Hi,

I've about finished my wireframes and I'm starting to delve into the specifications document.  I've compiled a list of questions/comments as I work with this aspect of Axure and I'm hoping I can get some feedback on these.  Thanks so much for your help (esp. victor!)

1) Whenever I generate a spec the window focus always returns to Axure instead of the spec (happens with the proto, too).  I feel this should go ahead and focus on the application (Microsoft Word) where this is being generated to.

2) Is there a better way to do this?  I've broken up the site hierarchy to 5 pages with separate parts of the page listed underneath.  For example, here's what it looks like in the Site Map palette:

Homepage
  Promo tiles
  Section 2
  Section 3

Product Page
  Add to Cart widget
  Section 2
  Section 3

My reasoning for this is that when I annotate everything on one page, the generated annotations are all grouped under one section and becomes flat.  What I'd rather have is a hierarchy where I can place page elements into their own sections.

3) Is there an option to remove the page break between sections?  This contributes to a very long document.

4) Is there an option to shrink down images so the section header and image which it refers to fits on one page?  I end up with pages where the section header is on one page and the wireframe is on another.

5) I've defined some links to go to URLs.  This makes the Interactions column take up a lot of horizontal space and forces the Specifcation column to be shrinked down to about 9 characters.  This obviously leads to very tall rows.  Is there some way around this?

6) How do I keep the footnotes on my wires from getting cut off?  This occurs on the top and left borders.  I've figured out how to avoid this on pages by using a border with my wires, but this seems impossible to avoid with dynamic panels.

7) Footnote sizes on different wires seem to differ even though I've checked the option "Do not to scale footnotes with screenshot".

8)  I notice that as I define and create the interactions that a lot of extraneous information (due to "tricks" in the prototyping process) is generated to the spec.  Do most Axure users just create an identical page to keep the spec and prototyping separate?  What's the best way to handle this?  (For example, if I create the dropdown menu as shown in http://axure.com/cs/blogs/axure/archive/2006/10/25/Creating-MouseOver-Flyout-Menus-using-Dynamic-Panels.aspx, the image map used behind the menu shows up in the spec.  Even if I manually delete the annotation, the footnote on the wireframe is still there.  Also, the annotation numbering doesn't renumber.)

9) Is there a way to define cell widths to be consistent for each table generated?

10) It'd be nice to have a cover page (with company, project name, document name, author, created/modified date, version, etc.) and version changes page available.

11) It'd be nice to be able to add padding around wires.

12) This might be more of a Microsoft Word question, but where do I find the Axure-specific styles in the Word template?  I'd like to change the header styles but I can't find AxureHeading1, AxureHeading2, etc.

13) It'd be nice to generate to PDF.

14) Table of Contents...  wow, 5 pages for the TOC alone.  Is there some way to cut this down so only the major sections are displayed?

Thanks again.

1) Thank you.

2) Are you including each of the sub-sections on the main page using inline frames? This method seems like it would work to separate out the content. Another option is to place the sub-sections into masters, but the structure of the document may still not be what you are looking for. We are considering options for grouping content for the specification.

3) There isn't an option for this in Axure RP, but you can search and replace page breaks in Word.

4) The generator should be trying to place them on the same page, but for certain size pages or with a certain amount of page notes, they may get separated. The easiest way to address this currently may be to resize the image in Word.

5) You could separate the interactions data into a separate annotation table. In the Annotations section of the configure specification dialog, you can add more annotation tables and select the fields in each.

6) We plan to address this.

7) They should be the same size. We'll do some testing around this.

8) Sometime the interactions column in removed from the annotation tables and a new annotation field is used to describe the interaction rather than use the default documentation for an interaction.

9) No, but we will consider this for a future release.

10) You can modify the Word template for the specification to include all of that content. Take a look at the Template section of the configuration dialog.

11) Thank you.

12)  In Word 2007, on the Home tab of the ribbon, click the arrow below the Change Styles button that says Show Styles (Alt+Ctrl+Shift+S). I believe in earlier versions of word, you can get to the styles using Format->Styles and Formatting.

13) Thank you.

14) The table of contents is configured to show certain styles. i.e. AxureHeading1, AxureHeading2. In Word, you can configure which styles to include in the table of contents.

Hope that helps!

pixeler:

Hi,

I've about finished my wireframes and I'm starting to delve into the specifications document.  I've compiled a list of questions/comments as I work with this aspect of Axure and I'm hoping I can get some feedback on these.  Thanks so much for your help (esp. victor!)

4) Is there an option to shrink down images so the section header and image which it refers to fits on one page?  I end up with pages where the section header is on one page and the wireframe is on another.

Thanks again.

In the specification generated by Axure RP Pro, the page image follows the section header, and the section header follows page break. When the page image is very long, sometimes the page image will display at next page, so the page that include section header would be include section header only. In this case, the wireframe can be adjusted to fit section header and page image on one page. When using the default specification template, the experience is below:

1. When the height of page less than 760 pixels, do nothing.
2. When the height of page more than 760 pixels, keep the height less than 1.23 times of width.

