apeisa Posted April 25, 2014 Share Posted April 25, 2014 Interesting: http://macaw.co/ (although writing code is easier for me than designing, but interesting to see if they really nailed it) 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
diogo Posted April 25, 2014 Share Posted April 25, 2014 Tried it by drawing a rectangle with some type inside and or what I've seen it creates a very clean code. I just don't really know how to deal with these graphical tools... even being a designer before being a coding I get a bit confused with what I'm supposed to do. Still, it seemed much more intuitive than Adobe's muse or edge. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yellowled Posted April 26, 2014 Share Posted April 26, 2014 Gave it a short trial run the other day. I'm more of a code-writing, design-in-the-browser kind of guy than a “visual designer”, which basically means that I can't even start a site design in PS or any other graphical tool because I never learned how to do that. That's probably why I didn't really grasp the idea behind Macaw quickly, I'm just not used to working that way. However, I don't even think I'm the target audience for it. I think the target audience are graphical designers who also do web design. To them, it might appeal more. And frankly, anything that makes people still doing fixed width designs in PS realize that it's a new world out there and helps them find their way in it is a good thing. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pwired Posted April 26, 2014 Share Posted April 26, 2014 Is it better than bloated artisteer ? Will give macaw a try. Anything that can save time is worth to try. And frankly, anything that makes people still doing fixed width designs in PS realize that it's a new world out there and helps them find their way in it is a good thing. A long time ago ps was very popular for designing a complete front. You can still find a lot of psd => html tuto´s and a lot of professional ps templates. Today I still use it to setup only the core of a front. PS is still a pro way to setup for example the front of a nav bar, a form or buttons. It looks much better than those css coded nav bars, forms or buttons. There is no difference in load time and they are also made responsive, and compatible with all browsers and their versions. Can´t say that from css coded stuff. Sometimes css coded nav bars/forms/buttons need longer time to load due to a lot of calls or database requests. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
diogo Posted April 26, 2014 Share Posted April 26, 2014 Is it better than bloated artisteer ? Only their webpage already gives me the creeps, but seeing their demo really freaks me out. I can't install it to try myself, but for what I've seen we are talking of two completely different products. I can't tell you if it's "better", only that one I feel like trying and giving it a chance and the other I feel like never looking at it again. Edit: how can a company that sells a software for building websites have this kind of quirks in their own website? 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cstevensjr Posted April 26, 2014 Share Posted April 26, 2014 I must admit that I immediately thought of Artisteer when I read the initial descriptions of this new product. I watched the videos and have to agree with Diogo that these are two separate products for two different markets. Artisteer produces unnecessarily bloated code where you can look at the generated code and know from whence it came. To be truthful, I've used Artisteer on Joomla and Wordpress sites. It's a workable templating system that gets the job done, however one great downside is that you are still tied to their Artisteer platform. The Macaw software looks interesting. I still believe that learning the PHP, CSS, HTML, MySQL and Jquery basics is the right way to go, Even if you use a visual tool later on, it pays to already know the essentials behind whatever you are using as a development platform and/or tool. I wish them the best. We need a variety of new development tools which should motivate the old guard to not sit on their laurels and not further innovate. Macaw seems like a step in the right direction. Only time will tell whether this is a flash or a fire. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
totoff Posted April 27, 2014 Share Posted April 27, 2014 I constantly found, that cleaning the mess of WYSIWG-tools is more effort than starting from scratch with my own code. I would be surprised, if this would be much different ... 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clsource Posted April 29, 2014 Share Posted April 29, 2014 Seems a good tool if you need to make something quick, but if you are trying to make something more elaborated I think it´s better to write your own code. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christophe Posted May 25, 2014 Share Posted May 25, 2014 Hello, I also found this the other day: https://www.google.com/webdesigner/ Have a nice week! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joss Posted May 25, 2014 Share Posted May 25, 2014 Hello, I also found this the other day: https://www.google.com/webdesigner/ Have a nice week! Be interesting to compare it to Edge Animate Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kongondo Posted December 1, 2015 Share Posted December 1, 2015 The Macaw thing is on sale (going for $49)...if anybody's interested... