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Comment by jbryson3 | Hacker News Reader

Looks like a well thought out tool. Though to get me or my team to adopt it I'd need at least a sprint or two of a free trial. I hope it gains adoption. It probably says more about me than the business strategy, but I don't think I've ever bought a tool that I couldn't try or play with first for free.

What I'm not sure it does, and would hope it does, is provide a WYSIWYG way of CSS layout. I.E. under the hood it's using css3 to layout, but in a way I don't have to think about it, and could output it after I get the design the way I want.

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Check it out, and if it doesn't work for your team we'd be happy to issue a refund.

Re: WYSIWYG CSS, we initially started w/ flexbox but things like the difference between margins, padding, and absolute positioning confused tons of designers coming from Photoshop/Sketch.

We ended up implementing our own layout system, which can be used directly in production (if you want to ship a runtime), otherwise it's possible to map layouts to something like flexbox+grid or native engines if your designers stay away from things that are hard to implement on those platforms (e.g., aspect ratio).

Our goal is to help people think about layout directly, not try to hide the inherent complexity from them. At the end of the day, most all digital products require close collaboration between designers and implementors.

Why not open it to a free trial? I’d like to try it out as well. I don’t like the whole refund song & dance game.

We need to focus on folks who're sufficiently motivated to solve this problem. If a refundable $25 is too high a hurdle, it's unlikely those folks will actually attempt to use the tool, reflect on their workflow, or otherwise help us build a compelling product.

I love this attitude. I backed the Kickstarter last year, because I feel the industry is greatly lacking in quality tools.

What you guys have built is worth far more than $25.

That's a fair perspective, but that doesn't ring true for me.

I've spent money on Spotify, Prime, Patreon (to support local podcasters and niche YouTube content), Twitch streamers, software (Sketch, Lightroom), Marvel/Invision... all because I got to sample the software or produced content and want to support the artist/developers.

Anyways, good luck. Competition and subsequent innovation is always a good thing.

Disagree.

First, I won't say your product is a commodity, but there are many, many, many layout and design tools out there. I'm not going to pay $25 to evaluate each one. It's as much about the sign-up-and-hand-over-the-credit-card process as it is about the money.

Second, the fact that it's refundable doesn't matter. I'm never going to ask for a refund. The hassle and the back-and-forth isn't worth $25 to me.

Third, I'm willing to pay way more than $25 if your tool actually solves my problem. There are tons of UI tools out there, but I haven't found the one. It's totally worth it to me if you save me hours of work.

So don't add any friction to the process. Feel free to time-limit or cripple the tool so I have to pay to do any real work, but don't waste my time, and don't make me pay you for the privilege of sinking a bunch of my time into determining if your product works or not.

Find a way to do free trials, and do it in such a way that your costs are minimal. It's worth it.

I don't understand the downvoting going on here. Even if you don't agree with the comment, it's still a valid point.

In lieu of shelling out $25, I took the engine for a spin to get an idea of the layout model. For others that might be interested:

https://paul.bluereboot.net/subform/

Reminds me of HTML tables and GroupLayout. Wasn't sure how to specify min/max sizes.

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