You did it! You can now generate, use, and share interactive prototypes.

AxShare is our prototype sharing service (currently in beta), that allows

you to manage an account of up to 10 active prototypes. You can upload

an RP file to generate and we provide you a link to share the prototype

with others. You also have an option to password protect it. And it's free to

use!

You'll also find a Discuss tab next to the sitemap in the prototype (which you can disable). You can view the discussions in your AxShare account.

You can find more details at http://share.axure.com/.

CHM is the format for Microsoft's HTML Help file. Most Windows machines have the player installed. Like zip files, this option enables you to distribute a single file and typically doesn’t require the recipient to install any software to view it. It’s a little easier on the recipient since they do not need to unzip and extract the files.

To generate a .chm file for the prototype, go to the “Distribute” section of the Configure HTML Prototype dialog (F5), and select the option to generate the CHM file. This creates a .chm file in the prototype folder when you generate the HTML prototype.

If you don’t have the HTML Help Workshop from Microsoft installed already, you will need it to generate CHM files. It is available as a free download here (click the Download button for “htmlhelp.exe”). Once installed, there is an hhc.exe file in the folder you installed it to. Click "Locate hhc.exe" in the “Distribute” section of the Configure HTML Prototype dialog to tell Axure RP the location of the program on your computer.

There are several ways to share or distribute the prototype... and without requiring your audience to install Axure RP or a reader.

To create a zip file of the prototype, right click on the folder that contains the prototype files and choose Send To -> Compressed (zipped) Folder (for PCs), or “Compress [folder name]” (for Macs). This creates a zip file of your prototype that you can email to the viewer.

Once the viewer receives the file, they can unzip the file and extract the prototype folder to their computer. To do this, open the zip file and select "Extract All Files," or drag and drop the prototype folder from the opened zip file onto the desktop.

To view the prototype, open the file "start.html”. This launches the prototype in the web browser. Please note, you cannot open the prototype directly from the zip file; you have to extract the files first.

To publish the prototype to a shared or web server, either generate the prototype locally first and move the files to the server afterward, or (with the appropriate access) generate directly to the server. To transfer the files to a server, use an FTP program like Flash FXP to upload the prototype folder. If you don’t know whether or not your organization has a server set up, your IT folks may be able to help.

After uploading all the files, you can distribute the location or link to the prototype. As long as they have permissions to the server, they will be able to view the prototype in their browser.

There are a number of ways you can customize the prototypes like selecting the pages to include and adding a logo or caption. Once you've configured the prototype, just click a button to generate the HTML and JavaScript.

To open the Generate Prototype dialog, go to Generate -> Prototype in the main menu or click the Prototype button in the editor toolbar.

General: Choose the Destination Folder for the generated prototype, and which browser to open. The prototype has a lot of files, so it’s best to create a folder just for the prototype. By default, the prototypes generate to the ~/My Documents/My Axure RP Prototypes folder on PCs, and the ~/Documents/Axure/Prototypes folder on Macs.

To reset the Destination Folder to the default path, click the Use Default button beneath the field.

Pages: Choose which pages you would like to include in the prototype. By default, this is set to generate all pages.

Notes: Select and order the page notes to display in the prototype.

Annotations: Select and order the annotation fields to display in the prototype if any. There is also the option to substitute the note icon with the widget's label.

Interactions: Choose to always show case descriptions or only show case descriptions when multiple cases exist.

Logo: Import an image and provide a caption to brand your prototype.

Mobile/Device: Choose to insert a viewport tag for mobile viewing. The viewport tag tells the prototype the size and scaling options on the device used to view the prototype.

Distribution (for PC only): Option to generate a CHM version of the prototype for single file distribution.

Advanced: Options to render text as images, choose the units for font sizes, and to not apply sketch effects.

Discuss (Beta): Option to enable discussions within the prototype powered by AxShare (share.axure.com). This feature is in Beta.

After you finish configuring the prototype, click the “Generate” button to create all the prototype files in the destination folder and open the prototype in the specified browser.

To launch the prototype at anytime, go to the folder where you generated the files (i.e., My Documents / My Axure RP Prototypes / [File Name]) and open the "start.html" file.

Tip: After generating the prototype the first time, you can re-generate single pages by going to Generate -> Regenerate Current Page to Prototype for the main menu. Refresh the browser to update the prototype page. This can be a huge timesaver when you’re working on an individual page in a large file.

Experience your design and share it with others using interactive prototypes. In this article, learn how to customize, generate and share interactive prototypes.

Interactive prototypes are a great way to simplify documentation, get user feedback, and identify and hammer out requirements. After you design, annotate, and 

add interactions to your wireframes, you can generate an interactive, browser-based prototype—without writing a single line of code.

Axure RP prototypes are made up of HTML, JavaScript, CSS and image files and you can view them in popular web browsers like Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari

and Chrome. You don't need to install a reader, player or Axure RP to view them making them easier to share. Your clients only need Axure RP if they will making edits to the design.

The generated code is not generally meant for production use; however, there is an API available that gives you programmatic access to the data in Axure RP      

files if you'd like to create a custom generator. You can learn more about the API here.

The prototype has two sections:

Sitemap, Page Notes, and Discuss (Left): There are three tabs in this pane. The Sitemap tab lets you open a page in the main frame by clicking on the page name. In the Page Notes tab, view the page notes added to the page. And use the Discuss tab to add and comment on topics.

You can collapse this pane by clicking on the gray rectangle in the top right corner of the pane. To bring it back into view, click on the gray icon in the top left corner of the page. You can also navigate directly to an HTML file for one of the pages to prevent this pane from appearing at all.

Main Frame (Right): Interact with the wireframes and flow diagrams. The interactions in the wireframe behave as you’ve defined them in Axure RP. Widgets with annotations have a note icon next to them. Clicking a note icon opens a dialog to view the annotations.

Tip: If you're using Internet Explorer, you may see a pop-up warning about allowing ActiveX content to display. To disable this warning, go to Tools->Internet Options in the main menu. In the Advanced tab, scroll down to the Security section and check the box next to “Allow active content to run files on My Computer”. 

Have questions? Drop us a line at support@axure.com, tweet us at @axurerp, or write on our Facebook wall.

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