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Launch HN: Pagedraw (YC W18) – Compile UI Mockups to React Code

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Re: Launch HN: Pagedraw (YC W18) – Compile UI Mockups to React Code

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was tough for us, because we're big believers in the standards-based web. We 100% promise that all the code we generate works across all browsers. Unfortunately, while most of the editor works in all browsers, getting full support is really hard. We're doing a lot of things that get pretty deep in the browser, so we wanted to lock things down as much as possible. We almost were electron-only to ensure consistenc…

As a basically-everything-except-Chrome user, I'm increasingly skeptical of excuses this. There's almost certainly some feature(s) that you've spent a lot of time on that provide less value than having the app working in Firefox and Safari. As soon as I saw it was Chrome only, I closed out.

On the other hand think of it from their perspective if you want your odds of success to be higher you have to focus on the biggest user base, simple 80/20. I doubt that an additional feature vs friefox support is a fair comparison.

Re: Launch HN: Pagedraw (YC W18) – Compile UI Mockups to React Code

#52

I'm a designer, so definitely interested in this. But I got a 'Sorry, our editor is optimised for Chrome' message. I'm using the latest version of Firefox... what features does Chrome have that FF hasn't? I get it's early stage, so you might have just done a blanket 'If not Chrome show message' check. If the latest version of FF can support, I would do a more fine grained check. Will check with Chrome later...

I just tried spoofing my user-agent with Firefox, editor and preview worked but the designer was pretty broken. It seems Firefox and Chrome still have slightly different ideas about how layout is supposed to work, would be curious to hear what the differences are.

Super excited for the Figma + React-native support, I think ~20% of my time this past month was converting our designer's figma sketches into react native!

Re: Launch HN: Pagedraw (YC W18) – Compile UI Mockups to React Code

#53
post #36
post #23

> Sorry, our editor is optimized for Chrome Internet Explorer all over again. ‍️

A highly specialized Web app doesn’t need to support more than one browser. If you’re a Firefox user, consider it as though it said “please download the Spotify app to use our service on your machine.”

Then why is it a web app? What happened to open standards? Why not just make it a standalone application, following your logic?

Re: Launch HN: Pagedraw (YC W18) – Compile UI Mockups to React Code

#54
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was tough for us, because we're big believers in the standards-based web. We 100% promise that all the code we generate works across all browsers. Unfortunately, while most of the editor works in all browsers, getting full support is really hard. We're doing a lot of things that get pretty deep in the browser, so we wanted to lock things down as much as possible. We almost were electron-only to ensure consistenc…

For anyone else looking for the electron app mentioned above it’s at https://documentation.pagedraw.io/electron/ BUT only in Mac and Linux versions

Windows versions are also up now! Please let us know if you run into any issues.

Re: Launch HN: Pagedraw (YC W18) – Compile UI Mockups to React Code

#55
Very cool! I particularly like the integration between the web app and the CLI. That seems like a clever way to solve the "browser sandbox border" problem between projects that are edited in the browser yet need to be represented in the file system constantly.

I've worked on React Studio (https://reactstudio.com), which is pretty similar. We also used the compiler metaphor to describe it. The original codegen targets were iOS + Obj-C and Android + Java, and later we built Tizen + C (at a customer's request on their bill) and then React + JS in an attempt to reach a larger audience through a free app. My regret is that we ended up with a sprawling native Mac codebase at a time when a lightweight cloud solution would be more suitable for the average interested potential customer. Oh well. It seemed like the right choice back when generating Xcode projects was the target...

If you don't mind the question, what's your monetization strategy? Right now Pagedraw looks to be completely free, and that's where we ended up with React Studio too. Business-wise, the only thing that's sort of worked for React Studio has been to make customized enterprise editions for large customers. I'm curious if you have something in mind that doesn't involve enterprise sales hell :)

Re: Launch HN: Pagedraw (YC W18) – Compile UI Mockups to React Code

#56
post #53
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A highly specialized Web app doesn’t need to support more than one browser. If you’re a Firefox user, consider it as though it said “please download the Spotify app to use our service on your machine.”

Then why is it a web app? What happened to open standards? Why not just make it a standalone application, following your logic?

You’re right, it’s not a web app. It is a stand-alone application built on top of Chrome the way that other apps are built on Qt or WPF.
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