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Show HN: Webflow - Design responsive websites visually

playground.webflow.com

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Re: Show HN: Webflow - Design responsive websites visually

#61

Post by bsaul »

callmevlad wrote: post #46
Kiro wrote: post #40

Do you mind telling us about the stack? It's a pretty impressive UI. Feels very native.

Sure! It's Node.js (pretty vanilla Express) on the backend, but most of the heavy lifting is in the browser. After trying Angular, Backbone and Ember, we settled on KnockoutJS for multiple reasons (that's a whole post in itself), the main one being performance (though some may find that statement shocking).

I'd be really curious to read that post if you ever write it. When i saw the binding betweeen editor widgets and code, i immediately thought of angularJS bindings between model and multiple views, but i don't know KnockoutJS very well, so i'm really curious.

Re: Show HN: Webflow - Design responsive websites visually

#62

Post by callmevlad »

bryanh wrote: post #56

First of all: congrats on launching! 7 months is a long time, it has to feel good! A long time ago I built "squeeze page" manager which had an editor like this (it was simpler and more focused on content management). I sunk a lot of time into it. However, I ran into the same problem I bet you guys will run into: "the design tool chasm". On one end are simple tools for publishing on the web (Weebly and Wordpress) and…

Hey Bryan, thank you for the feedback! (Btw, we love Zapier!)

We're definitely looking far beyond just being an editor. What you see right now was an important pre-requisite to what we really wanted to build - hoping to share more on that soon.

Re: Show HN: Webflow - Design responsive websites visually

#65

Post by lignuist »

webwielder wrote: post #57
webwielder wrote: post #39

This is really nice, but I just can't get too excited over web apps. Whether it's not having direct access to my source files, relying on the service to stay up (either from server or business issues), working when offline, not having access to OS-level services, the clunkiness and slowness compared to native, or the cognitive overhead of the app being inside another app, I think I'll always prefer desktop apps.

Serious question, as I enjoy posting on HN and don't want to run afoul of the community. Was my comment negged because I was seen as hijacking a thread by making general comments about web apps rather than addressing Webflow specifically? Or is it because of my negativity toward web apps and an appearance of ignorance on the state the art?

Don't worry. I have been downvoted just for mentioning a project that has the same name. Just wanted to make sure, that the creators are aware... I think, some posters have strong negativity sensors, which cause false positives from time to time. :)

Re: Show HN: Webflow - Design responsive websites visually

#68

Post by ameen »

callmevlad wrote: post #3

Co-founder here. My brother and I quit our jobs 7 months ago, and have been working on this day and night off of our savings since then. The CSS Playground is a preview of our CSS styling tools, and we'll be adding some of our other components (layout, adding new elements, code export) soon. Currently, it only works in Chrome, but we're working hard to add Firefox support.

Wonderful work. The hardwork really shows.

If you don't mind me asking, what were your backgrounds before you starting working on this?

Re: Show HN: Webflow - Design responsive websites visually

#69

Post by klemmytheklam »

Disclaimer, I'm not a designer and don't know much css. When I look at that wall of buttons I don't know how to use them to do what I want. I feel like if I knew css, I could probably code up what I want faster that pressing a bunch of buttons. Thoughts from designers/front end developers?

The preview tools are awesome though!

Re: Show HN: Webflow - Design responsive websites visually

#70

Post by ktavera »

callmevlad wrote: post #46
Kiro wrote: post #40

Do you mind telling us about the stack? It's a pretty impressive UI. Feels very native.

Sure! It's Node.js (pretty vanilla Express) on the backend, but most of the heavy lifting is in the browser. After trying Angular, Backbone and Ember, we settled on KnockoutJS for multiple reasons (that's a whole post in itself), the main one being performance (though some may find that statement shocking).

Good choice with Knockout. I use it in many apps because of how lightweight and easy to implement it is. I've hit some performance problems when tracking large number of observables but overall it can handles 99% of situations nicely.
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