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Maker here. This is a nice UI based on the open source: https://github.com/koenbok/Cactus/tree/v3 https://github.com/koenbok/Cactus/tree/v3 We decided to make

by koenbok 12y ago

Maker here. This is a nice UI based on the open source: https://github.com/koenbok/Cactus/tree/v3 https://github.com/koenbok/Cactus/tree/v3 We decided to make it free to fully focus on http://framerjs.com http://framerjs.com, out prototyping tool: http://cactusformac.com/blog/posts/cactus-and-glueprint.html http://cactusformac.com/blog/posts/cactus-and-glueprint.html

frozenport 12y ago
The mac only stuff is a real turn-off. It might be informative to look at the website visitor statistics to see the piece of the pie you're missing.
- veidr 12y ago
  Different perspective: Mac-only is a very attractive feature for some people. I blog infrequently, and only ever do it from one of my Macs. A solid, native Mac-only app is the only way to make the best possible app of this kind for OS X. So for me, and others in similar circumstances, it is actually a very attractive feature (and the thing that made me click through to see what Cactus is all about). I don't care about blogging from Windows or Linux, since I don't ever do that. (I do care about open source, though, so I would encourage the authors to open source the whole app, if at all possible.) EDIT: Hmm, but after playing with it I see that this tool doesn't actually provide native editing, which is the part where a native OS X app would be the most useful. This tool just kicks you out to your text editor to actually edit content. (I was thinking it would be something more like MarsEdit, but instead of publishing to one of the blog services, published to a static blog.)
  - jbeja 12y ago
    Don't know if your current demography actually take into account your point of view, many things kill a app but nothing kill it faster than assuming that you and your audience are on the same page. A example, would be me.
    - eddieroger 12y ago
      Maybe you're not the maker's target demographic. Not being a Mac user, for example.
- coldtea 12y ago
  >The mac only stuff is a real turn-off. It might be informative to look at the website visitor statistics to see the piece of the pie you're missing. And a SUV car maker is missing on selling sportcars and trucks. Not to mention he could be selling hamburgers and get a slice of McDonald's pie. Wanting to make software for platform A doesn't imply you want to make software in general. Some people get into software development because they like a particular platform/niche and it's APIs, tooling etc and want to create programs for that.
pavlov 12y ago
Is the Mac app going to be open source too? (I'm not saying it has to be, just curious to find out what your thoughts are on that.) If the code were released, it could be ported to other platforms. I've done a bunch of Cocoa -> Windows ports in the past using Cocotron and it works, albeit usually with a lot of manual tweaking on the AppKit level.
PeterWhittaker 12y ago
Hey, nice work. After years of avoiding "this web thing" :) I've recently started using Jekyll and GitHub Pages; I'm pretty happy with what I've learned and done so far, and since these are my foundations, I have to ask: Can you compare and contrast Jekyll and Cactus? Thanks!
jodoherty 12y ago
Hi there, I see GZIP optimization and fingerprinting in your deployment overview on the homepage, but do you include any built-in support for avoiding render-blocking CSS and JavaScript? And if so, then what about handling load order and dependencies between the asynchronously loaded pieces? It looks like your homepage actually fairs pretty poorly on PageSpeed Insights: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fcactusformac.com%2F https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=... I realize PageSpeed scores can be something of a red herring in a lot of cases, and I'd like to know if you think it's not worth addressing. I know for my place of work, if it influences SEO to any significant degree, then it's important to my boss. Currently we use Middleman, which from the description I saw of Cactus, would be the Ruby equivalent using Sprockets and Padrino instead of Django. We had to make a custom template with special helpers to address various PageSpeed issues. It'd be nice to have a tool that has features addressing these things out of the box though. Anyway, great work! I think tools like this are really the future as far as content on the web is concerned.
kylec 12y ago
It looks like Cactus is no longer available on the Mac App Store. Any reason why you took it down as opposed to simply making it free there?
- pervycreeper 12y ago
  Save $100/yr?
blub 12y ago
I am a customer that bought this app (the UI version) back when it used to cost ~20EUR. After checking the open source command-line project, I decided I don't want to mess with installing Python packages and so on so I got it from the AppStore. The easy install process was a major selling point in contrast with other available tools too (e.g. I don't want to interact with Haskell at all). On a technical level, I was quite happy with the app, but the fact that it was made free is disappointing, because unless it will be open sourced it means it's pretty much dead. Even then I will probably have to do a lot more work to upgrade. What are your plans regarding that?

