Show HN: Easier, Free Webflow
aspect.app
aspect.app
Something got pushed to production a while back that should very much not have been on the production website because of a broken workflow I had with a contractor. I didn't realize it did and it ended up blowing up in my face badly. I want to remove his ability to push to his work out or have me be a final approver, bu that's not possible. In fact, there are no levels of permission and anyone will always publish all changes not matter what. I want to be able to colab in real-time, publish per change, and manage users permissions to do things on the platform.
Another thing, that would actually solve the first thing, is integration to Github. If I could have my designer push a PR to GH I would be able to see the changes he was making and accept or reject them, right now I have no idea what changes are being made. He could point me to one thing and have changed a bunch of others. I also don't love the webflow hosting, it's not that performant. I'd much rather have a colab tool and manage my own infra. I know there is a code download feature, but downloading a zip, adding it to git every time is a heavy lift. I like being able to make little changes here and there.
I'd like to be able to write more custom code and add JS libs (looks like you have this one already, so cheers). I saw someone suggesting you host your own JS on a CDN and then call it in the header, but I don't like introducing outside dependencies unless I absolutely have to, I would rather host all of my JS with my other static content.
One last thing. I want markdown support for the blog. Our blog is technical and I've had to do some very hacky things to get code blocks in there.
Is the core app just using a canvas/svg? Did you have to build your own UI toolkit on top of it? Any open source libraries / similar projects I can read to learn more?
Thanks
Imagine that being your marketing page, what hope does that inspire in potential customers.
Aspect on the other hand was simple and to the point, without all the fanciness, and used their layout examples to do the talking.
Here's some feedback for the product itself.
- As noted by other HN users, the selection behavior is unintuitive for me. I read the comments here before trying it, so I understood exactly what to do. But as a naïve user, I wouldn't think that double clicking went 1 level deeper into containers, I would think that it went directly into whatever I'm clicking. For instance, if I click into a text box that's 2 containers deep, it would go directly into the text. I know other programs solve this by having a select tool and a "direct" select tool, although that might be a bad solution here... either way, I think you might want to think about the UX on that more.
- When editing text, I see a red circle with a minus inside. I would assume as a user that it removes the current element, but it doesn't seem to do anything when I click it. Very confusing for me.
- Adding links seems a bit confusing. I selected a text element inside of a container, clicked the chain icon to add a link, and then typed "www.google.com". I didn't see any confirm button, so I pressed the "enter" key on my keyboard. It seems the link was added, but the text didn't turn blue the way I would expect, and the "add link" interface didn't disappear as I would expect. I think just adding a confirm button that when clicked hides the add link interface (and goes back to the one with italic/bold/link/etc) would make it more straightforward.
- Adding an input element didn't seem to work at all for me. After double clicking the "input" option in the element list, I wasn't given the option to select its location like I was for all the other elements.
I love that it's currently free and I'm curious what the pricing model is – or what the future plan might be – are you thinking about freemium and charging for specific features?
I love this!
As a casual user, I can see myself using this to put together quick landing pages
Great work, Tshepo!
In most cases had to click a total of four times: once to get focus on the element, then a double click to select the text, and then once more to get a cursor within the text where I wanted it.
There were also some times where I only had to click three times if I did it with the right rhythm (once for focus, once for selection, and once for cursor), or five times if I had already selected an outer container component and was trying to select an inner component (double click for focus, double click for selection, and once for cursor).
For what it's worth, my own initial expectation was that if you click on an element, it should automatically place the cursor where you clicked, and that by default you should be selecting whatever text you are clicking on, not the outer envelope that contains it.
I observed all this on the "Multidisciplinary" theme (black background).
It's mostly to prevent empty "phantom" containers that people aren't aware are affecting their project layout.
I've been thinking about changing this to the straightforward, single click to select whatever's topmost and visible. Will have to if the current ux bothers people.
Considering you’re describing Aspect as easier, what are your solutions to these problems?