Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Open-sourced Webflow for your own app

github.com

21–30 of 101 posts

Re: Show HN: Open-sourced Webflow for your own app

#21
post #2

The main problem with these kind of tools is that they sit in a "dead zone" of being too in depth for non-technicals, yet too limiting and inefficient for engineers to bother with, as they end up injecting a huge bundle on the page just to render a form. How are you solving for that?

While that might be true at the moment, this is a (well designed) electron instance (edit: exists? I only saw install instructions for NPM so maybe it just needs built executables? it says it uses electron) away from being a modern replacement for WYSIWYG editors like Dreamweaver. I could see an easy integration to push your page up to a CDN or GH Pages instance. Even without, there are tons of places for moderately technical people to host static websites, and “upload the code and pictures to a server in this folder” is within many more people’s technical grasp now than it was 20 years ago. Most people don’t need all of the scaffolding most modern dynamic websites have. Online SAAS WYSIWYG web authoring tools— wix, squarespace, Wordpress, et al— have been the only practical option for people without front-end dev skills; beyond that, you’re in SSG land which requires a big jump in knowledge for very little gain in utility until you really start getting some dev knowledge, and most people don’t want or need that knowledge. Being able to stand up a site and tweak the code here and there to do something a little different is a great spot to sit in. Hell it’s what got me started on web stuff with my geocities site nearly 30 years ago.

I think this is a great example of why we need more product people involved with FOSS. Having worked in dev for quite some time before I got into design, I’ve experienced the blind spots inherent to having a purely technical focus. From the dev perspective, user needs often seem straightforward or even intuitive, but that’s heavily skewed by a completely different approach to using and reasoning about software than end users have. Developers are often pessimistic about users that seemingly always fail to grasp something they consider trivial, but developers rarely have to confront the actual complexity of other people’s jobs. Lots of people are smart and can solve problems, even if they don't have a formidable mental model of software development. Tweaking basic HTML/CSS generated by something else is well within their problem-solving capability and doesn’t require much technical know-how.

Re: Show HN: Open-sourced Webflow for your own app

#22

Thanks, this looks pretty neat! Definitely a project to keep an eye on :-) I love the approach of having it show you the code (and diff) and control on writing it back. This seems like it may be very useful! As an AOLPress user back in the day, it's both really surprising that in 2024 we don't have more WYSIWIYG tools, but also understandable because of how hard it is to design one. Most tools end up trying to find a…

> Most tools end up trying to find a sweet spot between targeting a developer and targeting a designer, and as a result end up doing neither well.

Emphasizing this because this happened to us. The initial version was trying to cater to designers and it was very hard for them to get value out of the to-code part because they need to convince the engineer to set up the codebase. Then when we add more support for engineers, it alienates the designer.

> generate good/maintainable code that doesn't tie you to the WYSIWYG tool for the rest of its life

Personally, this keeps me off most WYSIWYG. We don't have a great answer to this yet besides having a very narrow scope that works for our internal setup without polluting the code.

Re: Show HN: Open-sourced Webflow for your own app

#23
post #9

Watch out for trademarks. Your slogan “The power of WebFlow for your React app” is going to attract attention from Webflow’s legal department if your project is successful.

Agreed. I was worried that it's derivative while trying to communicate what we do succinctly. I know Supabase does the same thing with Firebase but our wording might be more problematic.

Honestly I would change that wording immediately. Even being pretty savvy with this stuff, I thought this was an open-sourced webflow when I skimmed it and I assure you, if they even vaguely consider this a future threat to any of their business at all, their counsel will use it as a legal cudgel to bludgeon you.

Re: Show HN: Open-sourced Webflow for your own app

#26

I think one challenge that you will face is that Webflow is a SaaS app while your app I have to host somewhere. If I'm a non-technical user then I have no idea how to host this thing myself and will just go to a competitor. On the other hand if I'm a developer then I have to weigh the time it would take to host and maintain the app versus just building a regular react app from scratch. My suggestion is keep offering…

"My suggestion is keep offering it as OSS, but offer a hosted version as well."

I would think, that is the obvious monetization plan?

Re: Show HN: Open-sourced Webflow for your own app

#27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I was worried that it's derivative while trying to communicate what we do succinctly. I know Supabase does the same thing with Firebase but our wording might be more problematic.

Honestly I would change that wording immediately. Even being pretty savvy with this stuff, I thought this was an open-sourced webflow when I skimmed it and I assure you, if they even vaguely consider this a future threat to any of their business at all, their counsel will use it as a legal cudgel to bludgeon you.

I agree "the power of webflow" implies a connection. "inspired by webflow" would be probably better, but even there I am not sure if it is safe enough.

Re: Show HN: Open-sourced Webflow for your own app

#28

I think one challenge that you will face is that Webflow is a SaaS app while your app I have to host somewhere. If I'm a non-technical user then I have no idea how to host this thing myself and will just go to a competitor. On the other hand if I'm a developer then I have to weigh the time it would take to host and maintain the app versus just building a regular react app from scratch. My suggestion is keep offering…

> If I'm a non-technical user then I have no idea how to host this thing myself and will just go to a competitor.

This is a good suggestion.

My plan is: 1. We start with packaging the Electron app as a downloadable. You'll still have to run your localhost app with it.

2. Then we'll add some UI support for cloning and running your project directly from the app.

3. The last step is to provide hosting for your app but I don't think we have the resources to do that well at the moment.

What do you think about this plan?

Re: Show HN: Open-sourced Webflow for your own app

#30
post #26

I think one challenge that you will face is that Webflow is a SaaS app while your app I have to host somewhere. If I'm a non-technical user then I have no idea how to host this thing myself and will just go to a competitor. On the other hand if I'm a developer then I have to weigh the time it would take to host and maintain the app versus just building a regular react app from scratch. My suggestion is keep offering…

"My suggestion is keep offering it as OSS, but offer a hosted version as well." I would think, that is the obvious monetization plan?

Yes, that is the most obvious plan. I want to find a community-friendly way to do this.

I know Supabase has a similar and successful monetization plan but I know some take issue with the way they offer their hosting.

Post reply on HN