

Show HN: Use Easel to style and build Bootstrap interfaces - mcolyer
http://www.easel.io/bootstrap

======
digitalengineer
Designer here. I was just using Easel yesterday before you added Bootstrap. I
was trying to work 'visually'. Great first impression. VERY glad to see you've
added bootstrap! Noticed a few things about the first Easel (Easel Pack (?)
interface elements): I'd like the ability to paste color codes instead of
using a color-circle. I _need_ the colors to match the corporate identity and
can't do that if I can't paste the exact color code. I also need the colors of
elements to match, so I'd love to be able to create a color swatch. You have
solved a lot of things for me with the Bootstrap integration. I really like
the way you're going about it. Good work man!

~~~
mcolyer
I'm glad you've found it useful. We're planning on improving the color
selection but until then you can actually just paste in the exact hex code if
you highlight the current hex code in the color picker. Hope that helps.

~~~
digitalengineer
Thanks! I'll have a (better) look.

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skyhook_mockups
Congratulations for shipping! It's a huge milestone to reach and I'm sure it
is nerve wracking to press that submit button on a 'Show HN'

Here are some of my observations after using the app for about 45 mins.

\- First impressions are very strong. A great design aesthetic, pleasing to
the eye (although a bit overwhelming as others have pointed out)

\- After about 5-10 mins frustration started to set in for the following
reasons:

\-- Hard to use on a 1280x1024 screen (overlapping toolbars)

\-- Re-size handles don't seem to do anything most of the time

\-- Positioning elements was difficult and often seemed to require some mind-
reading to try to work out how you intended to have the tools work

\-- Was difficult to conceptualise the underlying structure of the document (I
noticed the breadcrumbs which help to explain element nesting)

Seems that you're targeting the tool at designers. The tool has loads of
potential for this user base, but I think it would be difficult for a designer
to pick up as it is. The reason for this is that it seems to have a lot of
required knowledge of bootstrap's underlying structure to make use of it. The
kinds of questions a designer will be asking:

\- Whats a 'Well'?

\- Can I put a 'Row' in a 'Layout' or does it only go in a 'Container'?

\- What's the difference between a 'Container' and a 'Layout'

If you're familiar with the code then this stuff is going to be obvious..
otherwise it will lead to frustration.

I think the best way to tackle this type of issue is by having the tool
abstract away the underlying layout. This could be done by splitting the
workflow into 1) Layout, 2) Components. Users could be given a set of existing
layouts (let's face it there aren't _that_ many ways to lay out a document),
and then they move onto Component mode that then shows the options for adding
buttons, forms, tables etc.

Having about 10 pre-built layouts would be plenty and any modifications could
be done by splitting/merging columns.

On the other hand you could be targeting the app at existing coders who need a
way to quickly do some visual layout without opening a text editor (nobody
really wants to write another layout from scratch again right?). For this use-
case I think the tool can already be quite useful as the developer already has
a mental model of the code and how a document/layout should be structured.

Overall great stuff, hope things go well.

Cheers, Eli

~~~
mcolyer
Thanks Eli, we've actually been shipping for the past several months but it's
good to get such a large new feature out the door none the less.

This is great feedback, we've definitely struggled with how to present
building up a document in HTML to people who don't understand HTML. If you're
purely a designer or a product manager you'll most likely to use the other
aspects of Easel which allow you to position elements absolutely and style
their CSS properties with the inspector on the right.

The bootstrap feature is aimed more specifically at developers and designers
who are HTML and CSS savvy. We've found that there are many people out there
who are interested in designing responsive application. While they can "design
in the browser" with code they've found into inhibiting their creative
process.

We've built this feature to allow those savvy designers to get back to what
they do best, design and not code. It sounds like we're in the right direction
and with the right mix of introduction, learning and clarification it will be
alot easier to use.

Thanks again for taking the time to try things out and for giving us such
honest feedback.

------
mrgreenfur
Pretty awesome app. The interface is a little confusing and it's annoying to
see a welcome note on every visit.

Consider adding tips to give new users a quick overview of how it works?
Something like what tutorialize.me offers would be really useful. (I'm a co-
founder of tutorialize.me).

~~~
mcolyer
Thanks mrgreenfur. It's definitely something we're planning on adding in the
future. We'll be sure to take a look at tutorialize.me when we get started on
it.

~~~
mrgreenfur
Cool. Shoot me a note via the contact form when you get into it and I'll help
you out!

------
mrchess
It's a cool piece of engineering, but feels feature bloated to me. I am
genuinely confused with the interface.

My only feedback would be to make it simpler by removing or hiding some of the
advanced functionality. Shoving options in my face is just so overwhelming.
Like, what am I even looking at here? <http://i.imgur.com/baoGV.png>

The canvas isn't really in focus. For some reason a textarea is highlighted in
red, I have all these options on the right... so many numbers. I can edit
position (isn't part of the beauty of bootstrap a locked grid system?),
anyway, you get the idea.

