
Pingendo – Free, simple app for Bootstrap prototyping - rhapsodyv
http://pingendo.com
======
glossyscr
Slightly OT: Is it just me or is Bootstrap a bit of an overkill nowadays? I
know you can import what you need and keep the lib size small but the overall
framework feels aged and many feature are no rocket-science anymore. Still
some features are handy but again, is it worth it?

Without any customization you have this typical thousands times seen Bootstrap
look. Only few of the available Bootstrap themes have an original and from
Bootstrap outstanding look but then you add even more bloat to your site
figuring out what CSS you could leave out. You could also customize yourself
but again why not quickly do the stuff without Bootstrap? FE development got
quite far these days and today's CSS and JS is not your daddy's HTML anymore,
Flexbox is great and there're tons of specialized and modular libs.

Besides, Sass and Less were never my favorites but this would be a minor pick.
They are ok to get along.

Last but not least they claim to be mobile-first which is IMO far off and the
biggest deal breaker. Just open the Bootstrap page on a newer iPhone (eg 6)
and open the menu. There's some significant lag until the menu opens and then
the menu-open animation sluggishly stutters running at very low framerate.
This could have be done with native CSS and hardware-accelerated 3d-transforms
in a responsive and butter-smooth manner with a just few lines. Just having a
responsive grid-system doesn't make Bootstrap mobile-first.

I believe that Bootstrap could be good for non consumer facing sites where the
audience is less demanding. Eg you need to build an internal reporting
dashboard for some company departments and it doesn't have to slick, smooth or
sexy. Just a dashboard which is faster and more flexible than sending Excel
sheets back and forth. Then yes, Bootstrap is a good choice.

Don't want to be too negative, maybe it's just my cluenessless but could
somebody enlighten me: why do I need else Bootstrap in 2016?

~~~
pjbrunet
I agree. Ask clients why they _really_ want Bootstrap and it comes down
border-radius on buttons and that blue background color.

It's definitely not a better way to create fluid-responsive viewports.

And the whole grid obsession has gone too far. Among graphic designers and
studio artists, a "grid" was always just a fun-to-try curiosity for noob
artists to learn composition. Grids are only seriously used by "op" (optical
illusion) artists and a few OCD artists with an unhealthy obsession with
geometric alignment, like maybe Edward Hopper.

~~~
michaelbuddy
Your ideas that grids and therefore alignment is some quirk among a few OCD
artists is quite wrong. Good designers break grid all the time, but they all
use grids and guides to some extent. Not using a grid is the sure sign of an
amateur. Just because a grid is a well-known concept to everyone doesn't make
it amateurish.

~~~
pjbrunet
I have a BFA in this subject and 30+ years of experience designing graphics
and interfaces back to Deluxe Paint and Photoshop 1. So I can't take an anon
post seriously. What your saying demonstrates my point, it's a self-
reinforcing trend that's gaining more traction, and I blame the popularity of
Twitter for that. It was not common to see so many CSS grids until Twitter
Bootstrap.

The problem is, non-designers are buying and selling these frameworks and
themes. Often designers aren't even part of the purchase process. And how many
designers would object: "You're making a mistake because you will regret the
technical debt of this." Hey, more billable hours for everybody when it comes
time to maintain the grid within the grid from hell, which was FUBAR code from
day 1, further obfuscated by some proprietary WYSIWYG. Wow, the screenshot
looks great though! How many designers even use the Bootstrap grid properly,
assuming it was a good idea in the first place?

The fundamentals of composition haven't changed in hundreds of years. This is
false: "Not using a grid is the sure sign of an amateur." Yes, grids go back
to the Renaissance, but it's more often a crutch for a new artist copying a
master, or for an OCD personality like Edward Hopper. You can feel the cold,
painful rigidity of his work, it's amazing--but if the guy was my personal
friend, I'd say he needs to loosen up and take off the training wheels. But
hey, that's just my opinion ;-)

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vayeate
As a web developer who works almost exclusively with Boostrap and finds the
beginning stages of building a site with Bootstrap to be very tedious, I love
this. My boss (does a lot of web design work but not coding) might find this
interesting too. He's been wanting to be able to sit and make mockups but
can't find the motivation or maybe time to do it.

