Xion Community

Cliff, I wish to throw you a huge thanks, once again, for creating such a brilliant bit of software.

Besides being fantastic for player skins, I've found this to be an invaluable tool for client based work, allowing me to share working previews and demos of UI functions and interactions before handing it to them for C# coding. Long gone are the days I would simply send a folder full of bitmaps and resources and us both hope for the best. They truly appreciate a good solid mockup, and I can't agree more.

Here's a small beer for your efforts:



Cheers.

You know what? It could perhaps be very worth while to have a spin-off of the code you have for Xion, but develop it as a GUI builder/tester of sorts. Ditch the player side of things and open up to a couple of new features specific for GUI crafting. There's really not many tools around which can throw together an entire working UI in the time Xion can, and I find that funny because it's not even its intended purpose, really.

/thoughts

Cheers Lance!

Thanks for the beer, that's going to take some time to wear off

That's a good idea actually! I will definitely look into it

I did a quick google to see what else is out there and this looks interesting:

http://www.justinmind.com/

Looks pretty cool, uses emulator/simulator so it feels like you're using on the target device.

I found it on http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?GuiPrototypingTools

Lots of stuff there, the only one that supports PSD is http://www.cranksoftware.com/storyboard

I've heard of that justinmind before, and also GUI Designer by CommandFusion.

As brilliant as they are, I still reckon build-by-psd has a slight edge. No bulky fullscreen program needed, 99% of designers will already know how to use PS, and you can work on both design and prototype simultaneously.

I don't know, perhaps I'm a little biased. All those wysiwyg programs are brilliant, but I see working directly with your design down to the pixel as the best form of wysiwyg.