

Easel Acquired by GitHub - ollysb
http://blog.easel.io/blog/2014/01/06/easel-acquired-by-github/

======
GrinningFool
Showing my age. My first thought upon reading this was "holy crap, Easel[1] is
still around?!"

[1]
[http://www.thefreelibrary.com/VMARK+SOFTWARE,+INC.+AND+EASEL...](http://www.thefreelibrary.com/VMARK+SOFTWARE,+INC.+AND+EASEL+CORP.+TO+MERGE%3B+Easel+Posts...-a016333164)
\- I can't find a better link. Easel was a '4gl' in the early-mid 90s (and
maybe late 80s), one of the earlier event-driven UI programming languages. It
was kludgy and annoying to code for, but ahead of its time in a lot of ways.

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jqueryin
I ran through the guided demo/walk-through and was sad to see that the export
to HTML/CSS contained a crap ton of ID selectors. I only played with it for 5
or 10 minutes, but I found this:

Say you remove the id tag of #signup-form and change it to some arbitrary
classname. The styling immediately goes away on the element! Somewhere there's
a hard-coded style on the ID selector for the purposes of a pretty demo. This
doesn't sit well with me.. You can see this is true when you click on the
"Edit Project CSS" from the top menu item. I should've been able to change
that ID to a class or combination of classes and not affect the styling on the
fly.

Likewise, I'm a bit concerned what would happen by adding several classes. It
doesn't appear as though they're each uniquely and independently tied to their
own styles via the right adjusted area. If you want to do anything non-
trivial, I believe you're stuck with manually entering the CSS in the "Edit
Project CSS" pane on your own, which is worse than using your own IDE with
automated updates in the browser via LESS, SCSS, SASS, HAML, Stylus, etc.

All I'm trying to say is better handling of classes would be much appreciated
for those of us who prefer to try and widgetize and create reusable
components. Beyond that, it looks nice :)

~~~
ryanSrich
That's really the issue with most new wysiwyg editors. FWIW Macaw seems to
attack this problem head on ([http://macaw.co/](http://macaw.co/))

~~~
callmevlad
Relevant discussion on Macaw's use of absolute positioning:
[http://forum.macaw.co/discussion/64/absolute-positioning-
and...](http://forum.macaw.co/discussion/64/absolute-positioning-and-margins)

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andybak
I've checked out a bunch of these tools and they all seem rather lacking.

I admit to only giving each one five minutes but they usually fail my simple
test:

Can I easily create a new row and add some content to it without it doing
funky things (i.e. adding stupid positioning CSS that forces me to align it
manually or make it look different to the rest of the page).

~~~
callmevlad
Have you checked out [https://webflow.com](https://webflow.com)? Easily passes
that simple test. (I'm one of the founders.)

~~~
faceyspacey
Hey there do you know any open source tools that come close to what you are
doing with in-browser editing? There must be something on GitHub that makes it
so you can easily style elements on a page and absorb the CSS you added.

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Ihmahr
"Since the web is viewed in a browser, we believe it should be built in one
too."

Seriously?

~~~
andybak
And the alternative is a tool that differs in it's quirks from a browser
therefore forcing you to deal with a different set of quirks when building and
when in production.

So yes.

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isaacjohnwesley
So Github is getting into live online editing. Good move.

~~~
ileitch
My initial reaction was acquihire. Though given their recent improvements to
Pages [1], this acquisition could mean a push into the Easel market space.

1: [http://pages.github.com/](http://pages.github.com/)

EDIT: Just to point out why this is a big deal - What percentage of new sites
are mostly static, presentational? Probably a slim minority. Whilst Github
can't code your site for you (yet?), giving you the tools to develop your app
layer and frontend - with some as-of-yet seen integration tools? - those are
some very large slices of the pie. Don't forget Github pages is currently free
too, perhaps there'll be a paid tier for dynamic sites.

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loceng
This is a logical extension to supporting the Github ecosystem. The relatively
massive amount of investment money they received was a signal that this would
happen. I also can see a few other plays possible, and if they do them well,
they could become a $10B company. They will have some stiff competition -
whoever has a better vision will win though. Execution and the time it takes
doesn't really matter in this instance, as it's such a broad play. If I end up
having the time, maybe I'll jump into the game. Congrats to Easel. Checking
out the product. Hopefully they include it in Github's monthly fee. :)

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skrebbel
Congrats are in order, I guess.

Yet, no promises for new features, or even vague ideas about Easel's future
direction: is this a talent acquisition? If so, would it not be much more
honest to your users to just make that clear?

~~~
spicyj
GitHub acquired [https://speakerdeck.com/](https://speakerdeck.com/) and as
far as I can tell, has continued to improve it. I assume that they'll do the
same with Easel.

~~~
Argorak
Along with speakerdecks creators (Ordered List), GitHub acquired gaug.es and
Harmony.

Both are still running (although gaug.es has subsequently been given to
Fastest Forward in November 2013). But that is really all I can say. As a
gaug.es costumer, I saw no improvement or change on the service for all the
time. Basically, GitHub kept it running, but didn't exactly show love (which
they admitted in their email announcing the transfer to Fastest Forward). It's
better then shutting it down, but thats more the better of two evils. This was
an acquihire and the didn't buy Ordered List to continue working on their
products. I expect that to be the same here.

Harmony doesn't seem to be cared about as well.

speakerdeck isn't really changing as well, but thats okay, because its whole
reason of existence is its absence of advanced features.

 _edit: previous version sounded like I am not a gaug.es customer anymore. I
still am._

~~~
rhinoe
Why do they necessarily need to improve it after they've bought it?

~~~
Argorak
Because I expect that as a a paying customer.

GitHub has no obligation to improve them, sure. I am just opposing the view
that GitHub is handling all this so much better. The only difference is that
they leave the product stale instead of shutting it down.

------
Shank
I absolutely love how GitHub acquires technology and people, not one or the
other. It's awesome that they keep what they bought running, like Speaker
Deck, and now Easel.

~~~
winslow
They previously acquired Gauges ([http://get.gaug.es/](http://get.gaug.es/))
but didn't do anything with it and resold it. Maybe they used parts of it in
their recent repo traffic analytics?

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state
Yet another nice looking project that I learn about after the acquisition.
This has always been a tough problem to solve. Seems like they were on the
right track, hopefully it will only get better as a part of GitHub.

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saool
It might be a naive question, but having read on how GitHub works (holacracy,
no management and all that), how a decision like this is made and sanctioned.

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hangonhn
Are there other services out there like Easel?

~~~
callmevlad
Yes, plenty: [https://webflow.com](https://webflow.com) (I work here),
[https://jetstrap.com](https://jetstrap.com),
[http://froont.com/](http://froont.com/),
[http://www.divshot.com/](http://www.divshot.com/)

~~~
hangonhn
Hm...

Not exactly what I was looking for. I care more about being able to quickly
mock-up the UI and the interactions and being able to give and get comments on
the different elements of the mock up. I don't need someone to generate the
CSS and HTML for me.

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paulftw
Time will tell why they bought Easel, for now it seems Github decided to go
after Dribble (or geocities?)

~~~
sim0n
Maybe so that they can offer in-browser designing similar to how they offer
in-browser code editing via Ace Editor?

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loceng
Does anyone know what they're using for the Tour steps?

~~~
callmevlad
It's a library they built in-house:
[https://github.com/easelinc/tourist](https://github.com/easelinc/tourist)

~~~
loceng
Awesome. Thank you. :)

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adrianlmm
Well, it doesn't work on IE11.

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Stal3r
Holy crap! Congrats ben!

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rwebb
congrats ben and matt!

