Wireframing: Canvases vs. Layers

[LaurenSF]

Hi there OmniGraffle experts. How do you organize your document(s) when wireframing a good-sized web site?

Currently, I have one document with 5+ different canvases, one for section of the site. Within each of these canvases, I have 20+ layers, each with a sketch of the webpage and annotations. However, this doesn't seem to be ideal.

1. OG is running quite slowly (on a Tibook 10.4.8). The doc is 5.5 MB. Maybe I have too much going on in one document?

2. Printing/distributing to non-OG colleagues is a hassle. The only way I've been able to figure out how to print an entire section is to export each layer to PDF and then fire up Acrobat and "Insert" all the exported pages into a single PDF. Obviously this can be a huge time suck.

Am I not using Canvases and Layers appropriately? Am I better off creating a different OG document for each website section and giving each page its own canvas?

What are you doing?

[priceless]

Lauren

I've used OG Pro for wireframing with each screen being a canvas. You can have a lot of pages, but I like this approach because for those that don't have OG, I simply export as a PDF file.

You can use actions on objects to simulate actions and these carry through to the PDF nicely, allowing the person with the PDF to click around the document (it just flips the pages like a paper prototype).

Don't forget to use masters extensively -- you can set the bulk of a set of screens up once in a master and then reference it in each canvas. You can have multiple masters in OG Pro (don't know about OG).

HTH

Morgan

[LaurenSF]

Morgan:

Thanks ever so much for your suggestions. I have OG Pro and will be sure to make better use of the Master Canvases. I've never used Actions, but will look into them. Thanks again your thoughts were a big help.

:)

[priceless]

Not a problem Lauren - glad I could help.