

Adobe Muse - HTML websites without writing code - robin_reala
http://muse.adobe.com/

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modernerd
From the intro video:

"Muse is a tool for the graphic designer. And I mean that in the most sincere
sense."

I downloaded the demo. For me, it's defined by the absence of a source code
view. That said, the Muse site itself is built with the app, which is
impressive, but must have required incredible patience. The code it outputs is
less than impressive: the body code begins with six nested divs.

At $15/month, it may find an audience among keen hobbyists, though.
Professional graphic designers I know who've expressed an interest in web
design have all drifted towards Dreamweaver or taught themselves to hand code
sites from scratch, and I'm not sure that Muse is enticing enough a toolset to
break this trend at present. If they're trying to appeal to graphic designers
(typically Mac users), the fact that it's an Air app is likely to be a big
hurdle for adoption.

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kristaps
Why would the app running on AIR pose a problem?

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schraeds
Because most if not all AIR apps have non-standard interfaces that feel
clunky, slow, and out of place on Mac OS X.

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RexRollman
Kinda like Java all over again, isn't it.

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PeterMcCanney
It's interesting that the pricing model is purely rental. I can see a lot of
small businesses/hobbyists using this. $20 to get your website done will grab
a lot of attention.

For professionals it could be a good mock-up tool. Being able to quickly show
a client a website and alter it in real-time is going to save a lot of time,
even if it means having to recode the entire site from the ground up.

Client's for the most part don't really care what's going on under the hood,
just that their site looks super sexy.

Which of course will lead to this tool being abused by every half wit who can
draw a straightish line with a ruler. <p class="paragraph"> all round...

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pavlov
From the FAQ: "Muse is an Adobe AIR application."

I'm not convinced that AIR is good enough for large desktop apps. It's been a
while since I've checked out AIR's progress, though -- maybe my prejudice
about AIR is behind the times.

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mtogo
Nope, AIR still sucks on windows and is unsuable on everything else.

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Maci
Funtip: Turn off javascript, render navigation and other elements on "Muse"
based pages non-functional.

The lack of any meaningful fallback is disappointing. Accessibility to content
should at all stages be a priority.

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RexRollman
You're right. Far too many sites depend on Javascript and Flash to function.
In my opinion, sites that can't function without those are broken.

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keeganpoppen
So what is the non-intellectual-purity argument for why Javascript dependency
is bad? I've heard people talk for years about why it's so important to
support noscript, but tbh I feel like this is the year 2011-- the internet is
not (only) a set of hyperlinked documents any more, and javascript is an
essential part of the experience on many/most non-trivial websites. (note: not
trying to troll; I'm honestly curious)

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XLcommerce
There is no reasonable argument for going out of ones was to cater for non-js
users. It's on by default in every browser. If a user turned it off for
whatever reason they they'll know to turn it on again if they need to.

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simonhamp
Wait so instead of building the tool people actually want, Adobe is spending
the profit from their ludicrously over-priced products on this!!?? And at the
same time trying to perpetuate the pointless Air ecosystem...

Bye Adobe <http://scrumpy-jack.com/post/543705069/bye-bye-adobe>

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chippy
Great! I was really missing Frontpage.

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jamesmoss
The markup generated from this tool isn't so good (no surprise). e.g <p
class="paragraph">

Adobe should spend their time and money investing in a resource for designers
to learn and perfect HTML/CSS/JS techniques rather than building useless tools
like Muse.

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pavlov
That's akin to someone saying back in 1988 that, instead of building a
graphical tool like Illustrator, Adobe should have invested in educating
designers how to write PostScript by hand.

("Processing cycles on the printer's raster processor are incredibly precious!
Can you imagine, this printing job would easily run 70% faster if only the
PostScript document were hand-written instead of produced by some junky layout
tool...")

99% of designers will never write code, no matter how exciting educational
prose and tutorials we may come up with. It's a shame to drive away those
designers from the web just because of old-fashioned HTML snobbery.

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extension
Writing clean HTML is about a lot more than performance. It's about
compatibility, maintainability, future-proofing, accessibility, and so on.

History has shown us repeatedly that these sorts of wysiwyg programs write
really bad markup, which is a symptom of their pretending that HTML is capable
of things that it is not.

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pavlov
_... their pretending that HTML is capable of things that it is not._

That was unavoidable because HTML wasn't capable of doing the kind of layout
that designers wanted. This was back in the late '90s, when the demand for
WYSIWYG web design tools boomed but the HTML standard was splintered by
incompatible vendor-specific extensions.

We can do much better now; hopefully Adobe Muse does.

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dsadsa
first thought: oh another Microsoft Frontpage.

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RexRollman
Personally, I prefer a text editor, but I recognize that is not the solution
for everyone.

