[It's all fixed now. Finally. So forget all the links in this blog post. Jacco]
As you may have noticed, the official swipr site (www.swipr.com) is down. This has to do with some security issues surrounding the Mambo CMS.
I am working on resolving all of this, but in the meantime, the documentation and support parts are up and running:
As you may or may not know, the IA Summit 2007 will be held in Las Vegas, from the 22nd to the 26th of March. And I will be there, attending both pre conference workshops and the conference itself. The IA Summit has been very inspiring for me over the last couple of years, and the warm reception of swipr´s predecessor in Austin in 2004 has been a very important driver for me to create swipr and make it available to the IA community.
For this conference, I have proposed a free workshop to help people get started with swipr, but unfortunately, it was not accepted. This was partly because it was a proposal for a half-day pre-conference workshop, but free of charge. This doesn't fit with the normal way the pre-conf workshops are treated. However, I would still like to do some form of swipr promotion during the conference. So, if you are coming to the IA Summit, what would you like to see?
- Basic installation & setup of swipr;
- Examples of how to work with swipr;
- Help with your current problems involving swipr;
- Information on how to extend swipr with extra possibilities;
- Any other stuff you can think about.
If you are attending the Summit, and would like to get together to discuss any of the items mentioned, or anything else, please let me know, and also let me know when you would like to meet up. It seems that most of my Friday will be free, and there will be possibilities around Summit sessions aswell. As soon as I get an idea of how many people would like to see swipr, I can start to set up some sessions.
Also, I will be travelling back to Amsterdam via Washington. If anyone overthere is interested in a swipr presentation or workshop, let me know. I might be able to arrange something on the Thursday or Friday (29/30) after the IA Summit, if you're interested.
Hope to see you in Vegas or Washington!
Jacco Nieuwland
(info _at_ swipr.com)
First of all, a very happy and succesful 2007 to all of you!
I've had a number of questions about how to create an actual prototype with swipr. The normal output is a clickable version of the sitemap or screenflow, with popups for all the wireframes. Within the popup window it is possible to jump from wireframe to wireframe, but people would like to show the prototype in a normal browser window, instead of in the popup. Of course, this is possible, and I'll show you how to do this here.
In the 'normal' export of swipr, a popup window is launched everytime the user clicks on one of the screen elements in the swipr screenflow/sitemap. This window opens the file fd_popup.htm with the screennumber as its argument.
To have a prototype that does not work in popup screens, you will need a new copy of the fd_popup.htm. This is a very stripped-down version of the original, without any of the tabs to show additional information. The only thing this new version does is load the correct wireframe image, plus it's related imagemap, based on the screennumber argument. This means yu will always need to start your prototype with a call to this new fd_popup and a valid screen number as its argument.
The way I normally do this is by creating a new 'prototype' directory on the same level as the wireframes and comments directories. You place the new and stripped-down version of fd_popup.htm. Then, you edit the title page for the swipr screenflow. This page normally contains a link to page 00 (or whatever is the first page in your sitemap/screenflow). You can add a new link to open the first page of your prototype. (see image below).
This will open the first page in the same browser window, and WILL NOT have any of the tabs that a 'normal' swipr wireframe has. An example can be found on the swipr website.
I hope this will help you in creating a proper prototype using swipr.
I have received a number of reports of mis-aligned hyperlinks within the swipr-generated output. (BTW, I need a good name for this output, anybody got any ideas?). The problems can be traced back to two seperate causes.
Cause 1: Text objects are extending beyond the exported image.
If you select all objects in the page, you will notice pink outlines for all objects. See if you can determine the left and top edges of the exported image (compare it to the wireframe image), and then check if there are objects extending to the left and/or top of those edges. If any of the objects extending these edges are NOT on the 'no_export' layer, you have found your problem. This is normally caused by text objects that have a non-text part of the object extending above or to the left of the image. make sure all borders of text objects fall within the visible edges of the epxorted image.
A quick insight into how swipr creates the imagemap file that sets the hyperlinks:
OK, so maybe I am overreacting a little bit, but last night we had our 100th download of swipr! This means that at least 100 people have probably installed it and looked at the demo project. I'm very curious to find out how many people are actually using it for a project at this moment.
As it happens, a number of former colleagues have started to use swipr here in The Netherlands. From them, I know that they are using it, although I have had to help them set up swipr to make it work for them. So how do I find out how many other people are using it?
One more question on my mind is this: at this time, over 170 people have registered for the swipr website. The only reason for them to do so at this moment is, as far as I can tell, to download swipr. However, only 102 downloads have happened so far. That means 40% of the people that register, do not download swipr. Is there a bug in my metrics set-up, or are people abandoning the process after they've registered? If anyone has experienced problem with the download, please let me know!
As you may have noticed, documentation on swipr is quite sparse. It is difficult to find the time to create a very elaborate set of documentation, which is why I have set up the documentation in a wiki. It would be great if there are more people that would like to add to, and enhance the current set of documentation.
If you would like to contribute, please send me an email (info at swipr dot com). You'll need to be registered on swipr.com (which you probably are already). I will then change your role in swipr.com, so you have sufficient rights to modify and add content in the documentation area. Thanks in advance for your contributions!
This picture is taken from google analytics, that is keeping track of visitors to swipr.com. As you can see there are two peaks. 
The first (very small) one happened directly after the release of swipr in Berlin, during the weekend of Sep 30th - Oct 1st. A maximum of 46 visitors and 579 pageviews on one day was the result of this.
On Wednesday, Oct 25th, I sent a message to two IA mailing lists (IxDA Discuss and SIGIA-l). This peak was a bit more impressive, resulting in 261 visitors and almost 3000 pageviews in one day. Visitors then sharply fall again, but I'm hoping that there will be a bit of publicity within the blogosphere after people start using swipr in the next couple of weeks.
The total number of swipr downloads is now up to 92. I'm hoping at least soe of these people will actually start using swipr. I've been helping out a couple of people here in The Netherlands with setting up and starting to use it, which might be a bit more tricky for people further away. Still, it should not be an excuse not to use swipr, as there is a support forum on the swipr site which I am constantly monitoring.
Welcome to the swipr blog! After releasing swipr last month in Berlin, during the Euro IA, I was wondering how to keep people updated on new developments. It seems that a blog might be the best way to do so. The plan is to give regular updates on further development of swipr. Also, I might give some hints and tips for common problems, and it would be great if swipr users would allow me to show different applications of swipr in real life.
