Easel Acquired by GitHub
blog.easel.io
blog.easel.io
[1] http://www.thefreelibrary.com/VMARK+SOFTWARE,+INC.+AND+EASEL... - I can't find a better link. Easel was a '4gl' in the early-mid 90s (and maybe late 80s), one of the earlier event-driven UI programming languages. It was kludgy and annoying to code for, but ahead of its time in a lot of ways.
Say you remove the id tag of #signup-form and change it to some arbitrary classname. The styling immediately goes away on the element! Somewhere there's a hard-coded style on the ID selector for the purposes of a pretty demo. This doesn't sit well with me.. You can see this is true when you click on the "Edit Project CSS" from the top menu item. I should've been able to change that ID to a class or combination of classes and not affect the styling on the fly.
Likewise, I'm a bit concerned what would happen by adding several classes. It doesn't appear as though they're each uniquely and independently tied to their own styles via the right adjusted area. If you want to do anything non-trivial, I believe you're stuck with manually entering the CSS in the "Edit Project CSS" pane on your own, which is worse than using your own IDE with automated updates in the browser via LESS, SCSS, SASS, HAML, Stylus, etc.
All I'm trying to say is better handling of classes would be much appreciated for those of us who prefer to try and widgetize and create reusable components. Beyond that, it looks nice :)
I admit to only giving each one five minutes but they usually fail my simple test:
Can I easily create a new row and add some content to it without it doing funky things (i.e. adding stupid positioning CSS that forces me to align it manually or make it look different to the rest of the page).
Hint: try creating a page using the 'Home' template and messing with the rows/columns in the centre to get a feel for it (though it seems to work on the blank canvas, too).
Seriously?
So yes.
EDIT: Just to point out why this is a big deal - What percentage of new sites are mostly static, presentational? Probably a slim minority. Whilst Github can't code your site for you (yet?), giving you the tools to develop your app layer and frontend - with some as-of-yet seen integration tools? - those are some very large slices of the pie. Don't forget Github pages is currently free too, perhaps there'll be a paid tier for dynamic sites.
Yet, no promises for new features, or even vague ideas about Easel's future direction: is this a talent acquisition? If so, would it not be much more honest to your users to just make that clear?
Both are still running (although gaug.es has subsequently been given to Fastest Forward in November 2013). But that is really all I can say. As a gaug.es costumer, I saw no improvement or change on the service for all the time. Basically, GitHub kept it running, but didn't exactly show love (which they admitted in their email announcing the transfer to Fastest Forward). It's better then shutting it down, but thats more the better of two evils. This was an acquihire and the didn't buy Ordered List to continue working on their products. I expect that to be the same here.
Harmony doesn't seem to be cared about as well.
speakerdeck isn't really changing as well, but thats okay, because its whole reason of existence is its absence of advanced features.
edit: previous version sounded like I am not a gaug.es customer anymore. I still am.
GitHub has no obligation to improve them, sure. I am just opposing the view that GitHub is handling all this so much better. The only difference is that they leave the product stale instead of shutting it down.
Not exactly what I was looking for. I care more about being able to quickly mock-up the UI and the interactions and being able to give and get comments on the different elements of the mock up. I don't need someone to generate the CSS and HTML for me.