
Divshot - lukethomas
http://divshot.com/
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CGamesPlay
Why is there such a strong focus on "responsive" CSS? It has never made much
sense to me, because my desktop will never turn into a tablet, and my tablet
will never turn into a smartphone. It seems as though creating a better
server-side abstraction that lets me produce different markup that shares
much, but not all, of the CSS would be more effective from a development time
perspective.

If you use responsive CSS, what am I missing?

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tarr11
Some examples:

* Resizing your browser window.

* Changing font-size for accessibility (Ctrl+, Ctrl-)

* Moving your browser between multiple screens

If responsive was server-side, each of these scenarios would cause a page
reload in order to accomodate the adjusted layout.

Responsive design doesn't just mean CSS media queries. It more commonly means
using floating div/ul instead of tables for layout.

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TazeTSchnitzel
> _Resizing your browser window._

I love responsive design for exactly this. I often have small or large browser
windows, and being able to choose instead of being constrained by fixed-width
sites is great.

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timdorr
Interesting that the tagline is Interface Builder for web sites. One of the
big powers of IB is that it ties back into your code so directly. This seems
somewhat separated from whatever underlying code I'm creating.

I think the killer app is really an IB-for-the-web that plugs into
Rails/Django/Symphony/etc so you can start building a web app visually,
without sacrificing code quality.

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mbleigh
The great thing about building web apps is that it's extremely easy to connect
the front end to the back end. By focusing our efforts on making the
experience building the HTML and CSS great, we don't have to force a choice on
you like Rails vs. Django or Backbone vs. Spine.js.

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Breefield
<bluesky> Perhaps Divshot could have some plugins that allow you to take the
generated markup and specify, for example, which elements should repeat from
an array passed through from Rails, or Django, etc. Then export that kind of
code. Export to HAML would also be nice. </bluesky>

~~~
mbleigh
Our bluesky visions aren't so different, but no promises that outrageous just
yet :)

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yesimahuman
Congrats on the upcoming launch. I've been wanting to check out Divshot for
awhile but I haven't gotten an invite :)

I am the founder of Jetstrap (<http://jetstrap.com/>) and we've built an
interface builder for Bootstrap as well, so we are definitely in the same
space.

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eranation
I'm waiting for a beta invite for more than a month, I hope this hints of a
upcoming release? The competition (<http://jetstrap.com/>) is not waiting...

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jakejohnson
We rolled out our beta yesterday, sending out invites in short waves. You
should get one very soon. Thanks for being patient!

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superasn
Yeah I wanted to try it out too but never got an invite. I'll probably just
forget about this site in a few hours.

You should let more people try it even if it means stumbling upon a few bugs
than to turn away people who are genuinely interested in trying.

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jakejohnson
I'm still reviewing comments and sending out invites to new followers, sorry
you haven't received one yet! We opted for a private beta in short waves so we
can learn more about our users and address their early feedback. I wasn't able
to find your email so give us a shout if you're still interested. Click the
"Contact" link in the footer. Thanks!

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splatcollision
Got any sample output? I'd love to compare notes on the HTML your tool
creates.

I'm interested in this type of app, as I've built a design prototyping tool
called Edit Room, that also creates production-ready HTML and CSS from visual
design tools. <http://www.edit-room.com/>

Good luck!

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mbleigh
Here's some 100% unmodified output from a page I threw together in about a
minute just to post here:

<https://gist.github.com/3743829>

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juriga
Here's the same output in CSSDeck for a more convenient preview:

<http://cssdeck.com/labs/vsjc8abl/0>

Aside from some empty class attributes and extra div wrappers, the markup is
really close to what I'd write by hand. Great work with the export!

EDIT: Oh, sorry - this isn't the same output as mbleigh posted. Mine is the
tutorial page from Divshot when you first log in.

~~~
mbleigh
Those empty classes are a known bug, they'll disappear soon enough!

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fuzzygroove
I've been dreaming of something like this for a while. There's an OS project
called "Stylo" (<https://github.com/maccman/stylo>) that has the basic
framework for an interface builder, but it's not as far along as what I can
gather from the Divshot demo. I'd be much happier building web apps in my free
time, instead of an app to build web apps. Looking forward to checking it out.

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jakejohnson
We're huge fans of Alex MacCaw's open source projects. Divshot is written
completely in CoffeeScript and Spine. There are features in Stylo that we'd
like to add to Divshot such as color pickers and more design options for the
inspector (gradients, border radius, etc).

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showerst
Great looking product, can't wait for the invite.

I see you guys are associated with Intridea; any chance we can claim this as
another DC startup? DC needs all the buzz we can get =)

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mbleigh
Actually we got started at Startup Weekend Kansas City and now we're out in
LA, though Intridea's been awesome with their support :)

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SchizoDuckie
Looks very nice, but i will never use something like this as SAS.

This needs to be downloadable and embeddable in a private product (like a
CKeditor), otherwise i'd never use it.

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mbleigh
Could you explain a little more why you feel that way?

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SchizoDuckie
First and foremost, dependencies.

My apps cannot have third party services that it relies on. that would give
too much problems with our own SLA's. If the SAS goes down, you are
responsible.

Second: my stuff needs to be able work offline (at least o some degree) :)

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mbleigh
Lucky for you one of our key goals is that we will always export to clean,
unencumbered HTML and CSS. Once you export from Divshot you can use the output
in whatever tools you want without worrying about compatibility.

