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It's so much easier and rewarding to just learn the basic code to structure a webpage. What if I don't really know much web dev, but master this tool? Where wil

by rfnslyr 13y ago

It's so much easier and rewarding to just learn the basic code to structure a webpage. What if I don't really know much web dev, but master this tool? Where will that get me? "So it shows here you've developed 8 websites for clients, wow, what does your stack look like?" "Oh I kinda just mastered this one specific tool, I don't really know how to code." Reminds me of Dreamweaver days.

darth_aardvark 13y ago
I think the idea is that this is for people who have learned the code to structure a webpage, but are sick of fiddling around with CSS/LESS/SASS to get a certain div in exactly the right place.
- nilliams 13y ago
  Agree, it seems like a complementary tool for people who know how to code. I also would have loved to have this tool a couple of years ago to help explain certain concepts to my boss (an HTML/CSS naysayer), i.e. 'these are the kind of layout things that can be abstracted'.
adamnemecek 13y ago
Is this opinion this generation's version of "Real men only write code in (C|assembly|Fortran)"?
- nilliams 13y ago
  Well it's not quite so transparent in its naivete, since a lot of people have tried and failed to create decent visual editors for HTML & CSS in the past. This particular editor does seem a significantly better attempt than previous efforts though, namely that it seems to be written with a understanding of the equivalent, idiomatic code.
- rfnslyr 13y ago
  Not really since you can code just as well in other languages, but with tools like these, we've seen them built and we've seen how bad they were. Just going off experience.
fatbat 13y ago
Depends on your end goal I suppose. Not everyone wants to learn development. Some people just prefer getting things done and this tool certainly has potential to help in that regard.
MisterBastahrd 13y ago
The purpose of web design is to create a document which is appealing to the eye and is laid out in a logically consistent manner. It is a pain in the ass to jump back and forth between an HTML document and a style sheet in order to get various page elements sized correctly and with the right padding/shading/etc. Macaw gives people all of the settings they need side by side with a visual representation of their document. It isn't meant to replace hand-coding. It's instead meant to complement it by taking the pain out of the design work.
Guest98130 13y ago
I kind of agree. I can't imagine it being popular with professional web developers or designers. Working with modern HTML and CSS is fairly straightforward and quick for development. I see sorting out edge cases and bugs produced by code in Macaw would leave you better off writing the code from scratch. Plus, like you said, this has the benefit of being educational and transferring over to other work. I also can't see it being accepted by people trying to get a simple site online for their mom and pop shop. Tools like WordPress are much better suited to their needs, and they can click a few buttons, get a theme, website, and CMS working in minutes. What I would like to see is a tool to mockup changes to existing websites. For example, I enter a URL, and I can quickly drag and drop elements to different locations, adjust margins, widths, colors with a proper color picker, etc. I find I'm always using Firebug to try out style changes, but it's a little sluggish to constantly select elements, and manually modify CSS properties. Using an online app that's a little more interactive would be useful, and it doesn't need to produce proper code, since I'm only using it to visually see if these are changes I want to implement or not. For example, I enter the URL to HN. I click the orange bar at the top, color pick it to green. Click the link headings, change them to bold red text, and slide up the line-height to add more spacing. I hit save, and it gives me a URL like jsfiddle that I can share with others. I can then post this to HN, and say, 'hey, what do you think of these changes to the HN layout?'. It's a quick way for multiple people to share ideas on improving an existing design, or users to share their suggestions with developers. It would be great for meetings too. Let's drag our left column a little bigger, maybe scale these heading down a bit, and drag our logo over here. Yep, that looks a little better, have the development team code those change up and push it live.
- gfodor 13y ago
  This idea is awesome. I hope someone builds it.
  - proexploit 13y ago
    Someone made a tool just like that and posted it on HN a while ago. I can't remember the name of it unfortunately but maybe another commenter can. I think it had CSS in the title and it was essentially a tool to customize a live site with CSS and then share your result.
troymc 13y ago
"These are really great illustrations! What tools did you use?" "I used Adobe Illustrator and then exported them as SVG files." "SVG files are just text files. They look kind of like HTML. You should really use Vim to code SVG files. It's so much easier and more rewarding. Illustrator is for babies."

