CodePen 2.0 • Hacker News Board

Re: CodePen 2.0

#11

Post by bodhi_mind » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 7:45 PM UTC

gkoberger wrote: post #8

danielvaughn wrote: post #2

I've been a CodePen user since the very early days. Have always loved the platform. I hate to be negative, but I'm honestly not a fan of the 2.0 release. What I loved about CodePen was just being able to try out something really quick and simple. But the new interface makes me feel more like I'm building a website inside of a website.

That's the hard part about tools like this. They're too simple to be used for anything important, and as soon as the creator follows that path you end up in a situation where it's too simple for anything complex and too complex for anything simple. Amazing platforms like Glitch ran into this problem. (Some did pull it off! Like how Vercel built a kingdom out of `now`.)

Solvable with reasonable defaults and putting most things behind an advanced section?

Re: CodePen 2.0

#12

Post by log101 » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 7:45 PM UTC

CodePen is like an HTML/CSS/JS temple. Greate place to explore the limits of what native web offers.

Re: CodePen 2.0

#13

Post by gottagocode » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 8:01 PM UTC

Used to love this site back when you could see what other craftsmen were actually creating by hand.

Re: CodePen 2.0

#14

Post by shimman » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 8:01 PM UTC

Always felt like the worst aspect of code pen was the exploratory side. Looking up codepens is extremely poor, you often only look up one "tag" and after the first page quality gets worse.

Wish it had an advanced search that I can filter codepens for something useful like this: animejs, svg, forms; with the result being codepens that use anime.js around a form.

I'd probably use codepen as the defacto web ui reference if it had better search capabilities. Right now it's mostly github + blogs, but only because it's so hard to find anything worthwhile on codepen. Gold is there but it's deep under the strata with no willing to actually get it.

Re: CodePen 2.0

#15

Post by mckee_plus_plus » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 8:30 PM UTC

A CodePen api/protocol that supports a local ide opening a CodePen, making changes in the user's developer tooling and pushing back to the pen would be a game changer.

VCS extensions for jetbrains and vscode could hook into an api and smoothly pull and push pens. This feature was always my hangup for using CodePen as a UI playground.

Re: CodePen 2.0

#16

Post by rglover » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 8:34 PM UTC

This is awesome. Been a CodePen user/fan since it launched (and a fan of Chris/CSS-Tricks for even longer). Really nice to see CodePen evolving.

I don't use it as much as I used to but every so often I hack something up in it for a quick PoC. I'll say the new ability to deploy got my attention. Really handy to be able to deploy a prototype or demo of something and toss it over the fence.

Re: CodePen 2.0

#17

Post by undershirt » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 8:39 PM UTC

any intersection with val.town use cases?

Re: CodePen 2.0

#18

Post by unleashit » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 8:39 PM UTC

shimman wrote: post #14

Always felt like the worst aspect of code pen was the exploratory side. Looking up codepens is extremely poor, you often only look up one "tag" and after the first page quality gets worse. Wish it had an advanced search that I can filter codepens for something useful like this: animejs, svg, forms; with the result being codepens that use anime.js around a form. I'd probably use codepen as the defacto web ui reference…

This should be the top comment, especially since organic search has been lost. Not to be overly critical because Codepen was great in its time, but it's now on individual websites to upgrade their search game if they want to stay relevant and useful.

Edit: Just noticed that logging in is now required for search. I'm sure this is an attempt to prevent AI scraping, etc., but it's a big mistake IMHO. While I have an account, I don't log in much and tend to abandon sites that require log in. Among nerds, I'm probably not the only one like this.

Re: CodePen 2.0

#19

Post by micromacrofoot » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 9:25 PM UTC

bodhi_mind wrote: post #11

gkoberger wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the hard part about tools like this. They're too simple to be used for anything important, and as soon as the creator follows that path you end up in a situation where it's too simple for anything complex and too complex for anything simple. Amazing platforms like Glitch ran into this problem. (Some did pull it off! Like how Vercel built a kingdom out of `now`.)

Solvable with reasonable defaults and putting most things behind an advanced section?

no, it's just not solvable... you can only mitigate

anything hosted free will inevitably be abused by scammers, you need constant vigilance just to stay a step ahead

Re: CodePen 2.0

#20

Post by SahAssar » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 9:30 PM UTC

jjcm wrote: post #3

> every pen is deployable It will be interesting seeing how this evolves. Any free hosting solution tends to spiral towards abuse at some point. Still trying to solve it for my own stuff. That said, I do wonder how valuable something like codepen is in the current meta. I really no longer look at code. I'm not referencing examples, I'm just prompting for what I want / inputting images as context.

> Any free hosting solution tends to spiral towards abuse at some point.

Have github pages done this? Has cloudflare pages?