~~~
vayeate
Also, some quick feedback: The HTML and CSS panel was hidden by default for
me. It was a little hard to find. There's also no quick way to hide it again
that I can see. I have to resize it to minimum. Might be worth exploring how
double clicking works with PHPStorm (maximizes it) and adding a minimize
option to right click context menu. Also undocking options for CSS/HTML would
be nice for dual screen use.

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jordanlev
Suggestion for you FAQ:

> 4) Why use Bootstrap? > Because Bootstrap is the most widely adopted
> development framework, with the largest thriving community and most
> extensive documentation.

How about something a little better than "because everyone else is using it",
such as:

"Bootstrap gives us a common vocabulary of classes and components that makes
it easier for beginners to build fully-functioning markup, and makes it easier
for developers of all levels to communicate with one another. It also provides
constraints on the otherwise-unlimited possibilities of HTML+CSS which makes
it possible for us to build this GUI tool that interacts with it."

~~~
volaski
There's too much fluff in that description. If i were a potential user and saw
that line, i would just close the tab without trying to understand what you're
trying to say. The op rightly described the essence of what makes bootstrap
compelling imo.

~~~
jordanlev
Not being able to understand something doesn't make it "fluff". I believe that
there is actual meaning to what I wrote (maybe you disagree, and that's
okay... but it would be nice to hear what exactly you think is "fluffy" about
my explanation).

~~~
krotton
As opposed to the original explanation, yours actually applies to virtually
any CSS framework, so makes no argument after all.

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oelmekki
I'm very impressed, thanks for this app. Until now, I used Pencil for
prototyping on linux, which was not very efficient because it's more focused
on desktop app building.

Totally love the fact that there's a real browser behind and I can just add
bootstrap classes on elements I want. Great job, instant hook.

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arihant
What is up with every app requiring 10.8 and above? It's fine for others but
very unsettling for developer tools. I still know devs on 10.6.x!

This is even more weird when you consider that laptops that came with 10.7
went out of AppleCare a few months ago.

~~~
chrisseaton
Why can't everyone just upgrade?

~~~
arihant
It can be very messy to upgrade for a sizeable chunk of developers. Linked
libraries, lost compatibility. If the system gets unstable you lose years of
installed dependencies. I mean some of the unix apps take literally hours to
install, and a faulty upgrade can lose tens of them. You forget how you
resolved conflicts, gotten stuff to work.

~~~
chrisseaton
Why would you figure out how to install something, and then not automate it so
you didn't have to do it again? I think if you can't recreate your system in
an afternoon with just a backup of your user files, then you're already on
borrowed time.

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jiblylabs
Every tool that makes prototyping cheaper & faster is more than welcome!

~~~
jetpm
I've made an app & website that lets you quickly try out java snippets on
android, e.g. if you see a code snippet on stack overflow you can just copy
paste it and throw it in and let it run on your phone. But I didn't continue
with it because no one uses it :)
[https://runondroid.com/](https://runondroid.com/)

~~~
themartorana
Yo that's pretty neat right there...

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Scarbutt
The website says they are funded, how do they intend to make money? or this a
nonprofit?

~~~
bobwaycott
From the FAQ:

3) Is Pingendo free? Yes. What is free today will be free tomorrow. Premium
services are coming and they will pay our bills.

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yazriel
Free beats the rest ;)

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JeremyMorgan
This thing is amazing. I am a backend developer, and over the last couple of
years becoming "full stack" for web projects. For me I can do CSS/Photoshop
stuff but I'd rather hand code assembly language than CSS wrangling anyday. So
this tool is great.

I think if the target audience is "non designers" who just want to get
something done, it's perfect. I generally throw together UIs at work and pass
them on to our designers who of course throw it out and put in real stuff, but
at least they know they're starting with a functional product to work from.
That's where I think this tool will really work for people.

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gsere
Pingendo for Bootstrap 4 preview available here
[http://v4.pingendo.com/playground.html](http://v4.pingendo.com/playground.html)

~~~
mkrn
This is amazing, best yet! Wondering what's the status of that? Can't see save
button..

