Apply HN: Protoship.io – generate entire front end (HTML/CSS/React) from designs

[jasim]

You are a web developer - back-end/front-end/unicorn. You're good, you're fast, you have many years under your belt. Yet, building even the simplest of web applications is still a time-consuming chore. It is not the code, programming is always fun. But it is the tedium of writing and tweaking HTML and CSS that takes up most of your time (and money).

Protoship generates clean HTML, CSS, and even reusable React components for you, straight from design. No measuring of margins and paddings, no extracting and assembling of assets, and none of that pixel-perfection worries. Drop in a .sketch file, name your components, and it is done.

We have a video of a really early version here: https://medium.com/sketch-app-sources/code-generator-to-create-react-projects-straight-from-design-with-clean-html-and-css-c399a8189f0d#.kgvfikpvf

Our Homepage: https://protoship.io/#products

We are two developers who want to make useful things on the web without being bogged down by automatable, routine work. To make beautiful software without having to stay up all night.

Our Story: https://protoship.io/story

[ulasbilgen]

Hello, Thanks for sharing your project with HN. I have couple of questions. - Do you have any usage statistics, or at least Beta signups? - How is your service different from Zeplin (Which is a YC Startup) and Avocode?

[nojvek]

The biggest problem is not generating. Generating gets you 50%. The ability to then refactor on what is generate is key.

How are you going to tackle that problem? How much are you going to charge per conversion?

[jasim → nojvek]

- Fifty percent is already huge. We're starting there, but our larger goal is to make web development easier and faster. This is but a long journey, and we’re doing this one niche/tool at a time.

- We already have a rudimentary bi-directional flow working: from design to code, and from live web applications back to design. We call this Teleport, and here is its demo: https://medium.com/sketch-app-sources/introducing-protoship-...

- Not yet decided on pricing.

[nojvek → jasim]

Saw the video. Its website -> sketch. Seeing the sketch -> website would be great.

Why aren't you guys charging for it right away? That's going to give a good indication whether designer/devs are willing to pay out of pocket.

i.e Give 10 free conversions to new signups so users get a feel whether it solves their problem. There after its $5 per conversion or whatever amount you feel is worth.

Ages ago I used to convert psds to html by hand. There was this Russian tool to convert psd to html for $3 per conversion. It was my best friend. It got me 50% there and then I had to do the rest by hand.

Have you looked into conversion by OCR techniques? i.e someone pastes a screenshot, you recognize the margins, paddings, text, colours, font and spit out html/css