by koenbok 12y ago

frozenport 12y ago

The mac only stuff is a real turn-off. It might be informative to look at the website visitor statistics to see the piece of the pie you're missing.

veidr 12y ago
Different perspective: Mac-only is a very attractive feature for some people. I blog infrequently, and only ever do it from one of my Macs. A solid, native Mac-only app is the only way to make the best possible app of this kind for OS X. So for me, and others in similar circumstances, it is actually a very attractive feature (and the thing that made me click through to see what Cactus is all about). I don't care about blogging from Windows or Linux, since I don't ever do that. (I do care about open source, though, so I would encourage the authors to open source the whole app, if at all possible.) EDIT: Hmm, but after playing with it I see that this tool doesn't actually provide native editing, which is the part where a native OS X app would be the most useful. This tool just kicks you out to your text editor to actually edit content. (I was thinking it would be something more like MarsEdit, but instead of publishing to one of the blog services, published to a static blog.)
- jbeja 12y ago
  Don't know if your current demography actually take into account your point of view, many things kill a app but nothing kill it faster than assuming that you and your audience are on the same page. A example, would be me.
  - eddieroger 12y ago
    Maybe you're not the maker's target demographic. Not being a Mac user, for example.
coldtea 12y ago
>The mac only stuff is a real turn-off. It might be informative to look at the website visitor statistics to see the piece of the pie you're missing. And a SUV car maker is missing on selling sportcars and trucks. Not to mention he could be selling hamburgers and get a slice of McDonald's pie. Wanting to make software for platform A doesn't imply you want to make software in general. Some people get into software development because they like a particular platform/niche and it's APIs, tooling etc and want to create programs for that.

pavlov 12y ago

Is the Mac app going to be open source too? (I'm not saying it has to be, just curious to find out what your thoughts are on that.) If the code were released, it could be ported to other platforms. I've done a bunch of Cocoa -> Windows ports in the past using Cocotron and it works, albeit usually with a lot of manual tweaking on the AppKit level.

PeterWhittaker 12y ago

Hey, nice work. After years of avoiding "this web thing" :) I've recently started using Jekyll and GitHub Pages; I'm pretty happy with what I've learned and done so far, and since these are my foundations, I have to ask: Can you compare and contrast Jekyll and Cactus? Thanks!

jodoherty 12y ago

Hi there, I see GZIP optimization and fingerprinting in your deployment overview on the homepage, but do you include any built-in support for avoiding render-blocking CSS and JavaScript? And if so, then what about handling load order and dependencies between the asynchronously loaded pieces? It looks like your homepage actually fairs pretty poorly on PageSpeed Insights: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fcactusformac.com%2F https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=... I realize PageSpeed scores can be something of a red herring in a lot of cases, and I'd like to know if you think it's not worth addressing. I know for my place of work, if it influences SEO to any significant degree, then it's important to my boss. Currently we use Middleman, which from the description I saw of Cactus, would be the Ruby equivalent using Sprockets and Padrino instead of Django. We had to make a custom template with special helpers to address various PageSpeed issues. It'd be nice to have a tool that has features addressing these things out of the box though. Anyway, great work! I think tools like this are really the future as far as content on the web is concerned.

kylec 12y ago

It looks like Cactus is no longer available on the Mac App Store. Any reason why you took it down as opposed to simply making it free there?

pervycreeper 12y ago
Save $100/yr?

blub 12y ago

I am a customer that bought this app (the UI version) back when it used to cost ~20EUR. After checking the open source command-line project, I decided I don't want to mess with installing Python packages and so on so I got it from the AppStore. The easy install process was a major selling point in contrast with other available tools too (e.g. I don't want to interact with Haskell at all). On a technical level, I was quite happy with the app, but the fact that it was made free is disappointing, because unless it will be open sourced it means it's pretty much dead. Even then I will probably have to do a lot more work to upgrade. What are your plans regarding that?