I created a paper prototype guided by Carolyn Snyder's excellent book, Paper Prototyping: The Fast and Easy Way to Design and Refine User Interfaces, for a web application used to book occupancy of the road to do maintenance work, etc. It was a lot of fun testing it on my colleagues and a couple of genuine local users but when it got to testing remote users I thought perhaps I'd try to create an online prototype. I started with PowerPoint but found the macros deficient and a couple of things I wanted to do I couldn't. I then ordered Effective Prototyping with Excel by Bergen et al, expecting that their prototypes would involve some basic coding but was disappointed to find they didn't. A programming colleague showed me a couple of very basic code statements in Excel and I realised that with the Control Toolbox widgets, .Visible = True and .Visible = False statements, a couple of If statements, a little googling and a little recording of macros to figure out some code, I could create a pretty workable prototype, albeit only able to handle very specific use cases.

I would appreciate responses on:

1. the value of this type of prototype
   
2. whether it is possible to have more control over formatting of the Control Toolbox widgets, or, alternatively substitute the Forms toolbar widgets which are more formattable
   
3. other "bits of code" that non-coders can add to the repertoire
   
4. ways of making the prototype more like a real prototype, that is, not totally use case dependent, without going into real coding territory
   
5. any other suggestions