LESS is a wonderful alternative to SASS. http://lesscss.org/

nanoc is a very nice Ruby static site generator with a good community and a very active project maintainer: http://nanoc.stoneship.org/

+1 for less. I find it to be a lot nicer to use than SASS.

I also really enjoy using LESS. It has all the features I need, with a syntax which still feels like CSS. I personally can't stand the whitespace rules for SASS.

I certainly don't hate it, but I prefer a tab than dealing with curly brackets or termination.

At this point though, I guess it's about individual taste.

Thanks for reading.

I just proposed the same idea at work. Except I use Django + Compass. The advantage of this kind of prototyping is that you end up with a fully functional and clickable website. And it is much easier to do usability tests with functional websites than with mere static images.

Yes, it works well for user testing, feels more real, especially with a fluid layout. That's something usually harder to test with static mockups.

Rapid prototyping shouldn't involve HTML or CSS at all.

I guess the author refers to prototyping as in getting something basic working rather than UI prototyping. So in that case, thumbs up to HAML and SASS/LESS (whichever you use).

I love Balsamiq. I got a lot of UI ideas done easily with it. Was worth a lot more than the $79 I paid.

I thought I was the only one using haml to write my HTML for static sites. I just completed a static site for a friend and I didn't know about the static site servers mentioned in this blog, so was using $ haml mypage.haml mypage.html to get my output each time.

Kudos for tipping everyone on the statis site servers.

What do you propose? Photoshop? Balsamiq?

I'm not proposing a tool, I'm proposing an approach. We shouldn't have to build custom GUIs over and over again. We should use the same approach that Cocoa does (reusable GUI components)

I was definitely talking about an interactive prototype of the actual design, not wireframes.

It's the step I usually consider when passing on the design to the development department. Sometimes there's much more needed to explain than what a static mockup or interactive wireframe can.