

Laziness & The Web Designer: How Some Tools Make Designers Lazy - devinhalladay
http://devinhalladay.com/blog/laziness

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pulleasy
Well, a few weeks ago I would have agreed to your opinion.

But after watching Bret Victors great Talk about The Future Of Programming
([https://vimeo.com/71278954](https://vimeo.com/71278954)) I don't think
you're 100% right.

Right at the moment I also prefer hand written code over that generated code
by some Adobe tool. But as Bret Victor puts it in the talk, I think it would
be shame if we create applications in 20 to 40 years in the same way we do
today.

Or to put it into another way, who really knows what programming is? Is
programming something you do when you put characters into a text editor or is
it something you do when you click something together in a tool like Macaw?

I don't think we should wear blinkers but instead should be open for new ways
of thinking and approaching stuff. In the end, as long as computers do the
stuff we want them to do, I don't really care about how its done anymore.

Just my 2 cents.

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kazaroth
Agree 100%.

Devin's post and attitude are part of the problem and why development is still
utterly stuck in writing-lines-of-text in an editor mode. As if that's some
canonical 'best way' to produce software.

Suggest Devin goes to Bret's site and reads some of his essays about tools.
Software engineering is currently being massively held back (primarily in
terms of efficiency) by the reluctance to build out and support tools to
abstract creation further away from text editors. IMO.

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dscoville
I agree. In some ways, tools like Macaw do promote laziness. You could compare
it to the slicing tool in Photoshop that web designers used to use in the late
90s.

However, both design and frontend development are becoming more specialized
roles--especially for large web applications. A designer may be proficient in
CSS/HTML but it may not be her forte. She may spend most of her time in design
software creating wireframes and mockups and a smaller amount of time actually
producing CSS/HTML. Furthermore, some large web applications are so complex
(in terms of javascript and ajax) that production HTML/CSS is only written by
frontend developers.

Therefore, a tool like Macaw is brilliant for a designer who wants to quickly
produce actual working prototypes to show interaction, responsiveness, and
animations to developers. Simply delivering static screens to developers is
not enough anymore.

And, I'm not sure that designing all in the browser is the best approach,
especially if you're working on a complex web application. Designing in some
design software allows you to brainstorm and iterate through many different
design ideas before settling on something.

Furthermore, Macaw doesn't take away your job of writing CSS code. You still
have to organize DOM elements and set class names.

PS Macaw didn't pay me to write this. I just think their product is very
compelling for rapid prototyping.

~~~
devinhalladay
I do agree that Macaw could be great for prototyping, but I'm adamant that it
will be the death of quality code and websites if designers begin to misuse
it.

~~~
dscoville
I think you misunderstood me. The two roles (designer and frontend developer)
are becoming more disparate and specialized. In the future, designers may not
be coding full-fledged websites. Your ideas make sense to you now because you
are both coding and designing. But, I believe there will come a time in your
career where you will have to choose to specialize in one or the other. If you
spend more time in design, you will find that your frontend peers will zoom
past you (and vice versa).

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lasersalsa
How about using Macaw for drawing up the layout (kind of like we use Photoshop
today) and take advantage of the more web relevant sides of it.

I haven't quite managed to work Photoshop into my workflow, but Macaw looks
promising because it puts CSS into an UI.

So personally I consider using it for outputting my ideas and for showing
different layouts, but then later coding it down myself.

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zachmalone
It seems far too simplistic to declare "Macaw will make you into a lazy
designer" or "Macaw will transform the way we design the web". Both sides seem
to ignore the fact that Macaw is a tool, not the tool.

Macaw (or something that builds off of what Macaw starts) will find a niche in
prototyping designs that handcoding will be too slow to do.

Handcoding will remain the backbone and the quality control.

I work with a lot of folks that produce content but have no need, and no time,
to learn HTML/CSS. But a tool like Macaw can allow them to deliver content in
a way that I can refine instead of building from the ground up. Now, that flow
may end up being a terrible waste of time, but a tool that met that niche well
would be a welcome addition to my life.

I won't be building a site with Macaw - but I will gladly accept content
designed in Macaw to build off of.

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thomasjd
( tataniel 4 days ago | link

WTF? An Illustrator that never learned Hand Craft illustration as the core of
it's art, is not an illustrator but a guy who uses tools to replace and
emulate that art, same way, a Front-End must know how to code. If not is just
using tools, not a bad thing, but it's just the superficial layer of the work.
reply)

You do understand that if someone learns how to illustrate using a specific
tool, it would classify them as an illustrator. Just because a person doesnt
use the same methods you consider traditional illustration doesnt mean they're
not an illustrator. Does it mean they're not as good of an illustrator?
Possibly. But that's a bit close-minded.

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zancler
Sorry, I think you've missed the point here.

a) Why not use something to speed up designing and getting are products out
there? You do realise that's the point of tools, and the way they evolve - we
build better things that help us work faster and smarter. Otherwise we'd still
be satisfied using the first version of Photoshop and coding in Notepad.

b) You're not in a position to say what designers should and shouldn't do.

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vjay
I'm not lazy. I'm time poor. I would love to have time to learn how to code
but I don't. That's why tools like Macaw and others are a great asset to me.

I see tools like Macaw actually being the death of front end development. To
me its a waste of time going from Photoshop to code.

Designing in the browser and exporting the code removes the need for front end
development.

Sure it might be rough and dirty now but its early days.

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theolll
Agreed, I haven't used Macaw but have seen some demonstrations. I did recently
use a trial of [http://webflow.com/](http://webflow.com/) and although it's a
great tool I found it pretty slow and inefficient compared with hand coding.
Maybe this is how the next generation will design websites but for me wysiwyg
editors never sit right.

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henriquea
I agree, the same when people use jQuery without have a basic understanding of
Javascript.

By the way comments like that make me cry: "I see tools like Macaw actually
being the death of front end development". This guy clearly isn't a web
designer and doesn't understand the basic principles of front-end, web browser
and the web itself.

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inspiredmac
Watch the Macaw demo movie. The code it outputs is pristine. Your comments are
disingenuous. Following your logic, we would still be using postscript code to
construct documents instead of InDesign.

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daitwice
It's a load of tosh, we all dabbled in some early web coding using packages
like freeway and dreamweaver, same shit but better. Let them 'code'. Let's see
what happens.

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jalcine
Enough said, Macaw is going to be one of those tools that separate incapable
designers from the ones who know why flexbox is coming to be and what it
means.

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devinhalladay
Exactly! That's an excellent example of how these kinds of tools are depriving
designers of learning new techniques.

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mrxd
Does this argument work for illustration as well? Do you prefer to write SVG
using a text editor instead of using Illustrator?

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devinhalladay
That's completely irrelevant. The non-human-readable SVG format can't
translate to this topic in any respect.

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mrxd
False. SVG is an XML format, and very much human-readable.

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silentsvn
This is coming from someone whose father just bought them their first Mac.
Hmmmmm

