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Napkin - A Rapid Web Prototyping Tool

napkin.noodletalk.org

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Re: Napkin - A Rapid Web Prototyping Tool

#31

Post by roryokane »

This tool might be good for static web pages where the copy and layout is the most important thing, and perhaps basic web apps of the kind that Rails generates with scaffolding. But it doesn’t seem suited for most web apps. The library is missing components needed to represent many things. For instance, you can’t represent images. You can’t represent most things that would be a “custom view” of data – tables, graphs, diagrams, draggable components, etc..

I tried mocking up Napkin itself in Napkin and ran into trouble. The sidebar needs components of all types (Article, Form, and Navigation), so I need to split it into multiple boxes. But I can’t arrange the app by columns, only by rows, so the main content is vertically aligned with boxes in the sidebar, though it shouldn’t be. I couldn’t represent the screen prototype view – there’s no way to draw “dotted boxes”. I also tried mocking up another note-database app, and that went better – I typed bullets at the beginning of Article paragraphs to represent my bulleted list of notes.

At least the app is very polished. I enjoy the simplicity of the model – the grid-based layout and the organized types of content. The site also looks clean and pretty. Though a few interactions are weird, such as how you need to drag components from the sidebar to add them, but you can only click a “+” button to add elements listed in the sidebar.

A small bug: if you have a 3-column row and put content in columns 1 and 3, then Share Screen to preview, column 3 moves to the left to take empty column 2’s place. I would prefer it to stay on the right side.

Re: Napkin - A Rapid Web Prototyping Tool

#32

Post by mgkimsal »

ummm...

icons to do things like edit the project name, export as nodejs app and delete the project, but no icon to do anything? Oh... just click the actual project name.

Highly unintuitive - add an icon. And when editing the project name, increase the contrast of the 'done' icon/button/link - dark gray on black (espeically when other action icons are white on black) is very hard to read.

Re: Napkin - A Rapid Web Prototyping Tool

#34

Post by jurjenh »

nameuserc wrote: post #26
ataggart wrote: post #6

An overlay requiring me to "Sign in" before I can even know what the hell the site is about? No thanks.

This strategy of collecting email addresses without delivering anything first never seems to die down. The reason is simple: it works. Many people will hand over their email address with no guarantee of anything in return. A shockingly large number of people will do that. And then the opt-in spam begins. It's a never ending email campaign for who knows what. Does the spam work? Surprisingly, yes. Enough to be worth p…

download brew and install redis... nah, no time to do that just to get a preview of how it works.

Well, it may be the bees knees, but I'm not doing all that to get a look at it.

Re: Napkin - A Rapid Web Prototyping Tool

#36

Post by nameuserc »

jurjenh wrote: post #34
nameuserc wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This strategy of collecting email addresses without delivering anything first never seems to die down. The reason is simple: it works. Many people will hand over their email address with no guarantee of anything in return. A shockingly large number of people will do that. And then the opt-in spam begins. It's a never ending email campaign for who knows what. Does the spam work? Surprisingly, yes. Enough to be worth p…

download brew and install redis... nah, no time to do that just to get a preview of how it works. Well, it may be the bees knees, but I'm not doing all that to get a look at it.

I am 100% in agreement. I would never make users jump through hoops like that. Or assume that Redis would be their choice of database. That's a choice for the user.

But Lord knows I spend an inordinate amount of time jumping through hoops like these just to try evaluate software. It's just unavoidable.

A small, simple program with no dependencies or assumptions about your software preferences is like a breath of fresh air.

I wonder if there's an easy way to filter all of Github for these types of programs. Say, C programs with less than N LOC, and having no external dependencies.

Re: Napkin - A Rapid Web Prototyping Tool

#38

Post by fwenzel »

dylanvee wrote: post #29
roryokane wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it would be better to let you use the site as a guest, and then require signing in only to save your work. But I’m glad they use BrowserID for sign-in, at least. Since I was already signed in to BrowserID, the actual sign-in was super easy – a pop-up window opened, I clicked one button, and I was in.

This was my first real encounter with BrowserID, and I was pleasantly surprised by how nice the experience was.

Glad you like it! I feel the same way (I work for Mozilla, but I don't work on BrowserID).

Re: Napkin - A Rapid Web Prototyping Tool

#39

Post by vdm »

At first I Just Said No to the sign in overlay. Based on the comments here, the fact that it was a Mozilla project (I trust that brand, so it might help to say 'Napkin by Mozilla (Labs)' or similar), and the fact that I actually wanted to try a real example of Persona, I logged in.

The Persona experience was positive enough, but when I was bounced back to Napkin the examples under the overlay have disappeared. There is nothing to explore, just a blank interface; disappointing.

This is wasting too much of people's time to qualify as an MVP and is wasting the project's opportunity to get some decent feedback from HN. How not to launch.

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