---

Skype : huzhenghui
Gtalk : huzhengh
Gmail : huzhengh@gmail.com

victor:

2) Are you including each of the sub-sections on the main page using inline frames? This method seems like it would work to separate out the content. Another option is to place the sub-sections into masters, but the structure of the document may still not be what you are looking for. We are considering options for grouping content for the specification.

No, not with inline frames.  I just bascially recreate/copy the UI element I want to focus in on, create a new page in the Axure site map and indent it underneath the main page, then paste that content in the new page.  Doing it this way makes sure the spec recreates the same hierarchy as the site map.

victor:

3) There isn't an option for this in Axure RP, but you can search and replace page breaks in Word.

4) The generator should be trying to place them on the same page, but for certain size pages or with a certain amount of page notes, they may get separated. The easiest way to address this currently may be to resize the image in Word.

10) You can modify the Word template for the specification to include all of that content. Take a look at the Template section of the configuration dialog.

Maybe this is trying to control too many things from Axure, but I feel this is important because if I have to regenerate the spec, then I have to go back in and manually change all these again.

victor:

5) You could separate the interactions data into a separate annotation table. In the Annotations section of the configure specification dialog, you can add more annotation tables and select the fields in each.

Hmm, that's certainly an option but I feel the specification and interaction should really be hand-in-hand.  Plus, it adds a lot of noise (forcing readers to swap between the two to gather information for one element; increasing document length) to an already busy document.  Perhaps the best thing here is to simply turn off the interactions field and include them into the specification?

victor:

7) They should be the same size. We'll do some testing around this.

I'd be happy to send you screenshots, if necessary.

Concerning the cover page, I placed one before the TOC in the Axure template.  But when I generate the spec, it counts the cover page as Section 1 and starts the Pages section as Section 2.  Any tips to prevent this from happening?

victor:

8) Sometime the interactions column in removed from the annotation tables and a new annotation field is used to describe the interaction rather than use the default documentation for an interaction.

I've removed the interactions field entirely from the spec, but I'm still left with the footnote and an empty annotation.  Here's the dropdown menu example:

Any suggestions?  Thanks!

The TOC using heading styles to create the numbering. Are you using one of the axure or Word Heading styles on the title page? If so, you can either not use the style or remove the style from being included in the TOC.

There isn't a way to remove the footnote from the screenshot, but you can remove the empty row from the table. In the Annotations section of the configure specification dialog, check the option to "Remove objects with no data in selected fields".

I am not to bothered about deleting a few page breaks. I usually work with tall, full-page designs. So instead I would prefer that the wireframes in the specifications are resized or enlarged to fit a whole page width. The title above each wireframe (or "User interface") should still be visible at the top of such a page though. 

For specifications, this manual task of resizing images is the one that takes the most time, and unfortunately wireframe sizes can't be specified in Axure nor Spec Gen.

Does anybody know of any Word macro or other way to quickly resize all wireframes (or selected pictures) to a specified size or % width?

This article might help:

http://en.allexperts.com/q/Microsoft-Word-1058/Word-resize-pictures.htm

We're making a small change to the specification generation in 5.5 to try to fit the image to the same page as the heading more frequently.

I've found that this macro gives the best results.

Sub ResizePictureWidth()
' Macro to Resize the width of ALL pictures in the document to 18 cm

Dim inshpPower As InlineShape
Dim sngOldWidth As Single
Const sngNewWidth As Single = 18
With ActiveDocument
If .InlineShapes.Count > 0 Then
For Each inshpPower In .InlineShapes
With inshpPower
sngOldWidth = .Width
.Width = CentimetersToPoints(sngNewWidth)
.Height = CentimetersToPoints(((.Height * sngNewWidth) / sngOldWidth))
End With
Next
Else
MsgBox "There are no shapes in this document.", _
vbExclamation, "Cancelled"
End If
End With
End Sub

Re: #8

I've been exploring Axure for the last several months and I'm just starting to use it on projects. The developers I work with are used to working from Visio wireframes, so I've been experimenting with ways of exerting as much control over the spec as possible while still maximizing reuse between spec and prototype.

The most promising approach I've found so far is:

a. Turn off the Axure footnotes entirely, and don't use them for the annotations table. In my view, removing empty rows from the table is not enough; I don't want to give readers 12 footnotes to hunt for when there are only three rows in the table. 

b. Create pages as masters, and drag them on to separate prototype pages and spec pages, as mentioned in the original question. This sounds onerous, but I'm not planning to create spec pages until near the end of the process, so I can live with it. The nice thing about this approach is that I can sometimes create a onLoad event for a spec page that displays stuff that's initially hidden in the prototype so it shows up in the spec with no fiddling required. I can also decorate the spec page with additional info, including a "callout" custom widget (basically, a flow shape with a connector line sticking out of it that lets me point at things on the page). I add annotations to the callout, and the callout label in the wireframe matches a value in the annotations table. I can also put anything else on the page (say, a graphic on top of an inline frame to represent the content of the frame for the spec; this was in another recent thread) without having to worry about maintaining a bunch of invisible elements in the prototype.

Hi Jeff, thanks for sharing your solution. I can see how this gives you a more control over the specification, and we'll consider this when designing enhancements for future releases.