I think this is the second 'bootstrap designer' posted to HN today alone.
Here's my gripe with these things. It seems like we're going backwards. Years ago everyone used Frontpage and Dreamweaver to create their pages, which was fine. But it soon became apparent that handwriting your own HTML gave your far greater control and added way more value, and so use of these visual editors died down. But now they're back for revenge, except from the browser this time, and stuck with a totally overused css framework which in my opinion [when used at stock] completely devalues your design.
As a then designer who took the time to learn HTML and CSS during the WYSIWYG cull of the early 00s - which wasn't that hard - I just can't see why these editors are needed.
Graphical interfaces for laying out user interfaces on the Bootstrap grid are a "step backwards" from HTML/CSS like InDesign and Quark are a "step backwards" from TeX.
There's nothing inherently virtuous about building UI with raw HTML and CSS (or even Bootstrap's macro-assembly version of same). The problem with Dreamweaver wasn't that dumbed web design down; it's that it spit up terrible markup. But Bootstrap (and things like it) remove degrees of freedom and provide a semantic framework; they almost beg for graphical tools to configure them.
>But now they're back for revenge, except from the browser this time, and stuck with a totally overused css framework which in my opinion [when used at stock] completely devalues your design.
Did you look at the examples on the site? None of them look anything like the default bootstrap design. And the section below the example section is "Your Bootstrap site doesn't have to look like Bootstrap!"
Also, you download the resulting code, and the customized CSS is apparently in a separate CSS file that overrides the default bootstrap stuff, not intermixed, so it's easy to further hand-modify as needed.
Only problem is there's no apparent way to test it out and see how it works without providing a credit card. Would love the ability to really see for myself to what degree you can customize bootstrap before signing up for recurring billing, even at just $4.99/mo.
A free tier that gives you the ability to create customized designs and view them in a preview window (similar wrapbootstrap.com), but no way to save them to your account or other conveniences, would be nice.
I agree with you on the paywall. I can't see this tool, other than it promises to help make bootstrap look nicer.
This may be one of the cases where forcing you to pay before you download or save might be the preferred method of payment. That way I can play with my design, and I'm very much inclined to hand over my money now.
Is monthly billing the best option for this or is single payment? Monthly is OK if I'm going to keep coming back to this tool, though single payment up front may be better (e.g. $15-$20 per site, and my design is saved). Who knows how long bootstrap is going to remain popular.
Similar approach, but the designer gives you visual representation of the design settings (font settings, color/gradient selection, css effects, etc). Combined with real-time preview, makes it easy to experiment and to get ideas.
I think the editor is valuable if:
1. is responsive and lets you think visually
2. doesn't break bootstrap's model, so the output is similar to what a human would do.
This means that you should have control over ids and classes and generally know the html structure of the components.
3. lets you extend bootstrap's components with CSS,JS,HTML
4. lets you create new components in a similarly modular way
5. plays nicely with server-side/front-end templates (mustache/erb)
6. talks with github so the changes you make can eventually be merged in (feature branch, pull request)
With Bootstrap Designer, I can quickly experiment with font combinations (to see how a title, body and headline font work together), color matching, image & background selection (to see how it would look on the design), etc and pick all the combination that I feel works for my project. I cannot get this visual representation immediately by coding. The tool helps in this area and it creates a very simple/clean template that is easy to extend. It uses CSS overides, separate from Bootstrap.
There sure is an abundance of these lately. I can see the reason why Bootstrap opens up the possibility of building this, but I don't see exactly where it's going. Maybe I'm missing something though, so I'd be curious to have the creators defend the work.
What is going to make one of these win over the others, and who exactly is the intended audience?
Before releasing the Bootstrap Designer, it was my personal tool to create a mockup for clients. I can quickly experiment with colors, fonts, images, etc and pick the combination that I feel works for my project. I see this will help users to focus more on creative work.
I'm sure this is a great personal tool for quick prototyping, but I'd really like to see people who are building products around the premise of design to actually care about and understand design instead of compiling bad assets from free resources to charge for it. The default Bootstrap layout is preferable to bad textures and typography laid on a custom non-grid.
https://www.easel.io/bootstrap is a free alternative for people looking for a WYSIWYG approach to Bootstrap, but in any case - like with the previously mentioned Frontpage and Dreamweaver dilemmas - I'd advise against using these tools for anything other than a functional mockup.
data-* attributes on all the elements. But switched up and randomised so you wouldn't be able to strip them out with a single line of XSLT; and for greater annoyance, some of them would be required to make the design work, so stripping them out with a regex would break things.
Make 'em work for the free html they designed with your tool...
If it seems like a waste of effort on both sides, that's because it is.
Given that tools like this appear to be easy to write and easy to launch they should probably be sold to hosting companies not designers. As in, you'd make more money selling AutoMattic the whole shebang to use for designing things on top of Wordpress or it's successor than you would trying to sell $9/month subscriptions to would be web designers.
Here's my gripe with these things. It seems like we're going backwards. Years ago everyone used Frontpage and Dreamweaver to create their pages, which was fine. But it soon became apparent that handwriting your own HTML gave your far greater control and added way more value, and so use of these visual editors died down. But now they're back for revenge, except from the browser this time, and stuck with a totally overused css framework which in my opinion [when used at stock] completely devalues your design.
As a then designer who took the time to learn HTML and CSS during the WYSIWYG cull of the early 00s - which wasn't that hard - I just can't see why these editors are needed.