UI

I had an earlier post describing free or cheap UI mock-up tools.

To take things to the next level and start creating prototypes, I was looking for rapid application development (RAD) tools that would allow me to draw out HTML pages with dragging and dropping.

I haven't yet found a suitable RAD HTML editor, but I did run across a blog post which provides copy-and-paste HTML elements (source) which you can use to quickly cobble a UI together. Here's that link :

I'm certainly no expert in UI design, but it's nice to mock-up things before you start committing them to code.

I like what I've seen from Balsamiq (http://balsamiq.com), but $79 for a license seemed a bit of a stretch for my modest needs.

I found the free app "Pencil" (http://pencil.evolus.vn) seems to work pretty good.

You can use Pencil as a Firefox plugin, but I ran it as a stand-alone XULRunner app.

Documentation is kind of sparse, but here's one useful link :
http://www.graphicrating.com/2009/10/05/creating-wireframes-with-pencil-...