fireframe software with a wysiwyg interface. The most common one seems to be from Adobe. Then, you still need to transform the resulting design to proper XHTML/CSS.

I was looking for a super simple and super quick Fireframe application. Facebook apps is usually not high in graphism anyway. Powerpoint is one solution but it seems to me cumbersome for web design.

And I found Balsamiq. I think this is the perfect match to quickly design a Facebook app. It is also possible to create automatically the XHMTL/CSS from the mockup with Napkee or BmmlExporter. I did not try those applications though.