~~~
mcolyer
Thanks for the feedback mrchess. It's true that there are many options that
appear all at once. Do you think having a tour that highlighted specific next
actions would address some of your concerns?

~~~
mrchess
I don't think a tutorial would help. The feeling is similar is that of being
thrown into Photoshop. Here's a couple initial thoughts after playing for 30
minutes:

1\. Not sure what monitor size you are using, but the right menu blends with
the editing area. Would be nice to add a shadow to give me clarity on the
division of the right menu.

2\. Resize handles on a lot of objects yet I can't resize them.

3\. Clicking on the items on the left menu for a preview throws me off. Makes
me think that the descriptions are options eg. Page Heading (I tried to drag
some of them out a few times).

4\. How do I zoom out?

I guess in the context of a Bootstrap toolkit, less is more. I just want to be
able to drag stuff and have it all "work". I don't really care about the extra
options because the padding, typography, is already taken care of with
Bootstrap. That being said I'd want Advanced features to be opt-in.

My 2c.

------
neya
You should post a simple guided tour like how Yahoo does for their first time
E-mail users or how google does for the new compose button. The app itself is
excellent and your target audience I believe is not everyone, but specific
web-designers with HTML+CSS knowledge - So you should try to make that clear.
Right now, it looks as if it's meant for everyone and hence the "too complex"
complaints. I'd give this a 5-star rating. I'm a designer myself and this
would save me tons of time.

Keep up the good work, thanks! :)

~~~
mcolyer
Thanks neya, we'd love to see what you come up with in Easel.

As for the tour, the feedback here has been strongly in favor of a more guided
introduction so we'll see what we can cook up.

------
digitalengineer
Oh with regards to your payoff: "Design & build in your browser" I don't
_design_ in the browser. I do _build_ my design in the browser. I design on
paper, using Photoshop, Illustrator and what not. If you're designing you
don't have a clear idea of what you're going to make and you're changing
things, replacing, resizing... Wouldn't recommend that in a browser ;-)

~~~
mrbogle
We want you to design in the browser. We want you to do that experimentation
in your browser with easel. :) The ultimate goal of easel is to be the tool
for designing websites.

------
liquidcool
Perhaps I missed it, but one thing I didn't see was how to upload or point to
new web fonts. That would be very nice.

~~~
mrbogle
This is one of our next features. We've had a lot of feature requests for a
better font integration. If you have a typekit account, we will soon be able
to use that. Email me: ben@easel.io and we'll set it up.

------
OriginalSyn
Unfortunate naming collision, For far too long I was wondering where
EaselJS[1] came into the picture.

<http://www.createjs.com/#!/EaselJS>

~~~
alexanderh
Came here to say this. At least its not another competing javascript
framework, but a full blown web-tool.

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callmeed
I'd really like to see some sort of open-source or license-able tool like this
that can be integrated into other apps or CMS tools. Something packaged up
like rich-text editors are

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aviswanathan
Very cool stuff. Something that immediately comes to mind is if this can be
done in an even more inclusive way (not necessarily dependent on Twitter
Bootstrap). I.e. if there is a WYSIWYG kind of way to create divs, containers,
and easily drop elements into them.

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omegant
I have been looking for something like this (I´m trying to test some ideas), I
think is a necessary tool. But I find it confusing, make it more intuitive,
after all this is not for an expert coder, is more for people who doesn´t know
how to do it, isn´t it?.

------
nemesis1637
Very cool indeed. I spent about 20 mins messing around and was thoroughly
impressed. I typically use Balsamiq Mockups but will have to try this for my
next project.

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sgdesign
Looks great! I'd be curious to know how it compares to Divshot
(<http://divshot.com>)?

~~~
coderdude
Looks like there are now three serious competitors in this space:

\- Jetstrap (<http://jetstrap.com/>)

\- Divshot (<http://divshot.com/>)

\- Easel (<https://www.easel.io/>)

I could see a company like Adobe wanting to get in on this.

~~~
TSR830-10Q
I've been using Jetstrap and Divshot for 2 weeks on a small project. Of the
two so far, I've found Divshot has more features and ease of use, yet Jetstrap
is very good in its own right. I want to try Easel and I signed up, but the
site seemed to be overwhelmed (by Show HN?) and it failed to load for me.

Surely we want competitors in this area, there's obviously a need for it and a
number of tools competing on features and price can be good for consumers?

~~~
yesimahuman
Thanks, I built Jetstrap :)

To answer the parent, Adobe technically does have a competitor in this space,
though it's not focused on bootstrap and it's kind of complicated:
<http://html.adobe.com/edge/reflow/>

As someone with a product in this space, I'm confident each of the current
offerings listed above will diverge sufficiently in the future, specifically
in their target audience. It's still so early though.

------
shredfvz
Things I like about Easel:

\- Zipfile export contains everything you need to demo your site with a web
server

\- The UI. It's simple and elegant [1] in its most minimal implementation, but
grows in complexity in the right ways when you need it to. The menus are easy
to understand at the core, and the functionality behind it should be self-
evident to most front end devs. Kinks can be worked out but the overall
implementation is effective. I don't like that the RHS menu overlaps with the
design you're working on, but I take partial responsibility for using a
1366x768 display.

