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Google Web Designer (2013)

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Re: Google Web Designer (2013)

#31

Post by deboboy »

vcool07 wrote: post #17

Could any expert shed any information on why we lack a professional front-end WYSIWYG kind of editor for the web ? I remember tools like dreamweaver/frontpage existed a long time ago, but don't hear about them anymore. Is it something that's too hard to make or is it just that the market doesn't exist ?

Adobe is going after this space with Muse: http://muse.adobe.com

We've used WebFlow for a couple of years; it doesn't suck and you can actually build an early stage [pre-rev] business with it before committing to a full stack team/budget.

Re: Google Web Designer (2013)

#32

Post by moonlighter »

vcool07 wrote: post #17

Could any expert shed any information on why we lack a professional front-end WYSIWYG kind of editor for the web ? I remember tools like dreamweaver/frontpage existed a long time ago, but don't hear about them anymore. Is it something that's too hard to make or is it just that the market doesn't exist ?

Macaw is such a tool, runs on Mac and Windows. It's a free download at http://macaw.co (the product isn't updated anymore though; the devs have moved on).

Re: Google Web Designer (2013)

#34

Post by Animats »

vcool07 wrote: post #17

Could any expert shed any information on why we lack a professional front-end WYSIWYG kind of editor for the web ? I remember tools like dreamweaver/frontpage existed a long time ago, but don't hear about them anymore. Is it something that's too hard to make or is it just that the market doesn't exist ?

One of the few remaining alternatives to Dreamweaver is Blue Griffon.[1] It's open source (mostly), but the manual is proprietary. I just downloaded it and tried it. It's a basic HTML editor, not, like Dreamweaver, a site manager. It's heavily oriented towards preparing content for screen readers for the blind, with ARIA features prominent.

[1] http://www.bluegriffon.org

Re: Google Web Designer (2013)

#36

Post by vivekd »

Where is the need for this product? People who know about computers will probably just use the very easy to learn HTML and CSS code and people who don't know computers will likely use wix or wordpress or some similar alternative. I wonder where this product will fit?

Re: Google Web Designer (2013)

#37

Post by tonyhb »

This has been out for around 5 years. I remember installing this at an ad agency I worked at when HTML5 ads were barely a thing.

At this point they probably have a small team working on it for sake of their ad division but people here shouldn't into this too much.

Re: Google Web Designer (2013)

#38

Post by vonklaus »

vivekd wrote: post #36

Where is the need for this product? People who know about computers will probably just use the very easy to learn HTML and CSS code and people who don't know computers will likely use wix or wordpress or some similar alternative. I wonder where this product will fit?

> Where is the need for this product?

An intuitive easy to use WYSIWYG editor is a highly sought afterand demanded product category. Squarespace costs money and is actually (for me) a pretty bad user exp.

Google probably can deliver on this because they are SEO. Even good editors were not semantic. I havent tried this product, but if it is halfway decent it will find market share. If it is perfect it could replace wordpress.

I am pretty competent as a developer and I would use (based on my understanding from the link) this product rather than battle css or compile sass. Plus I can edit the code.

On top of top teir engineering, google has control of SEO & pagerank so maybe they can win where orhers hadnt. No brainer for them.

Re: Google Web Designer (2013)

#39

Post by frozenport »

vcool07 wrote: post #17

Could any expert shed any information on why we lack a professional front-end WYSIWYG kind of editor for the web ? I remember tools like dreamweaver/frontpage existed a long time ago, but don't hear about them anymore. Is it something that's too hard to make or is it just that the market doesn't exist ?

WordPress met those people's requirements

Re: Google Web Designer (2013)

#40

Post by tluyben2 »

pcr0 wrote: post #27
vcool07 wrote: post #17

Could any expert shed any information on why we lack a professional front-end WYSIWYG kind of editor for the web ? I remember tools like dreamweaver/frontpage existed a long time ago, but don't hear about them anymore. Is it something that's too hard to make or is it just that the market doesn't exist ?

A bunch of reasons, including lack of market, complexity of today's web. They aren't entirely gone though, this was posted to HN a while ago: https://preview.webflow.com/preview/flexbox-game?preview=d1a... It's a game in their editor that teaches you flexbox.

Complexity? Web apps are often complex yes but web pages? Even the Webflow homepage/marketing pages look identical to every web site posted here. So the lack of market yes; people take a template/code and change the content. Not sure if web apps were ever a good fit for tools like this as that is more like a full IDE as it would need coding as well to make sense. At least allow to specify data structures as in and out for the components you are designing.
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