Right now, I’m hand-coding my first full site, because I was starting to get fed up with some of Freeway’s idiosyncrasies, and have been really enjoying the freedom. However, Macaw might change all that for me if it’s anything like what the website and video say it will be.
Thomas, if any number of us jump ship, I’m sure that we will see each other around. That is just the nature of folks like Ernie, Todd, Walter, and you.
On Jul 29, 2013, at 12:17 AM, Caleb Grove email@hidden wrote:
Wow.
Right now, I’m hand-coding my first full site, because I was starting to get fed up with some of Freeway’s idiosyncrasies, and have been really enjoying the freedom. However, Macaw might change all that for me if it’s anything like what the website and video say it will be.
Thomas, if any number of us jump ship, I’m sure that we will see each other around. That is just the nature of folks like Ernie, Todd, Walter, and you.
Holy crapballs that looks good! This is pretty much what I have been dreaming of. Obviously there are many questions that remain about the functionality etc. Especially inserting markup. Signed up fo sho!
Looks promising. Will be interesting to know if they plan to make it extensible for adding things like js library effects that would be available within the programs interface.
I agree. The premise seems to come from the hand-coding side of the fence, though. The UI is very strongly skewed toward people who know what a div is and how it differs from an article, for example, and there are lots of “sugars” for people who know how to hand-code evident throughout. I am curious to see what a code-phobic person could create with it, and whether they would get the full benefit (or that mythical 80% of the benefit) without knowing or writing code.
Walter
On Jul 29, 2013, at 3:41 PM, chuckamuck wrote:
Looks promising. Will be interesting to know if they plan to make it extensible for adding things like js library effects that would be available within the programs interface.
I think maybe a big test for me will be this new code-writing engine. It
sounds as if it may not be that predictable - deciding itself how the code
is written. But I like the way they describe the priorities, so I will want
to see for myself.
The first thing I wondered about was how hands-off the output actually is. Is it something I can tweak if I so choose without it being overwritten? I don’t know. But for myself, even if I can’t/don’t use it for production it could still be a kick-ass prototyping tool which would be just fine too.
Interesting. The “one-way street” comment was noteworthy though at least they’re looking for ways to integrate external editors. These guys may be on to something big. Time will tell.
With these 2 new guys on the block (which to a layman look very similar) it seems as though Softpress may have their work cut out for a future update. They both look very user friendly, understandable and appealing.
I’v been an intermittent user of Freeway since V2 - I’m not really a web designer and never purport to be - and it’s always looked dated and clunky to use. FW6 is an improvement, but look at the UI compared to these new ones. It looks very old fashioned. I’m now talking looks over substance, but look at how a good shop window can draw you in. As for the clunkiness, it’s the box-jumping that really gets me down (along with the 1 level of undo), and then having to close the document and reopen it to get back to where you were before that box jumped - because the 1 level of undo didn’t even work on that bit!
I probably won’t go over to the other side, as I’m now just beginning to get the hang of FW’s oddities and complexities, but it would be nice in a future update if Softpress were to make a nod in the direction of the newbies coming out now, otherwise I fear they will be relegated to DinosaurLand.
I wonder if their support system is as good as Freeways though
I think this could be something for Softpress to look at but I don’t think they should take freeway in this direction. I can see this as a great prototyping tool that can churn out quick designs etc. But in terms of building a large, multi feature site, I can’t see myself using something like this. I’ve just been playing around with webflow and it’s super quick to build a half decent responsive site. The UI does feel a bit clunky and finding things takes a while but I’m sure it’s a whole new learning experience.