Things I don't like about Easel:

\- Exported stylesheets for demo app aren't perfect [2]

\- Elements don't snap to grid.

\- It's extremely buggy. Some features flat out don't work, some work but are
an eyesore. After clicking "Upgrade", I should not have to type "ESC" to exit
the Upgrade path for example.

\- The left hand side menu - the dropdowns make it seem like I have multiple
choices to select from. It took me a while to realize my mouse wasn't failing
to select from an apparent dropdown list.

\- The right hand side menu - it should be dockable, minimizable, an arrow
should be there, something should let me hide it from view if need be. This
comes in handy when selecting multiple elements on a small screen.

Things I like about divshot:

\- Edit CSS. This is a nice feature. Not that I want to be editing much code
in a browser, I have Vim for that. It's just that access to the raw
stylesheets gives you fine grain control over everything.

Things I don't like about divshot:

\- Edit CSS was buggy and slow to load changes.

\- The export to HTML/CSS feature is essential, but please don't make me have
to link to your hosted version of my static assets. I don't enjoy CSS
templates that employ href's to placehold.it either for this reason. I want to
not worry about my Interweb connection status when running a server on
localhost to preview the HTML as I integrate it into a bigger project. This is
make or break important for me. Send all of the static assets I need in a
zipfile.

\- Previews. I don't want to see the dark blue bar on the RHS in preview mode,
maybe turn it off when I switch to full screen mode?

\- Color scheme. Prototyping should be energizing. Doing mockups should be
(is) more exciting than many other phases in the app development lifecycle,
because it's the closest you ever get to pure creativity without being weighed
down with technical decisions. Give me a simple, lightweight tool that makes
it easy and fun to make creative app designs with. The dark blue UI brings me
down.

[1] <http://imgur.com/hrUcE>

[2] <http://imgur.com/d3QJA>

~~~
mrbogle
Thanks for the comment. We appreciate the kind words on the ui.

To address your concerns:

\- The stylesheet from the demo seems to work as expected. It mixes absolutely
positioned elements and elements inside containers. The goal of that demo is
to show the flexibility. I suppose the usage of absolutely positioned elements
isnt obvious.

\- When using the bootstrap containers, elements snap to bootstrap's grid
systems. When you dont use the containers, you can use the built in grid.
Under the grid menu, you can turn on/off the grid and a 960gs grid system.

\- I'd like to know more about the bugs. We'll fix the issue with the upgrade
path. I didnt see your email address in your hn profile. Please email me at
ben@easel.io and let me know which features dont work and which ones are an
eyesore.

\-- did the bootstrap dropdown not work? There should be 2 other options:
'Easel Pack' and 'Icons'

\-- We'll think about the best way to allow hiding/resizing of the inspector.

Thanks again for the comment.

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mion
It looks cool and I'd totally use something like that, but the demo page has
too many stuff on it which kinda scared me away.

------
flipside
I was importing things from bootstrap before so thanks for streamlining the
process!

Also, FYI: the link to the blog post is broken

~~~
mcolyer
That's great to hear! We've also fixed up that broken link, thanks for letting
us know.

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yesimahuman
Congrats Ben and Matt, this looks sick.

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mhitza
Stop script | Continue

I'll go with the first choice.

~~~
epaga
It would be more helpful to the developers if you let them know which browser
& OS you were on...

~~~
mhitza
You're right. Firefox 16.0.2.

But I'm more likely to consider it overneedy for a netbook with 1GB ram and
dual core Atom ~1.8GHz

------
joewee
Really awesome work.

Saved me about a month of work! You can count me as a customer.

------
philipmorg
This looks great! Wish I'd had it when I used Bootstrap for my photography
site <http://philipmorganphotography.com>

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arcatek
Is it possible to make 100%-width elements ?

~~~
mcolyer
It depends on what you want. The bootstrap container elements are 100% of the
width but if you place things inside of them the have a small amount of
padding.

Do have something specific you'd like to accomplish?

~~~
arcatek
I'm trying to put a navigation bar inside a fluid container (like any static
navigation headers), it doesn't seem to work :<

~~~
mcolyer
Ah. Navigation bars are intended to go outside of containers. You can make it
span the entire width by setting the position in the inspector to "fixed top".

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rorrr
It's ok, but there are bugs. After deleting all of elements from the demo
project, and inserting a heading and a layout element, I ended up with this:

<http://i.imgur.com/V9QOP.png>

I also noticed that it takes me longer to drag and drop shit around than to
code it in HTML/CSS.

~~~
mrbogle
If it's a nav bar with positioning set to fixed-top, it will be z-index'd on
top of the container. The container will need top margin to bring it out from
under the nav bar. This is something we should probably do automatically, but
right now we're using the vanilla bootstrap behavior.

