Pinegrow: Multi Platform HTML / CSS / JavaScript GUI | Hacker News Reader

JavaScript GUI

pinegrow.com

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FWIW, close friend of mine (who is a very talented engineer) paid for the Tailwind editor, and used it to build a small SaaS platform with Tailwind UI.

He had nothing but good things to say about it, says it was worth the purchase.

If you are looking for an OSS similar product, with less polish, I recommend Grapes.js

https://grapesjs.com

Haven't used it myself, though contemplated it. Would potentially have bought a subscription if they offered a free trial and could test it out.

Hm, I'm quite sure it's against Tailwind ToS to build a page editor using their framework?

Do you have a link to his platform? I'm curious.

The Tailwind CSS utility framework[1] is open source and can be used without restrictions. The restrictions are for Tailwind UI[2], a commercial product sold by Tailwind Labs, that includes prebuilt page designs and application components built with Tailwind CSS.

[1] https://tailwindcss.com/ [2] https://tailwindui.com/

tailwind is not MIT so you can do with it whatever you want?

No, tailwind UI is not "do whatever you want." There are license conditions: https://www.notion.so/Tailwind-UI-License-644418bb34ad4fa29a...

tailwind UI != the tailwind CSS framework. The CSS framework is licensed under MIT[1].

[1]: https://github.com/tailwindlabs/tailwindcss/blob/master/LICE...

Ah, I could see the confusion.

They don't distribute Tailwind UI, they just have prebuilt components that if you own a license you can import and use.

"Please note that Tailwind UI library itself is not included or distributed with Tailwind Visual Editor. You need to purchase the appropriate license directly from the TailwindUI website."

He had previously purchased both of the Tailwind UI component packs.

The GP specified Tailwind UI, as did I. Nobody that I can see has stated or implied that Tailwind UI == Tailwind CSS

gavinray said they built a "small SaaS platform" with Tailwind UI, and then tmikaeld replied with "it's against Tailwind ToS to build a page editor" (which seems like a non sequitur), to which I clarified that the Tailwind framework is MIT so you can do whatever you want with it.

It seems like everyone is confused about everything, but it's all been clarified now.

Based on the title, I thought this was a GUI library to compete with Electron/etc, not another Dreamweaver/frontpage.

Instead it's probably built on Electron.

If you're making a WYSIWYG HTML editor you'd be crazy to not use Electron.

It's built on NW.js.

I remember using this a few years ago, but was irritated to see the nested div mess. It creates unnecessary amount of them to make a view look like what we intend. Is this common for other WYSIWYG editors for HTML? Or has this been fixed? Good to see it still kicking around tho, given how frequently things shut down.

It doesn’t do this. It works with the html you give it, no extra fluff. I’ve been very impressed.

I think you're confusing it with another tool. Pinegrow is not a page builder, it's an HTML editor with visual features and support for frameworks like Bootstrap or Foundation. You can create standard HTML with the structure of your choice.

Having an enormous DOM due to too much inline tags and CSS is something that site builders are plagued with. It bottles down to the fact that there's no dynamic elements to the site builders, they edit static HTML and that requires everything customized to be in-lined. It's not uncommon to see a single page have more than 2000 DOM elements, thus giving warnings in the browser console about performance issues..

Pinegrow is not a site Builder. It is an HTML editor with visual features. The structure of your documents is the one you choose. Have a look at https://pinegrow.com/docs/getting-started/is-pinegrow-the-ri...

Webflow somehow does a fairly decent job of not doing this

Yup, but it doesn't support something as simple and widespread as custom breakpoints, CSS variables, pseudo-classes, but also descendant and non-class selectors.

I have used this, and have recommended it vehemently to people who I thought it could help.

It has a very specific target demographic, in my mind. If you are a developer, and you need to bash out a full design, this tool provides excellent tools for keeping your markup/stylesheet technical part clean, while rapidly editing visually. I worked in small web shops with no designers on staff. Also great for making product pages, docs, side project stuff.

It relies entirely on your chosen framework for its elements. No custom "blocks", just the exact components you'd find in the docs.

The editor is great for managing classes and keeping CSS/SASS clean. Its as fast to make a new class and add it to the element as just inlining the style, so the ergonomics help thwart bad habits.

I recently made a small business website with this + netlify, and it was the first time in my experience where making a website was as simple as it ought to be.

We're back to Dreamweaver?

Well, given that Squarespace/Wix/Weebly etc. are selling Dreamweaver-as-a-service (plus hosting), I would say there's a lot of demand still. Pinegrow seems like it would cater to someone slightly more technical (since you need to figure deploying/hosting), but not willing to entirely learn the frontend stuff just to make a simple site. I have plenty of sympathy with that, it's better than going with WordPress for a four-page brochure site, at least.

It's definitely a useful tool for more technical oriented people too. Someone would definitely need to have his/her front-end chops in place to work with Pinegrow without frameworks.

Is that such a bad thing, in an absolute sense? Sure it made a mess of code (well, early versions, at least) but it enabled people who don't/can't/won't code to put content on the web fairly easily. I know I used it as a tool in the early DIV/CSS days to shunt stuff around quickly, before diving in to clean up the code afterwards.

One big issue these days is mobile. A lot more difficult to do responsive design in the kind of UI Dreamweaver once provided.

Sure, but I'd then suggest it almost makes things easier - today's internet consumers are generally expectant of a certain range of formats, rather than the early CSS Days' DIV Free For All. A neat contemporary version of Dreamweaver, with a focus on CSS/Grid, Responsive layouts, etc, could be great!

This is different from Dreamweaver in a lot of ways. It's not like Webflow either, which writes code for you, quite in a verbose way and without real support for lots of niceties, like CSS Variables.

Pinegrow lets you choose a framework or allow you to write code yourself, as you wish. If you choose the latter, it just gives you visual tools to create code that follows the standards.

There is an article on this very subject that I invite you to read: https://pinegrow.com/blog/pinegrow-for-dreamweaver-users/

well, we had dreamweaver when browsers were pretty much toys, why can't we have dreamweaver now that browsers are gigantic application runtimes?

The WordPress part is awesome! Going to try this out.

Who's the demographic for this?

Ah, you mean, the "target"? Well, people (amateurs, seasoned, professionals) who want to build responsive websites faster with the help of a powerful visual editor which includes live multi-page editing, CSS & SASS styling, CSS Grid editor and support for Bootstrap, Tailwind CSS, Foundation and WordPress.

This comment wasn't meant to be a bash... I hope it's successful. I just never met one dev who said "you know...I really want to throw out all my code and switch to a GUI editor".

Maybe, the “visual oriented coder”? Like, a designer that also want to control the code.

what about the found end developer who code html/css ?

The world?

Don't redirect people to different languages by geographic location! Especially if your translation is incomplete and you don't have a button to change language.

If you're going to redirect, I think it should be based on the browser language. This preference is usually accessible everywhere in your stack.

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