Prototyping websites has been a hot topic on the Interaction Design (IxDA) discussion board recently, along with a huge thread about the new iPhone and Bill Buxton's hand sketching for early prototypes.

I stumbled upon Canvas as a prototyping tool a while ago. It's relatively easy to learn and allows you to target links, uses layers and exports as a "clickable" PDF or as HTML easily.

Being a Mac user, I really like OmniGraffle for ease of use, but hadn't though of it as a prototyping tool, until Michael Angeles generously offered to share his knowledge and custom stencils with the rest of us. Haven't had the chance to start using his method, but plan to migrate over to that platform for an upcoming prototype.

Like so much else these days, there are many strong opinions about what's the best tool for prototyping – from Axure, iRise, Viso, to a combination of Adobe's Illustrator and InDesign. Andy Clarke has an interesting take on the subject in his new book, "Transcending CSS".

Although I'm stumbling around trying to actually write CSS, his book is beginning to make sense, although a lot of it is way over my head right now. Clarke maintains that producing well marked up CSS interactive prototypes may be a more effective workflow. Hope I can get my old brain around this new workflow.