What is VisDynamica?
Simply put, it is a tool that can turn a Microsoft Visio™ project into a webpage. It uses the existing “Save as Webpage” feature, but while this function produces just a set of static images inside a frames structure, VisDynamica is supposed to make the result much closer to a real-life website.
This means that with VisDynamica you will be able to easily use things like AJAX, flash, javascript libraries, or real forms in your prototype. All means of rich interactions, generated directly from a Microsoft Visio™ drawing.
Please note: it does not work with beta Visio 2010. The new engine will hopefully do, however while it is still in development, please use previous Visio versions.
Why should you bother?
If you design only for documentation purposes, you probably don’t need to bother at all. But if you plan to use the project as a prototype (e.g. for briefing teammates or testing and evaluation purposes) - you should aim at achieving as genuine and close to real-life result as possible.
Brief list of the current features
- Dynamic loading - onmouseover and onclick events that update the layout in some way
- Popups - full-featured lightbox-like solution, with internal navigation
- Google Analytics tracking - easy way to add Google Analytics tracking code to your prototype
- Comment tooltips - easy configured tooltips that let you add unobtrusive comments to your prototype
- Basic scroller - just a basic feature, but it seems promising
- Tabbed interface - automatically generated tabs you could use to display some pages of your drawing
- Youtube video - instead of placeholders, you can use real videoclips in your prototype
- Custom code insert - to put a custom CSS or JS file in the header of an exported page; this way you can do anything with some specific part of your prototype, while the rest is automatically generated
- Custom image - to use any custom image, that will be loaded to an exported page; most useful for animated gifs
- Page load delay - to put a constant or random delay on page opening, when another page is displayed on top of it
- Real HTML forms - with value posting between pages, validation on change or on submit, etc
What do you need to do to get started?
- First, register to this website and download your copy of the desktop VisDynamica client.
- Next, activate your workstation, as it is described here.
- When you’re done, you can download the sample document and custom shapes to try VisDynamica on your own.
- If anything gets you confused, use the contact form to ask me
Live-demo of how your vision might be brought to life
There is a preview of the features current beta version comes with. And it actually is a direct export from a Microsoft Visio™ document. Would you guess?
