

Easel (YC S12) launches as an easier way to design for the web in your browser - mcolyer
http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/07/easel-a-web-app-for-web-design/

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jenntoda
Excited to see where this goes - the team is spot on that

"The current web design process is broken. People use image editing tools for
creation, share screenshots/flat exports over email, and spend more time than
necessary manually translating the design into a working product."

Certainly the future of application design should be with tools that
understand the medium and the process.

~~~
danso
> _Certainly the future of application design should be with tools that
> understand the medium and the process._

This. The reason why web-design is very hard to abstract out into a Photoshop-
like app is that because non-trivial websites are at their core, a
fundamentally different medium than anything that Photoshop-familiar-designers
are trained to create.

To treat the transition from visual-sketch to working-website as just some
tedious code-work that gets in the way of brilliance and implementation is
missing the point...the brilliance IS typically in the code that implements
the vision in such a way that the site is maintainable and graceful across
different platforms and screensizes.

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TazeTSchnitzel
Great, now it's even easier for people like me with no talent for design to
make horrendous UIs.

Edit: For a more helpful comment, they really need some <input type=number>
things in there. You now, TSpinEdits (any Delphi users out there?). Number
controls.

~~~
mnicole
I've gotta agree on this one. Generally all I can think when I use browser-
based design tools is how much faster/easier it would be for me to go into
Photoshop or better, the code itself.

I think the biggest flaw in these apps is they start people with either an
amateur design or a blank template instead of exposing the grids and guides
that define a website (and further define the limitations of web design) right
off the bat. Even though it starts as a blank page, I love Alex Maccaw's Stylo
(<http://styloapp.com/>) because the tools are simple and familiar, they don't
overburden the page I'm focusing on and it creates smart guides that show up
when I've got two elements on the same plane. It's the only one of these apps
I've tried that actually extends my creativity and doesn't end up taking me
longer to design something I like between clunky UI elements or trying to
figure out what everything does.

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maccman
Haha, I'm honored (and slightly amazed) that people are using it in
production.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Hey, perhaps I'm missing something, but could you add a button to show the
styles on an element, somehow? Thanks!

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timr
We've been using Easel to quickly prototype new designs for Vayable, and we're
pretty happy with it. It's way more convenient to send around easel links than
mucking with Photoshop files.

Congrats to Easel! Keep going!

~~~
mcolyer
Thanks!

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fredsters_s
Really impressive to see how fast these guys are iterating. Excited to see
where this goes.

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codegeek
Just tried it. Really cool. I have one question though. The option to right
click and "Export HTML/CSS" only exports the current selected widget and not
the entire grid/layout. That would be awesome if possible :)

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TazeTSchnitzel
I think that's intentional. The web doesn't need more fixed-size, absolutely-
positioned-everything sites.

Easel aims to be a design tool, I think, to help you in coding and designing
sites, but won't do all of the former for you.

~~~
mcolyer
Exactly what we are thinking.

We realize that it's a difficult problem to create good markup but that
doesn't mean we can't help. So we felt the best tradeoff was to give the CSS
properties used so you can spend less time with the eyedropper tool.

There is an option to export the full page but we think it's best for quick
prototypes.

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kazevedo
Getting the details right on individual CSS elements is one of things that
always falls to the back of the priority queue. Easel seems like a fantastic
option for quickly polishing up buttons, forms, etc, which adds up to a much
better UI over time. Great job guys!

~~~
mrbogle
Thanks!

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tstegart
I love it! Some tabs would be awesome, as would multiple background images
(just saying that because I'm having trouble with them today, I doubt many
people use multiple images)

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ColinHayhurst
Well done. This solves a big problem for some. Enough said.

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chermanowicz
this is cool, but hope we won't see more terrible UIs from people with bad
design sense