Secondly, we definitely want to support offline capabilities (as a web app
still, but it's very possible) and the ability to safely store all of your
work :)

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ryanfitz
This would be great if it could also generate javascript code to run the app
(backbone.js, angular...) then you could plug that into calling your backend.

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mbleigh
We're not focusing on connector code at the moment because, as a tool for
developers, we want to give everyone the ability to use their own frameworks
of choice (Backbone or Angular, Knockout or Spine). Everyone uses HTML and CSS
(or at least HAML and SASS), so we can use it as a common starting ground and
help speed up the initial phases of development.

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SoftwareMaven
I'm right at the beginning of designing my templates for a Bootstrap/Django
project, so this is a really great time to see this. I'd really like the
ability to tweak the designs without needing to edit a text file and reload
the browser.

Question: do you guys support custom Bootstrap themes?

(Oh, and I wouldn't turn down an invite. The email I signed up with is in my
profile.)

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jakejohnson
You're in. Can't wait to hear your feedback and ideas! A: We plan to support
custom Bootstrap themes in the near future. Stay tuned!

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superchink
I'm in a similar boat; never received an invite, but looking forward to trying
it out… any chance at getting into the beta? You have my word this will be the
last such request.

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Roelven
Oh I like this. It's great to see so many things taking off thanks to
Bootstrap. Yay for a less ugly web!

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ddewit
For teams where you have non-coding interaction designers and backend
designers AND separate marketing teams this could be an awesome accelerator
simply because everyone uses the same tool (Bootstrap) but interacts with it
in different ways. That's awesome.

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dmauro
This looks really exciting. This seems more like what I wanted easel.io to be.
I had actually started working on a simple html/css in-browser editor to use
for mocks that could be taken into production, but looks like this might be
what I was looking for.

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tomaskafka
Nice - I made a prototype of something similar half a year ago - drag&drop
designing of bootstrap-based sites :) <http://www.screenr.com/vjo8>

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yehanyin
Thanks for the invitation. I'm glad to have the chance to try it today. It
works great and definitely will be my first choice for mockup when starting a
new web app. Thanks again!

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tharris0101
I'm not sure I'd use something like this for production, but anything to let
me do mock ups quicker is nice in my book. Can't wait for the invite.

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mbleigh
We think you might be convinced to use it for production once you see the
output HTML. Stay tuned!

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tharris0101
I hope you're right! I got the invite so I'll try it tonight

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atto
Looks awesome, great work guys. The resulting code looks very clean and
maintainable too. I'd love to check it out when you have more room.

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nanexcool
Hoping to try it out, I'm mocking up a website with Bootstrap and changing
themes a bit and doing it visually sounds interesting.

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jtansley
This looks incredible. Eagerly awaiting a beta invite. I can't wait to try
this out. Great job Divshot team!

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CWIZO
Does it support SASS or is the only output CSS at the moment? I'd love to try
it out ASAP btw :)

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mbleigh
We're still pretty early, but we know how much people love their CSS
preprocessors. Check out <http://divshot.com/alloy> as a preview and promise
that we won't leave SASS users out in the cold :)

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se85
How are you getting such clean html from the WYSIWYG, pre or post html
processing?

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Klorophyl
Can't wait to try this out ! gabriel_zora <at> hotmail <dot> com

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erinaceous
wow, very impressive! I look forward to using it :) I have a couple of webapps
that need frontends, so definitely giving this a whirl when it's released.

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mikeevans
Looks great. Hopefully invites will be rolling out soon.

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lenindesign
What do I have to do to get an invite to test it?

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shrikant
This looks really nice - great work, signed up!

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jhargen
So cool - can't wait to put this to the test!

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amwelles
This looks awesome. Can't wait to try it out!

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cadab
Any chance for some invites? I'd love to try.

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jakejohnson
We'll be reviewing comments here throughout the day and if we can easily find
your email you might receive an early invite!

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ckrailo
If I'm going to use this soon, now's the time since I'm prototyping out a web
app. I'd love an early invite while the timing's good. (The email I signed up
with is my username here at gmail.)

Edit: Either you saw me or I just got lucky. Thanks a bunch! I'll be sure to
share feedback (even if it's just saying good job). :)

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francov88
Great app! Congrats to Michael and the team!

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tzaman
So this is an interactive bootstrap builder?

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mbleigh
We're starting with Bootstrap, but it's a general tool for rapid prototyping
and front-end construction for web apps. Bootstrap's the most popular UI kit
out there right now, so we're starting there :)

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jawr
"watch video", but it's already playing!

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lucisferre
Really cool stuff guys. Love the idea.

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yessql
So this is like Frontpage?

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lenindesign
lenin_aviles@sorc.com

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WayneDB
Please make this a downloadable app that I can run on my desktop, if it's not
already (I can't tell yet).

I will never "sign in" to use a dev tool and I'm certainly not alone.

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mbleigh
So I take it you're not a GitHub user? :)

Desktop/downloadable version is on the horizon but not our first focus.

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WayneDB
The GitHub analogy doesn't seem to fit. I can continue to use git regardless
of whether GitHub is up, down or sideways.

I'm glad to hear that a downloadable version is on the horizon though! Thank
You.

