Rapid Prototyping with Ruby on Rails
On the heels of Fred’s MNteractive debut, “Finally, Rapid Prototyping that is actually rapid”, I’m finally digging into Ruby on Rails and have been pleasantly surprised.
After playing with it for a couple days, the RailsDay.com challenge - build a working web application in 24 hours - seems viable. Rather than making documentation tools closer to prototyping, the Rails framework makes building the actual website easier. I foresee a threshold in website complexity where building it would be faster and easier than drawing out traditional wireframes.
With that in mind, a quick compare and contrast against the other wireframe options:
- Pros:
- Cross platform, it’s just text files
- Output is an actual website
- Revisions can happen in real time, use your meetings to make the site better
- Plugs into versioning systems, always have the previous versions
- Default style is gray on white, perfect for wireframes
- Cons:
- Access to server running Ruby on Rails and a database are required
- Some degree of programming knowledge required
- More difficult to print out
One Comment
The local Object Technology User Group will
be having a (free) presentation on Ruby on Rails this September 20th:
http://www.otug.org/meeting/20050920.html
The Pragmatic Bookshelf has also just published a book on the topic:
“Agile Web Development with Rails” (http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/rails/index.html)