4 ms·

I am waiting for someone to finally give me just a wysiwyg tool to make web pages and apps so I don't need to program anymore. I just want to make content, not

I am waiting for someone to finally give me just a wysiwyg tool to make web pages and apps so I don't need to program anymore. I just want to make content, not make a machine to then make my content with. It's like building a wood cutting machine when I just want to be warm in the winter.

Ozzie_osman 3y ago
WYSIWYG UI-builder with LLM-based ability to describe what you want. "Form with username and password and when you submit it creates an account".
- weakfish 3y ago
  This won’t ever work as long as LLMs are non deterministic
  - intalentive 3y ago
    Temperature = 0
atoav 3y ago
While I get the sentiment, as someone who knows CSS and HTML5 well, I can't help but feel there are reasons why this can't work. Aside my web involvement I did a lot of print design as well. For print wysiwyg is perfectly fine. But how would you wysiwyg for a medium that is inherently multifaced? I mean your window could be small, or huge, portrait or landscape, it could have colors or not, heck it could even be print. So you won't get what you see unless you replicate the exact conditions under which it was seen when tou made it. Do you want that thing that you scale to stay at fixed size, should it stay at fixed distances to the viewport borders? If yes which ones? What happens if users set their font sizes differently and your perfectly scaled text box overflows? Either that wysiwyg editor has very opinionated choices that won't work for half of the people, or it will have auch a complexity in its options you will be better off with learning css in the first place. Web is not print, nobody will get what you see. That being said, if you are really just about content, I would just use the most basic default browser css (so basically none) and html and call it a day. That won't look shiny, but if people want shiny they can do their own styling. Some of my favourite blogs do this. Other than that I wouldn't discount the fact that a backend can be a crucial part of the content as well as it allows you to do valuable things that are geared towards the consumption of said content, e.g. taxonomy (tags, categories, authors, consistent dates), but also more specialized things like linking between relevant topics, etc. Of course you could also do that by hand, but then you wouldn't be focusing on the content, wouldn't you? In the end it is your content and you want to present it in a certain way. If you want precise control over the how, you have to deal with these things — if it ia just about the content, use whatever CMS you like and never look back.
- ardit33 3y ago
  Jesus.... Visual Basic did this in the 80s and 90s just fine. Flash did it in the early 2000s. It is doable, but it requires a stable runtime. Just the HTML/CSS ecosystem is too flaky, and HTML/CSSS is a poorly design system for this type of interactive systems/apps.
  - throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
    I was gonna say, I did some of this with VB3, and VB6 definitely could do it all. CSS & HTML are ancient technology limping on with an entire industry of people who know its dark magic keeping it afloat.
  - b800h 3y ago
    It's not that HTML is flaky - it's explicitly designed to work in different types of portal, which Flash and VB were not. For example, Flash and VB are not known for their easy compatibility with screen readers for the blind.
merpnderp 3y ago
You might try a happy in between like something along the lines of Streamlit.
dclowd9901 3y ago
I’m building that right now. It’s not great (it requires you to clone the repo and build your site from that) but it does currently support gallery and blog pages. Very alpha but it’s a pet project I’m enjoying. It also handles deploying to an S3 bucket, and purging a cloud front distribution (instructions for setting that up included too). https://github.com/dclowd9901/posse https://github.com/dclowd9901/posse
miraculixx 3y ago
There's plenty. Google it.
mr_toad 3y ago
> I am waiting 1997 calling, they say they have that wysiwyg tool you’ve been waiting for.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

Ozzie_osman 3y ago

WYSIWYG UI-builder with LLM-based ability to describe what you want. "Form with username and password and when you submit it creates an account".

weakfish 3y ago
This won’t ever work as long as LLMs are non deterministic
- intalentive 3y ago
  Temperature = 0

atoav 3y ago

While I get the sentiment, as someone who knows CSS and HTML5 well, I can't help but feel there are reasons why this can't work. Aside my web involvement I did a lot of print design as well. For print wysiwyg is perfectly fine. But how would you wysiwyg for a medium that is inherently multifaced? I mean your window could be small, or huge, portrait or landscape, it could have colors or not, heck it could even be print. So you won't get what you see unless you replicate the exact conditions under which it was seen when tou made it. Do you want that thing that you scale to stay at fixed size, should it stay at fixed distances to the viewport borders? If yes which ones? What happens if users set their font sizes differently and your perfectly scaled text box overflows? Either that wysiwyg editor has very opinionated choices that won't work for half of the people, or it will have auch a complexity in its options you will be better off with learning css in the first place. Web is not print, nobody will get what you see. That being said, if you are really just about content, I would just use the most basic default browser css (so basically none) and html and call it a day. That won't look shiny, but if people want shiny they can do their own styling. Some of my favourite blogs do this. Other than that I wouldn't discount the fact that a backend can be a crucial part of the content as well as it allows you to do valuable things that are geared towards the consumption of said content, e.g. taxonomy (tags, categories, authors, consistent dates), but also more specialized things like linking between relevant topics, etc. Of course you could also do that by hand, but then you wouldn't be focusing on the content, wouldn't you? In the end it is your content and you want to present it in a certain way. If you want precise control over the how, you have to deal with these things — if it ia just about the content, use whatever CMS you like and never look back.

ardit33 3y ago
Jesus.... Visual Basic did this in the 80s and 90s just fine. Flash did it in the early 2000s. It is doable, but it requires a stable runtime. Just the HTML/CSS ecosystem is too flaky, and HTML/CSSS is a poorly design system for this type of interactive systems/apps.
- throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
  I was gonna say, I did some of this with VB3, and VB6 definitely could do it all. CSS & HTML are ancient technology limping on with an entire industry of people who know its dark magic keeping it afloat.
- b800h 3y ago
  It's not that HTML is flaky - it's explicitly designed to work in different types of portal, which Flash and VB were not. For example, Flash and VB are not known for their easy compatibility with screen readers for the blind.

merpnderp 3y ago

You might try a happy in between like something along the lines of Streamlit.

dclowd9901 3y ago

I’m building that right now. It’s not great (it requires you to clone the repo and build your site from that) but it does currently support gallery and blog pages. Very alpha but it’s a pet project I’m enjoying. It also handles deploying to an S3 bucket, and purging a cloud front distribution (instructions for setting that up included too). https://github.com/dclowd9901/posse https://github.com/dclowd9901/posse

miraculixx 3y ago

There's plenty. Google it.

mr_toad 3y ago

> I am waiting 1997 calling, they say they have that wysiwyg tool you’ve been waiting for.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]