What is wireframing?

Hi creative people of themeforest! I hope you all are succeding in everything you do.

I have a question and need your valuable help. What is wireframing and how does it help when it comes to web design? I was reading a book and the author mentioned it but didn’t explain so much. I google it, but quite don’t understand how can it help me.

I also read about this tool for wireframing, omnigraffle:

http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnigraffle/

Is this better than firewoks? I am one of those guys who has Ilustrator but don’t quite use it as its full potential.

Thanks for your help. Have a nice day!

read http://vector.tutsplus.com/tutorials/web-design/build-a-promotional-iphone-app-website-wireframe-in-fireworks/

it’s done in fireworks, but you can use illustrator etc

I do mine in fw as I didn’t get illustratior with my adobe package

I always use Fireworks for wireframes and mockups. I don’t know how to explain it though

Wireframing is the process of laying out the page, with out colors and fancy stuff to see what the layout will look like with out putting to much work into it. Its mainly helpful in a client situation where you do a quick wireframe and your client likes one part but hates the rest. So there you didn’t waste your time and money working all day making it. Its generally good to cook up 2-4 wireframes and see what works best.

Usually wireframes go together with moodboards. For an example of a wireframe take a look at this:

http://www.albruna.nl/albrunablog/images/2009/09/wireframe.jpg

for an example of the moodboard that goes with it look here:

http://www.albruna.nl/albrunablog/images/2009/09/moodboard.jpg

the resulting site looks like this:

http://www.isis-books.nl

Hope this helped somewhat.