And without taking screenshots or copying the html, since the point is that it should have the power to quickly create something that looks just like our current ui. Also, it should be web based, because then fonts, etc will be right, and also I hate installing things. My previous attempt at explaining this: http://friendfeed.com/e... (Balsamiq is not what I want). It does not need to produce html though, so it can cheat anyway it likes. - Paul Buchheit

So you wanna something like "html to png/psd"? Editable graphical interface with layers and stuff? - Selim Yoruk

No, not at all. My point is that you could look at the the FriendFeed ui (with your eyes) and then create something that looked just like it. - Paul Buchheit

Fireworks is pixel perfect, correct font sizes and previews image in browser. Yes/No? - Toby Graham

Are you looking for something like what is mentioned in this article - http://www.labnol.org/interne... - Atul Arora

Are you want something like web-based rich page editor which works with objects in manner the human see them and want change them? - gmarketer

I guess it's difficult to explain something that doesn't exist :( - Paul Buchheit

thats piracy!!! - Arjun

Paul, I like the idea, it's got merit. There's plenty of tools that do half the job, that is, snip the page. The second part, i'm not overly familiar with the tools out there. The manipulation. I guess you could snip the page, and embed into your tool a js library, like scriptaculous, and attach special event significance to the controls/tags, for moving, dropping, dragging. - Stu Andrews

I think I get what you mean now and I agree. That's not very helpful but hey. In the mean time you could edit the page live using firebug maybe? - Toby Graham

It seems to me like you want the Visual Studio Win Forms designer for web apps hosted and served to designers as a web app. Drag and drop elements onto the page and adjust their properties in a property grid. Then send a link to others so you can share your concept. - Eric Schoonover

For this, I use simple vector graphics editing app, like Xara or InkScape - I just make screenshots and use them as raw building blocks - usually I cut out from them small elements like controls/text-blocks/images/etc... In vector graphics enironment managing such kind of blocks is much more easier than in photoshop. - Phil Smirnov

remembers that this idea has been described by David Siegel in 1997 in his book : Creating Killer Web Sites (http://tinyurl.com/5skw63) - Oaksun

Paul, i think the edit-page command on ubiquity with the ability to: visually edit css and publish the changes is close to what you are describing. - Ian

Eric pretty much nailed the description of the dream tool that I think Paul was asking for. In my dream the web app is truly collaborative and has an active GUI. So you can adjust those properties using a mouse or tablet and anyone else on your design team can watch as you do it so they can make suggestions and modifications as you work. - David Muir

Let's say you want to make a mockup of FriendFeed called "FriendFood". You want it to generally have the same layout, only the top blue bar will actually have a background made of lasagna and a font that is made of French fries, and what shows on the page is everything people write about food on the regular FF, like "pasta OR bean OR potato OR steak". But you'd like someone to be able to do that from the web and without messing into much coding. Is that it? - Rodrigo Jaroszewski

http://blogoscoped.com/video... - Philipp Lenssen

I use OmniGraffle for this purpose. - Jason Wehmhoener

Could you achieve it by using Firebug and tweaking the CSS? - Shakeel Mahate

So something with the usability of say, omnigraffle, but that only used webkit for its rendering. With text controlled and positioned by actual css so that line spacing etc were correct, although again with a simpler UI than CSS has. - Robin Barooah

Paul - I _just_ came across a site that did exactly that. Unfortunately, Safari's browser history is failing me and I can't find it anymore. Doh! - Patrick Lightbody

Paul, not sure if you're still reading, but are you looking for interaction design changes as well, or just appearance? - Mark Trapp

Did you try "PENCIL" an add-on for Firefox http://www.evolus.vn/Pencil/ - Francois Lamotte

I had never heard of Pencil, but it sure looks a lot like what I think Paul is describing. - Jason Wehmhoener

I use ScrapBook Firefox extension to capture the page as is, and then edit that using Firebug. - Jughead

Paul, I totally got you first time - anyone who thinks it's not a good idea has plainly misunderstood :-) It's the next step up from sketching out your UI on paper, n'est pas? - Slippy "WildBeard" Lane

Thanks @Francois. Pencil looks quite promising... - Ashwin Bharambe

Firefox Webchunks? Does only the snipping part though. Perhaps an add-on to webchunks that will let us use all those chunks together. - Vamsee

it'd be kind of like pushing edit on a wiki, right. like, firefox would have an edit button then you could visually redo the page - Coleman Foley

There's also Axure RP, something I found a while ago. http://www.google.com/search... - Jauder Ho

Dosen't ASP.Net do that already??? - Roberto Bonini

One quick tip in Photoshop is to turn off anti-aliasing and use your various web fonts (Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, etc.) and use your preferred font size in pixels/points... This will provide you with screen accurate font appearances and sizes. The biggest problem with a "pixel-perfect" browser rendering is that it will never be consistent from browser to browser. They all render ever so slightly different, which is where tools like Microsoft's new SuperPreview come in handy: http://www.microsoft.com/uk... - Nathan Chase