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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

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Did/have you considered making this into a native application? I can see this competing with fireworks, but not if it's web based.

We've considered it, and it's definitely possible (the core of Webflow right now is actually just Webkit), but we're currently focusing on making sure it works really well on the web.

Re: Show HN: Webflow - Design responsive websites visually

#92
post #75

This is great work! How do you plan on allowing people to add new elements? With a toolbox on the side?

Yes, primarily. You can see a small preview right now on the Library ("+" icon), but we chose to disable it for now so we can focus the demo on CSS.

Re: Show HN: Webflow - Design responsive websites visually

#93
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 would be very interested in hearing why you chose that framework. Look forward to the blog post.

Re: Show HN: Webflow - Design responsive websites visually

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These limitations are all slowly disappearing as web standards are advancing fast to fill these gaps. I think soon we'll be able to give trusted web apps permission to read/write to our file systems and reach out to more OS-level interfaces that our browsers have access to. Web apps also offer advantages over native apps, like zero installation, universal compatibility regardless of OS, and the ability for publishers…

>universal compatibility regardless of OS The browser becomes the OS for web apps, and in this case Webflow only supports one OS, Chrome.

We're very close to having Firefox and IE10 support, so this will not be true for long.

Re: Show HN: Webflow - Design responsive websites visually

#95

That is very impressive, congrats! I'd really like to know the following: what process did you follow to create that 10min UI Tutorial video [1]? Did you rehearse it and then record it all in one go? How did you memorize the script? Did you edit it with multiple takes of various scenes? Etc. Thanks so much. [1] http://vimeo.com/62227334

Thanks! At first we thought it would be a good idea to record the whole tutorial in one pass, without edits. That didn't work out - it was too hard to keep it concise and focused. I ended up recording different sections of the script (5 total) and piecing them together. I recorded it all in the storage area of my apartment because it would have been too loud at the Hacker Dojo (where we have been working). After recording the audio and putting that together, I exported the audio and listened to it while recording my screen. The screen recording took 1 shot. I threw it over the audio and exported it. It's not perfect but it works!

Moral of the story: if you don't have a good sound room - find a storage room. :)

Re: Show HN: Webflow - Design responsive websites visually

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you! It's still early, but we're planning on offering a subscription service to create/import sites and host them on our platform.

Looks great! One thing: Please don't force me to host my stuff with you. I'd rather pay twice to have the freedom to dl my designs. Also: Let me pay-as-I-go. As a designer I'd like to use this but I would not want to pay X bucks per month. I would pay X dollars per project. Edit: After studying the video: I'll pay triple! Any thoughts on importing bootstrap?

Love the edit :)

We're actually big fans of the MailChimp pricing model (both pay-as-you go and monthly options), so it's a possibility.

About Bootstrap, the current demo already uses it for the non-visual elements (grid, etc), but we're still not sure about a whole-scale import yet. There are a lot of changes afoot with Bootstrap and Foundation (mobile-first being a big trend), so we're noodling on a ton of options.

Re: Show HN: Webflow - Design responsive websites visually

#98

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.

Very well done. Without looking at the docs (sorry) can you import existing css files and full-on frameworks? That's the #1 thing I'd be looking to use. jsFiddle is great but the window is so tiny... Webflow CSS looks even better.

Thanks! These are some of the questions we've been mulling over. We are working on importing existing CSS, but as far as importing the framework - that's another hurdle. We will be giving our designers either choices of frameworks to work from (bootstrap, foundation, etc) when creating a new website or our own framework - it all depends on the goal of the designer (to export the code or continue to use Webflow to build the website). Really, our personal goal is to give designers the best tools so they don't have to worry about frameworks. All they have to do is design and everything just works.

Re: Show HN: Webflow - Design responsive websites visually

#100
post #68

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?

I'm not sure how far back you want us to go. Born in the freezing winter lands of the former USSR, Vlad and Sergie Magdalin embarked on a... oh, not that far? :)

I've been doing freelance web design on the side for a long time (actually bought the webflow.com domain in college for that purpose, going into a lot of debt in the process), then worked at Intuit for several years on an a social enterprise product. Studied CS at CalPoly, and spent a few years wandering through art school in SF before that.

My brother (Sergie) studied at UCSD and worked as a creative director for MuirSkate.com prior to starting work on Webflow. You can see his (now outdated) portfolio here: http://sergie.info/

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