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Ask HN: Review my app, LayoutGenerator

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Ask HN: Review my app, LayoutGenerator

#1

Post by okayzedd »

Hi everyone -

I'm part of a start up working on creating a tool to simplify web development. Our first app makes it easy for developers to position elements of their site. People can draw in divs directly on top of an image/mockup using our editor (written in Cappuccino!) and we output cross browser compatible, table-free code. We'd love any feedback on this product and any tips on how we can improve it.

App is at: http://gen1.recreclabs.com

We eventually hope to make this a completely automated process (we have algorithms that detect various elements of a website) and have the editor be used only for minor fixes. Is this something you guys would find useful?

Edit1:

Some sample screenshots of websites we have been using are in:

http://dontbite.me/~okay/screens/

Re: Ask HN: Review my app, LayoutGenerator

#5

Post by JabavuAdams »

Hmm. That's kind of neat. How about using edge detection to suggest boxes? E.g. I swipe the mouse along one linear feature, and if it's an edge, you create some kind of guide-line there. Do that again for another perpendicular guide-line and there's a corner, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Review my app, LayoutGenerator

#7

Post by okayzedd »

parfe wrote: post #3

I'm not quite sure why I had to upload an image. I took a screenshot of this page and uploaded it, but it seems as though if I was given a blank page I could have designed the same layout.

Overall, the idea is to automatically turn a mockup of a page into HTML. This is predicated on the user having a picture of the page they want, whether it be a photoshop drawn file or by hand.

In this version, we are outputting floating CSS (with padding, margins, etc) & intelligently named divs, which is intended to save web devs time on getting all that together by hand.

Re: Ask HN: Review my app, LayoutGenerator

#8

Post by okayzedd »

JabavuAdams wrote: post #5

Hmm. That's kind of neat. How about using edge detection to suggest boxes? E.g. I swipe the mouse along one linear feature, and if it's an edge, you create some kind of guide-line there. Do that again for another perpendicular guide-line and there's a corner, etc.

We are doing the processing server side, so that might be slightly difficult, but we are intending to make the process automatic, including auto-finding the divs.

here's an example of our auto-detection algorithms:

http://gen1.recreclabs.com/mocks/43?guid=67e5e7082e6a6283296...

Re: Ask HN: Review my app, LayoutGenerator

#10

Post by parfe »

okayzedd wrote: post #7
parfe wrote: post #3

I'm not quite sure why I had to upload an image. I took a screenshot of this page and uploaded it, but it seems as though if I was given a blank page I could have designed the same layout.

Overall, the idea is to automatically turn a mockup of a page into HTML. This is predicated on the user having a picture of the page they want, whether it be a photoshop drawn file or by hand. In this version, we are outputting floating CSS (with padding, margins, etc) & intelligently named divs, which is intended to save web devs time on getting all that together by hand.

I see the goal, but why is an image required to use the app?
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