| Things I like about Easel: - Zipfile export contains everything you need to demo your site with a web server - The UI. It's simple and elegant [1] in its most minimal implementation, but grows in complexity in the right ways when you need it to. The menus are easy to understand at the core, and the functionality behind it should be self-evident to most front end devs. Kinks can be worked out but the overall implementation is effective. I don't like that the RHS menu overlaps with the design you're working on, but I take partial responsibility for using a 1366x768 display. Things I don't like about Easel: - Exported stylesheets for demo app aren't perfect [2] - Elements don't snap to grid. - It's extremely buggy. Some features flat out don't work, some work but are an eyesore. After clicking "Upgrade", I should not have to type "ESC" to exit the Upgrade path for example. - The left hand side menu - the dropdowns make it seem like I have multiple choices to select from. It took me a while to realize my mouse wasn't failing to select from an apparent dropdown list. - The right hand side menu - it should be dockable, minimizable, an arrow should be there, something should let me hide it from view if need be. This comes in handy when selecting multiple elements on a small screen. Things I like about divshot: - Edit CSS. This is a nice feature. Not that I want to be editing much code in a browser, I have Vim for that. It's just that access to the raw stylesheets gives you fine grain control over everything. Things I don't like about divshot: - Edit CSS was buggy and slow to load changes. - The export to HTML/CSS feature is essential, but please don't make me have to link to your hosted version of my static assets. I don't enjoy CSS templates that employ href's to placehold.it either for this reason. I want to not worry about my Interweb connection status when running a server on localhost to preview the HTML as I integrate it into a bigger project. This is make or break important for me. Send all of the static assets I need in a zipfile. - Previews. I don't want to see the dark blue bar on the RHS in preview mode, maybe turn it off when I switch to full screen mode? - Color scheme. Prototyping should be energizing. Doing mockups should be (is) more exciting than many other phases in the app development lifecycle, because it's the closest you ever get to pure creativity without being weighed down with technical decisions. Give me a simple, lightweight tool that makes it easy and fun to make creative app designs with. The dark blue UI brings me down. [1] http://imgur.com/hrUcE [2] http://imgur.com/d3QJA |
To address your concerns:
- The stylesheet from the demo seems to work as expected. It mixes absolutely positioned elements and elements inside containers. The goal of that demo is to show the flexibility. I suppose the usage of absolutely positioned elements isnt obvious.
- When using the bootstrap containers, elements snap to bootstrap's grid systems. When you dont use the containers, you can use the built in grid. Under the grid menu, you can turn on/off the grid and a 960gs grid system.
- I'd like to know more about the bugs. We'll fix the issue with the upgrade path. I didnt see your email address in your hn profile. Please email me at ben@easel.io and let me know which features dont work and which ones are an eyesore.
-- did the bootstrap dropdown not work? There should be 2 other options: 'Easel Pack' and 'Icons'
-- We'll think about the best way to allow hiding/resizing of the inspector.
Thanks again for the comment.