Hi,
I am quite experienced into HTML+CSS+Javascript, but a total newbie
regarding Ruby, Rails, etc. As a web usability specialst/UX designer, I
usually perform my rapid prototyping tasks using tools like Axure RP.
I’m willing to test a different approach, that would allow the CSS/HTML
to be (at least partially) reused by the front-end developer, and the
prototype to be used/tested directly on target devices. As I work on
mobile/tablet enabled applications, I’d like to try using Zurb’s
Foundation framework.
I followed Ruby and Rails tutorials (some things are just amazing, like
the way database are accessed, some still sound weird but I guess it
would need more practicing), and started studying which Ruby gems I can
use. Rails seems to be too complicated for rapid prototyping (“rapid”
would not be true, I guess…), so it seems using a non-MVC framework,
able to generate static files (like MiddleMan) would be great.
for the moment I’d
prefer to avoid the MVC overhead : I usually work in early stages of
projects, when everything is not clear about data/functions/use cases.
The aim is precisely to be able to very quickly present a prototype that
runs and is representative of current design hypothesis. MVC would
clearly be an overhead, especially in my case : I’m really not
comfortable with Ruby (yet?).
I installed several (Haml, Sass, MiddleMan, Compass, Zurb-Foundation),
and followed the MiddleMan tutorial (’>middleman init testfoundation
–template=foundation-smacss’). But there, when I launch the server
(>middleman server). I get errors, due to lacking SCSS files
(normalize). I opened and changed some files, corrected the first
errors, but there are still other errors.
AFAIK, my current problem is that the layout makes a call to the
“application” through a stylesheet_link_tag, that generates a
css/application.css" link in the html code. This call gives a 404. It
seems logical as the scss is located in the
/stylesheets/application.css.scss file, and the confir.rb contains :
’
set :css_dir, ‘css’
set :sass_dir, ‘stylesheets’
’
But when I set both css_dir and sas_dir in the same directory, I get a
sass syntax error, for a file not found (normalize). 
I’m pretty stuck! I feel I lack some basic understanding about what are gems in Ruby, what makes them
available in a project (shall I add them in the config.rb or elsewhere
?). Any advices?
Best regards,
Yann