For prototyping a new webapp, I like to get an HTML prototype on screen as fast as possible. There are a number of ways to achieve this, ranging from the heavyweight Rails, to the lightweight Sinatra. But even a barebones Sinatra app requires you to specify routes and layouts. When I'm focused on sketching out the markup structure and design, what I'm looking for is less distractions from setup. Theoretically, one could prototype everything with raw static HTML, but most designs usually share layouts and snippets that would be a pain to copy and paste between different files. Writing raw CSS is also possible, but once you've gotten a taste of Sass and Compass extensions, why would you want to? In this post I'll outline my bottoms up approach to getting a site design bootstrapped. I'll also cover how to get these prototypes up in a public area for feedback, and how these prototypes can be used as scaffolding alongside your development.