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avinassh
Anyone have details on the technology behind it? I mean is it a cross platform
single app written in JS/Electron or individual native languages etc?

~~~
simple10
It's an Atom/Electron app.

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ryanmarsh
Would have loved if they'd signed the code so I didn't get the "unidentified
developer" message when I try to run it on OSX.

~~~
jordanlev
FYI, if you right-click the application icon and choose "open" from the popup
menu, it will let you run the app.

(I agree that it's annoying to have to do that though)

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mandeepj
is it a coincidence? Bootstrap also introduces something similar today -
bootstrap studio ([https://bootstrapstudio.io/](https://bootstrapstudio.io/))

is there any difference?

~~~
wolfgke
Is Bootstrap Studio really from the Bootstrap devs? According to this website
([https://bootstrapstudio.io/](https://bootstrapstudio.io/)) Bootstrap Studio
is a tool developed by Zine EOOD, a Bulgarian company:
[http://zine.bg/](http://zine.bg/)

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kybernetyk
This looks very very similar to [http://blocsapp.com](http://blocsapp.com) (as
in the UI being almost an exact copy).

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BorisMelnik
I've been using Pingendo for about 1 year now at home and at work. Super fun
app to use, and makes some really nice and clean code in the end.

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sogen
I'm on Safari trying the demo (v4), it's missing the scroll bar :/

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jordache
froze 5 min into using the app, whilst browsing stock photo to insert as the
hero image...

the app felt very clunky. As a developer, I felt very restricted.. This
definitely not intended for developers...

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cdevs
I downloaded it one day and realized it was a attempted closed software atom
app...just unzip it if you want to comment out their JavaScript security line.
Other than that it seems like they took most of their code from a similiar
atom project that is completely free and open source.

~~~
gsere
I'm the author of Pingendo. Which is this "similar atom project" you mention ?

~~~
cdevs
Sorry got pingendo mixed up with the pinegrow devs pushing their 100$ software
around here when there are great alternatives such as this. Sorry for the
trolling. I'll delete my comment once I'm on a desktop. Question where is the
"pin" in these bootstrap editors names coming from?

~~~
mattront
[http://pinegrow.com](http://pinegrow.com), now that you mention it :)

Pine in Pinegrow comes from Pine trees and no code comes from Atom. Besides
Bootstrap, PG also supports Foundation, plain HTML, converting HTML pages to
WordPress themes, master pages, smart components etc and aims to be a kind of
modern Dreamweaver replacement.

And sorry that you feel offended by my kids having to eat.

~~~
cdevs
Not offended your kids have to eat but does it have to be filet mignon every
night? I'd gladly charge $20-$40 on my card for software anyone can easily get
the source for and unlock the saving functionality but I feel like I have to
pay $100 because half of you user WILL just steal it. Wrap some security
around it and prove the business will be around for a few years and if I
missed the boat and still hate front end work then I guess I'll have to pay.
But it's a free world charge what you want and I'll stick to firebug.

~~~
michaelbuddy
early adopter of pinegrow here. I even bought multiple licenses early on, just
to support them. It's become a critical part of my work now. And it's pretty
affordable. Any software isn't going to be worth it if you don't find use out
of it or use something else. But I'd be quite unhappy if I didn't have
pinegrow to work on UI at my current job. I love how easy it is to copy and
delete objects and I build screens for stakeholders (and then devs to work on)

firebug / chrome dev tools are great, I still use them along side pinegrow,
but they aren't pinegrow. And pinegrow doesn't do everything perfect. I will
ocassionally open up the same files I'm working in pinegrow inside a code
editor for more robust tools, BUT pinegrow has been excellent to work visually
on some of the mindnumbing things I'd have to do in code if I didn't have it.

