Easel: We've Added CSS Editing | Hacker News Reader

Easel: We've Added CSS Editing

blog.easel.io

48 pointsmcolyer18 comments

It's good to see these types of services pop up because "loosely coupled web services" has always been our design goal - ie. we never want to add features into Decal, we'd much rather rely on a rich ecosystem to provide functionality (eg. dropbox for files, wufoo for forms, easel for editing HTML etc.)

I'm really interested in how Easel could work with our CMS, which takes HTML (with a few extra attributes) as input[1] - ping me on iain@workingsoftware.com.au if you're interested in chatting.

[1]http://www.decalcms.com/tour/

This is awesome! Our company allows customers to create templates using editors like CuteEditor and Redactor, but this would absolutely blow those options away!

Will keep an eye out for 3rd party integrations in the future!

Woohoo! I loved the site but felt limited by the fact that I couldn't just "edit-source" and fix things. It's great that this feature is finally in.

Thanks! Noted on the ability to edit the source directly.

Having just seen the subtlepatterns bookmarklet it would be awesome if you had a subtlepatterns available in your background picker.

I (cofounder of Easel) really want to add this at some point. There are these transparent versions of many of the patterns here: http://halgatewood.com/150-transparent-subtle-patterns/ It's really neat to be able to apply the pattern then color it. Especially in the case of the argyle pattern.

'Since the web is viewed in a browser, we believe it should be built in one too.'

Wait, why?

We strongly believe that the only way to know what something we really look like is to work in the medium in which it will be ultimately be presented in.

Anything less will just be an approximation of the final product.

Well, I can't really agree with this. Filming a movie and viewing a movie are two completely different experiences and take place in completely different environments, even if the medium is the same.

What you're saying would be like saying all movies should be filmed in cinemas… I think using the browser's rendering engine is great, but there's no reason why we necessarily need to create websites in actual browsers.

In fact I think the main weakness of apps like Easel compared to, say, Photoshop, is precisely the fact that they run in the browser and don't feel as fast and responsive as a native desktop app.

The analogy doesnt really hold up considering how much time/money have been invested in making realistic previews available on cameras, that is the entire point of an slr.

Being inside a browser does not equate to slow, and using photoshop as an example pretty much proves that point.

A native app with a WebKit canvas would be much nicer, no?

Lucky there is only ever one way something will be displayed on the web then.

I've been using Easel for a month now, and I can honestly say it's awesome!

Zoom to fit would be very much appreciated on my 15inch laptop screen.

It does actually do this. Do you want the demo document's to zoom? If the document wont fit in the viewport on load, it will zoom. Also, if the document is really small, it will zoom in to fit on load.

Hmm, at the default zoom level when the page loads the flyouts from either side partially cover the page. What I was looking for was a zoom option in the View menu that zoomed the page to fit exactly between the two flyouts when they're open.

BTW I'm incredibly impressed, been looking for something that my girlfriend could use as she's just moving into web design. Muse was pretty disapointing(to say the least). I can see this being a much practical solution. Having seen how good it is I can see myself using it as my go to tool for at least prototype designs.

We dont take the sidebars into account on the viewport calculation :/. We've been thinking a bit about how to make it better on small screens.

That's great to hear. If you have any questions/concerns, etc. as you get deeper into it, shoot me an email: ben@easel.io. I'm here to help.

Peace out Dreamweaver.

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