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Show HN: Easel, web design in the browser

alpha.easel.io

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Re: Show HN: Easel, web design in the browser

#111

Post by mrbogle »

splatcollision wrote: post #98

Congratulations! Glad to see more people attempting this type of thing. The demo content design is pretty nice. Some good things in Easel, but I have lots of problems with all the tiny little controls. Also it's an interesting decision to use a canvas element instead of the DOM. Without solving the overall page layout issue, this is a nice drawing tool like others have mentioned, and kudos to the technical and design…

Interesting. Using canvas allows us to do a couple things:

- draw vector shapes

- export images on the client side

- filters/effects in the future

- pixelated zoom (not implemented, yet, though)

Re: Show HN: Easel, web design in the browser

#113

Post by fleetvanjeremy »

Watts wrote: post #88
mrbogle wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The intent at this point is to not generate layout html/css. Humans are much better at this right now than the editor could be. And the assumption is that the programmer will want to write the layout code himself anyway, being careful to place it in nice modules that fit with their dev environment. We could build an entire product just trying to generate semantic, reflowable markup from a design.

I agree. Let's be honest - it's kind of weird that we rely on a program that is really designed for editing photographs as our main tool for designing web sites. I'm all for exploring this further at least as a tool for doing layouts and design that CSS can handle. For everything else (e.g. designing icons), there are more appropriate tools.

It would be nice to have something that allowed you to use both. There can be so much rapid experimentation in photoshop because we know the tool so well - having that import easily into something like this for the final touchup would be ideal (in my most perfect world) as so much time goes into the touchup and the last few pixels in css.

Re: Show HN: Easel, web design in the browser

#114

Post by hcarvalhoalves »

mrbogle wrote: post #38
hcarvalhoalves wrote: post #27

Just a drawing tool in the browser. This doesn't do anything different than Photoshop or Omnigraffle, if the web designer is smart enough to reuse layers / components. It could be a really useful though if it had support for more than absolute-positioned, fixed-sized elements, and used the browser's layout engine instead. Today's biggest problem is that web designers use Photoshop for coming up with mockups and then…

The hard part about using the browser's layout engine is that it is limiting to the designer. We'd have to snap things into say, floating position, etc. And we'd have to know exactly what the designer was thinking when they're dragging some element around. Or they would have to know about floats, and how to use them. We think (right now) that the best way around this is some kind of constraint system, like CAD apps h…

The hard part about using the browser's layout engine is that it is limiting to the designer.

Web design is all about limits. The designer has to understand, and ultimately play along, the constraints the media imposes on him - otherwise he's not a web designer, he's just a guy coming up with pretty mockups.

(...) Or they would have to know about floats, and how to use them.

Sincerely, if a web designer doesn't understand how floats work, what are they doing working with the web in the first place? Web designers != Photoshop pilots

Re: Show HN: Easel, web design in the browser

#116

Post by mrbogle »

digitalengineer wrote: post #95

Great idea guys! I can already see myself designing something and building a quick real-world prototype and sharing the url of that with clients. So much better than designing/wireframing something, creating a 1000-layer mockup in photoshop, sending over a dozen JPEGS to the client and explaining what's what. As a designer the interface is a nobrainer. I can just step in and get to work. Very easy! Nice to see 960 gr…

Thank you. Please email me at ben@easel.io

Re: Show HN: Easel, web design in the browser

#117

Post by splatcollision »

mrbogle wrote: post #111
splatcollision wrote: post #98

Congratulations! Glad to see more people attempting this type of thing. The demo content design is pretty nice. Some good things in Easel, but I have lots of problems with all the tiny little controls. Also it's an interesting decision to use a canvas element instead of the DOM. Without solving the overall page layout issue, this is a nice drawing tool like others have mentioned, and kudos to the technical and design…

Interesting. Using canvas allows us to do a couple things: - draw vector shapes - export images on the client side - filters/effects in the future - pixelated zoom (not implemented, yet, though)

Agree there are advantages and disadvantages of each approach. I encourage you to keep improving your app, it is indeed an excellent alpha. I always wanted to integrate canvas and SVG into Edit Room but have not done so yet. Cheers!

Re: Show HN: Easel, web design in the browser

#118

Post by splatcollision »

jurre wrote: post #105
splatcollision wrote: post #98

Congratulations! Glad to see more people attempting this type of thing. The demo content design is pretty nice. Some good things in Easel, but I have lots of problems with all the tiny little controls. Also it's an interesting decision to use a canvas element instead of the DOM. Without solving the overall page layout issue, this is a nice drawing tool like others have mentioned, and kudos to the technical and design…

This is very impressive, nice job! If I can give you one piece of advice though it would be to hire a designer. You need to give people the feeling that they will be able to build a beautiful website with your product and I almost dismissed it by looking at your landing page's design, it was only when I decided to check out the demo that I was convinced.

Thanks for the feedback! I've gone through several versions of the home screen so far and will try to improve it further.

Re: Show HN: Easel, web design in the browser

#119

Post by splatcollision »

salimmadjd wrote: post #108
splatcollision wrote: post #98

Congratulations! Glad to see more people attempting this type of thing. The demo content design is pretty nice. Some good things in Easel, but I have lots of problems with all the tiny little controls. Also it's an interesting decision to use a canvas element instead of the DOM. Without solving the overall page layout issue, this is a nice drawing tool like others have mentioned, and kudos to the technical and design…

Nice stuff man. As other have said it, the design is old school. Looking at your personal site, I know do design work as well. But I think we can all benefit from additional design help. Also, can you include the common grid marks, 960, 1280, etc.

Thanks! I won't be including pixel grids at all, but the width preview tool has some standard breakpoints baked in. I feel strongly that 960, etc are fictions created by web designers and in reality we don't have the luxury of assuming fixed widths on the web.

Re: Show HN: Easel, web design in the browser

#120

Post by splatcollision »

mrgreenfur wrote: post #104
splatcollision wrote: post #98

Congratulations! Glad to see more people attempting this type of thing. The demo content design is pretty nice. Some good things in Easel, but I have lots of problems with all the tiny little controls. Also it's an interesting decision to use a canvas element instead of the DOM. Without solving the overall page layout issue, this is a nice drawing tool like others have mentioned, and kudos to the technical and design…

This is a pretty incredible "project". The styling is a little old-school, but the product is incredible. Are you planning to make this bigger? :)

Absolutely! There's still much to be done, I'll be continually improving this app and keeping up with web standards. Can't wait for wider support for CSS filters for example.
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