Jason is right. We need a new layout tool for the web:
It’s high time we had a grown up User Interface design program, one that understands the nature of the web and the parameters we work under. Each time I revise a bunch of related text in a Photoshop comp, I wonder why the hell there aren’t Styles palettes like InDesign. But let’s not stop there: how about per-document grids, rather than system level settings. Or functionality to treat images and text as flowing and wrapping elements, rather than islands of content that need to be moved individually. Perhaps a rendering engine that understands CSS, the intricacies of type styling, and relative sizing units (px, em, %). Knowledge of current browser UIs, chrome, scroll bars, and libraries of those elements to use in comps (Fireworks does currently touch on libraries of form elements). Also, we don’t really think of pages as flat and static entities anymore; we now have pages that adapt to user interactions, reflowing, recreating, and altering content without a page refresh. The framework for what a page is has changed considerably even in the past few years, though our applications to design those frameworks are still stuck in the web of yore.Mucking Up the Fireworks
