Frontend: The web visual editor

A shameless plug for my own similar open source project with an already functional version <a href="http://www.brickseditor.com/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.brickseditor.com&#x2F;</a>. It uses Bootstrap for the layout but there are plans to support other frameworks. It&#x27;s built on AngularJS. I&#x27;m currently working on it full time. Maybe there could be some way we could collaborate if this Kickstarter isn&#x27;t successful?

It pains me to see how he repeats the same action for each subtitle-block element, doing the same thing 3 times total. Imagine you had a scrollable area with 20 blocks.<p>If it&#x27;s a mockup editor, then it should be easy to customize from JS to make anything useful from the mockup.<p>If it&#x27;s a site builder, better add support for templates, so that one would then be able to drag and drop data (e.g. json) onto the canvas and bind it to a template to automatically populate a whole set of elements at once.<p>P.S. No matter how slick your UI is, if it&#x27;s not programmable, it&#x27;s not useful.

Although Frontend is impressive, the target market is a bit blurry. As a front-end developer, I don&#x27;t see myself using such a tool. And non tech-savvy people would probably feel a bit overwhelmed and would still have issues designing a decent layout considering it&#x27;s not their job.<p>For some time, I&#x27;ve had in mind a service where people could easily build their websites. A bit like Squarespace (which is amazing) but with a different interface. For many clients who only need a homepage, a contact page, an about page, and some content pages, I usually end up building a custom WordPress theme because its admin interface is efficient and user-friendly, and because I have much experience in it. But still, I don&#x27;t consider it the best tool for the job.<p>I&#x27;m not a great programmer, but I have UI, UX, and front-end skills. I&#x27;ll probably try to develop a workable draft of this app I have in mind, but if anyone is interested in building an easy-to-use platform for non tech-savvy people, feel free to contact me. I have some ideas about how the workflow should be and what features it should have.

Looks cool. But nothing related to Photoshop. They can say this something like iWeb or DreamWeaver, but not Photoshop at all.

Bro, do you even Bootstrap? Edit: Sorry, it&#x27;s not Bootstrap, it&#x27;s their own framework. Though visually it&#x27;s very similar.<p>But seriously, I&#x27;m not sure who this is for. It looks like there&#x27;s quite a technical hurdle to setting it up - node.js and vagrant aren&#x27;t easy to install for a novice user, and they aren&#x27;t suitable for any shared hosting environment that I&#x27;ve come across.<p>I imagine (possibly incorrectly) that the market for simple point and click interfaces wouldn&#x27;t necessarily overlap with that of people who are comfortable setting up complex hosting environments.<p>Now, as an online subscription model, I think it could be quite competitive. That&#x27;s an entirely different route which definitely has a market.

The open source part of it is cool, but i still have a couple of issues with it:<p>+ why do you need 75K as a minimum ? Sounds a bit high, even for 2 people<p>+ They say its built with node, but what about the frontend of frontend ? Only jquery ?<p>+ does it support bootstrap or other layouting frameworks?<p>+ when will they let people contribute to it ?<p>Id really like something like this being open source, but in that case i feel it would need some more flexibility to be integrated into CMSes and Frameworks. Abstracted reusable components to plug it into existing systems, some kind of Content Repository integration for versioning etc. If thats the plan, ill fund in a heartbeat. If its meant just as a downloadable tool to built basic websites it wouldnt have much appeal to me though.

Have you seen Webflow[0] and Froont[1]?<p>[0] <a href="https://webflow.com/" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;webflow.com&#x2F;</a><p>[1] <a href="http://froont.com/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;froont.com&#x2F;</a>

Do the components include back-end Node.is code also? If so I really hope your project becomes popular and is open source. Because I think that developers should code components not UIs or reinventing Crud or email sign up forms. So this is the right direction for developers not just designers or novices. The popular approach with a lot of manual code for basic things like layout and other things is very dumb. Components are the way to go.

Hey everybody. Please give a second look over the project. We tried to make clear the differences between Frontend and the other options out there. Let us know about anything we can improve on the Kickstarter page. Thank you.<p><a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/emoriz/frontend-the-web-visual-editor" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kickstarter.com&#x2F;projects&#x2F;emoriz&#x2F;frontend-the-web-...</a>

Webflow, an existing product, is much more powerful and pretty affordable. Macaw, if it&#x27;s as awesome as it looks in the demo, may be better than Webflow.<p>This, this is thoroughly underwhelming. Sorry.<p>If open source is your biggest differentiator, I think you should emphasize this. Being able to use this as a part of other environments would make it much more compelling. Maybe change up the kickstarter page?

1.How is it different from macaw or Adobe Muse ? 2.I did not understand why are you using a custom web framework xtyle , instead why not go for Bootstrap ?. Its already used by millions and you also save a lot of time. 3.Components feature sounds exciting , but how much similar is it to angular directives. 4.What is target market ? front-end developers or non-tech people?

This is Microsoft Frontpage all over again.<p>I&#x27;m sure they will have market: people who don&#x27;t have the money to contract serious developers, and some novel developers who may like this idea, but in the end, I think it&#x27;s a product with few possibilities.

Looks to me like it works pretty much just like Squarespace (except self-hosted and open). The way Squarespace makes it easy for non-web-designer folk to put together nice-looking websites is excellent, so it&#x27;s a good model to work from.

It irks me that this is called Frontend. It&#x27;s not, it&#x27;s design. Call it Design. Or Frontpage 2013. Whatever. Frontend is a development skill, which requires intricate knowledge of markup and javascript languages&#x2F;frameworks.

What about <a href="https://rukzuk.com/en/" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;rukzuk.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;</a> ? Not open source but the only tool I found which has integrated CMS. Website says it&#x27;s even extendable with custom code.

The reward structure is odd. For example, the &#x27;super backer&#x27; $1000 level is limited to 200, yet the rewards given (e.g. The memory stick) are unlimited in the previous levels. Why artificially limit yourself to 200?

This seems to be more or less exactly the same as <a href="http://jetstrap.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;jetstrap.com</a>

The product looks amazing but the Kickstarter reward levels need to be rethought.

there are many of this apps already, and while there are a couple that are nice my question is: has anyone actually ever used any of this for something serious?

Nice. What technologies are you using to build Frontend?

If you have no ideas - create secure messenger...or web builder.