by rfnslyr 13y ago

darth_aardvark 13y ago

I think the idea is that this is for people who have learned the code to structure a webpage, but are sick of fiddling around with CSS/LESS/SASS to get a certain div in exactly the right place.

nilliams 13y ago
Agree, it seems like a complementary tool for people who know how to code. I also would have loved to have this tool a couple of years ago to help explain certain concepts to my boss (an HTML/CSS naysayer), i.e. 'these are the kind of layout things that can be abstracted'.

adamnemecek 13y ago

Is this opinion this generation's version of "Real men only write code in (C|assembly|Fortran)"?

nilliams 13y ago
Well it's not quite so transparent in its naivete, since a lot of people have tried and failed to create decent visual editors for HTML & CSS in the past. This particular editor does seem a significantly better attempt than previous efforts though, namely that it seems to be written with a understanding of the equivalent, idiomatic code.
rfnslyr 13y ago
Not really since you can code just as well in other languages, but with tools like these, we've seen them built and we've seen how bad they were. Just going off experience.

fatbat 13y ago

Depends on your end goal I suppose. Not everyone wants to learn development. Some people just prefer getting things done and this tool certainly has potential to help in that regard.

MisterBastahrd 13y ago

The purpose of web design is to create a document which is appealing to the eye and is laid out in a logically consistent manner. It is a pain in the ass to jump back and forth between an HTML document and a style sheet in order to get various page elements sized correctly and with the right padding/shading/etc. Macaw gives people all of the settings they need side by side with a visual representation of their document. It isn't meant to replace hand-coding. It's instead meant to complement it by taking the pain out of the design work.

Guest98130 13y ago

I kind of agree. I can't imagine it being popular with professional web developers or designers. Working with modern HTML and CSS is fairly straightforward and quick for development. I see sorting out edge cases and bugs produced by code in Macaw would leave you better off writing the code from scratch. Plus, like you said, this has the benefit of being educational and transferring over to other work. I also can't see it being accepted by people trying to get a simple site online for their mom and pop shop. Tools like WordPress are much better suited to their needs, and they can click a few buttons, get a theme, website, and CMS working in minutes. What I would like to see is a tool to mockup changes to existing websites. For example, I enter a URL, and I can quickly drag and drop elements to different locations, adjust margins, widths, colors with a proper color picker, etc. I find I'm always using Firebug to try out style changes, but it's a little sluggish to constantly select elements, and manually modify CSS properties. Using an online app that's a little more interactive would be useful, and it doesn't need to produce proper code, since I'm only using it to visually see if these are changes I want to implement or not. For example, I enter the URL to HN. I click the orange bar at the top, color pick it to green. Click the link headings, change them to bold red text, and slide up the line-height to add more spacing. I hit save, and it gives me a URL like jsfiddle that I can share with others. I can then post this to HN, and say, 'hey, what do you think of these changes to the HN layout?'. It's a quick way for multiple people to share ideas on improving an existing design, or users to share their suggestions with developers. It would be great for meetings too. Let's drag our left column a little bigger, maybe scale these heading down a bit, and drag our logo over here. Yep, that looks a little better, have the development team code those change up and push it live.

gfodor 13y ago
This idea is awesome. I hope someone builds it.
- proexploit 13y ago
  Someone made a tool just like that and posted it on HN a while ago. I can't remember the name of it unfortunately but maybe another commenter can. I think it had CSS in the title and it was essentially a tool to customize a live site with CSS and then share your result.

troymc 13y ago

"These are really great illustrations! What tools did you use?" "I used Adobe Illustrator and then exported them as SVG files." "SVG files are just text files. They look kind of like HTML. You should really use Vim to code SVG files. It's so much easier and more rewarding. Illustrator is for babies."