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christophe Posted December 1, 2015 Share Posted December 1, 2015 And "CYBER MONDAY SALE - 20% OFF all editions of Pinegrow". I wonder if I would benefit from using Macaw (not on Linux) or Pinegrow. Has someone tried/tested both? Macaw is a "cloud application", isn't it? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pwired Posted December 2, 2015 Share Posted December 2, 2015 Stop writing code, start drawing it ? Complexity of Web Design is only growingand no wysiwyg will ever surpass a Programmer/Designer.But maybe this one would be usable for fast mock-ups to show to your clients. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christophe Posted December 2, 2015 Share Posted December 2, 2015 I like writing/tweaking code and seeing the results after having refreshed the browser(s). I'm drawing it in my imagination... Pinegrow can help if someone is using Bootstrap or Foundation, for example. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Rockett Posted December 2, 2015 Share Posted December 2, 2015 Interesting topic, this. For me, coding is better. Though, there have been a few instances where someone taking over development of a client's site resulted in endless stress because they didn't understand the way I'd put it all together - let's just say I'm not fully standards driven. Luckily, however, a few tweaks here and there often fix the issue, and then people pick up on it pretty quickly. Haven't ever really played with tools like Pinegrow or Macaw before - anyone here have any proper experience to share? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kongondo Posted December 2, 2015 Share Posted December 2, 2015 Tell me about it. I opened Macaw and got a headache straight away . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rick Posted December 2, 2015 Share Posted December 2, 2015 I certainly can appreciate the effort that went into developing macaw, as well as the others mentioned. But like Mike Rockett said, coding is better for me. I am old-school, and still flowchart my procedures. o_O I have tried other pseudo-gui applications in the past, but was always dis-satisfied with the unclean code they generated; It took longer to learn the app, then clean up the output, than starting from idea/sketch/code process. I'm not saying these are a bad thing. They just aren't for me. /$.02 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LostKobrakai Posted December 2, 2015 Share Posted December 2, 2015 The thing is, such tools are great for encapulated frontend dev work, but i doubt anyone here is living in this kind of a bubble. We all work on the backend as well, which this tools cannot cater to. I still hate it that I sometimes need to translate UI I created in sketch to actual code, but in the end I wouldn't be much faster by using the pregenerated code as well. Often I even sketch ideas out in a codepen/jsbin or such and then import the code into my project. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elabx Posted December 2, 2015 Share Posted December 2, 2015 Tell me about it. I opened Macaw and got a headache straight away . Nice review lol! I had to take care of a website done in Edge Animate a few months ago, oh lord was that painful thing to hack inside the horrible code editor. Having to go under a few clicks to add classes or and ID is already too much loss of time, Macaw looks a lot more easy to use from the video tutorials. What dislike the most about this type of software is that you might be doing good with the features up to a certain point where you want to start doing some fancy customization, and BANG! guess what, this thing is not build to work well outside their "Design -> Build" pipeline, so you find yourself jumping between programs, and getting frustrated because you can't make changes to the final code build, because if you change something on the design software side, it's gonna overwrite whatever you hacked in the final code. (At least this was my experience with Adobe Edge) Though, for example, if Macaw handles responsiveness good enough, I could be using it for small to medium clients with simple websites that focus a lot more on static content, optimization is not critical and saving me a few hours of coding is nice enough and truth be told, working with Processwire makes building this simple websites a breeze. Now, if I could just plug this Macaw thing to the PW API to automagically create templates, fields... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Craig Posted January 28, 2016 Share Posted January 28, 2016 Macaw is joining InVision! What’s up with Macaw? That’s something many have asked us over the past few months. With great pleasure, we can finally answer that question. We've joined InVision and will be rolling our innovations into their already incredible offerings. Macaw started as a simple experiment and we’re humbled by what it turned into. We’re thrilled to be taking our products and experience to InVision where we’ll have the opportunity and resources to increase our impact on the industry we love. We want to thank you – our users, community members, Kickstarters, advisors and everyone else who lent a hand. Your support has meant the world to us. We have much in store for you! Thanks for the ride! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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