Adobe Proto is a great website and mobile app that enables you to quickly and easily design wire frame layouts of websites and mobile apps. After reviewing many different tools for this purpose we have found that Adobe Proto is the only one that really allows us to do actual framework designs with our customers live on an iPad or Android. It’s intuitive pen strokes enable you to put together an entire page design in only a few minutes.

The Adobe Proto touch app works seamlessly with Adobe Creative Cloud and puts your designs on your personal cloud for integration with your Adobe Touch apps, including Adobe Dreamweaver CS6. Dreamweaver requires an additional free extension to read Adobe Proto files, but even if you do not use your files on the desktop directly, they are great reference when designing your Fireworks files for a new website.

Adobe Proto is a really incredible wire frame program allowing you to quickly summon different design elements with just the stroke of your finger or stylus. For example, drawing a square on the screen will produce a video element in your wire frame that you can customize for inclusion in your design. A squiggly line produces “lorem ipsum” latin filler text to add text elements to your wire frame letting you prepare detailed drawings.

I normally use Adobe Proto while visiting a client’s facility to capture my initial ideas of what their website will look like. Other times I may take my iPad to the pool or to sit by the lake and work with Adobe Proto to come up with new and unique ideas for client websites.

Adobe Proto is another expensive touch app at $9.99 for the iPad version, but Adobe offers Creative Cloud users a free month of service when purchasing 3 Adobe touch apps for your mobile devices. Proto only works on iPads or tablets, but it is a great addition to a web designer’s mobile toolbox.