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120 pointssquiggy2254 comments

"beautiful" and "responsive" have become two of the biggest "buzzword bingo" words of the web these last few years. So many people telling you that their stuff is beautiful that the word starts to lose value.

"Responsive" is pretty factual - something either is or it isn't responsive.

"Beautiful" and "awesome", however, I could do without seeing everywhere for a few months. Especially "awesome".

But it's not always a necessity to be responsive.

Nor does it imply quality in and of itself.

>>"Responsive" is pretty factual - something either is or it isn't responsive.

"Car" is pretty factual. There's all kinds of cars...

Sure, but if you want to drive on the road, it's still at least a bit helpful to know that the framework is not, in fact, a boat. (I wonder if someone could give a Devil's Advocate position on the advantages of a non-responsive framework...)

Advantages of a non-responsive framework: Less complexity. This leads to more speed and reliability in terms of development, deployment, and maintenance.

If I was building something that saw no significant advantages from being responsive (e.g. an ATM GUI) I'd definitely skip it.

"Responsive" is pretty factual - something either is or it isn't responsive.

But unfortunately the original meaning of "responsive" as Marcotte coined the term has been diluted by people who apply the term to any site that uses media queries to change its layout on a mobile device. There is more to responsive web design than media queries, and there are plenty of ways to use media queries to adapt a site to different devices that aren't responsive web design.

Language evolves... so long as we can all agree on what we WANT "responsive" to mean, it's all good in the hood.

Well, at that point, it's really just a matter of opinion. If a layout uses media queries to 'respond' to different screen sizes, it is by definition 'responsive'. Anything past that starts to be an aesthetic/no true scotsman type of argument.

Well, at that point, it's really just a matter of opinion.

I don't have much interest in a lengthy argument about this, but FYI, the term "Responsive Web Design" was coined by Ethan Marcotte in an article for A List Apart in May 2010[1]. What it means is only a No True Scotsman type of argument if you choose to ignore the original source, or maybe if you want to argue about whether "responsive web design" and "Responsive Web Design" mean different things, neither of which seems particularly constructive.

[1] http://alistapart.com/article/responsive-web-design/

seems like "reactive" is going to be the next one.

Don't forget "delightful". I've even seen a networking library described as delightful. Needless to say, it wasn't.

I love Webflow, and have used it for multiple projects, but I personally feel like it's way too expensive. As a student, I could literarily get the entire adobe creative suite for cheaper than the Webflow plan I would need would cost. And, as I only create a few static web pages a year, there's no way I can justify paying for Webflow.

Prices are way too high for me as well. I hope they are noticing these comments and can come up with better pricing plans.

I agree also.

While limited in features, Weebly has a "designer platform" where you can make unlimited websites for preview, and then publish websites for $8/month. Form submissions don't cost anything.

+1 for weebly! Their tools have been awesome for when I need something good looking up quickly.

Hey, this is Kyle from the Webflow team. We actually offer a great discount for students now. Shoot us an email at support@webflow.com and we can hook you up!

I also use webflow but it definitely seems geared toward small agencies. The individual pricing plan is too much. Again I love the tool and would gladly pay for if the individual plan's cost went down.

+1, the individual plans are too expensive and also there is no support for the use case of just using the tool without paying for their hosting. I keep coming back to their website because I need such a tool and theirs is one the best but get totally disappointed as soon as I see their prices.

If the Webflow website was built and designed using only Webflow, then I would be impressed.

(Co-founder here...)

The Webflow.com website was mostly designed in Webflow, but we had some limitations at the time that required us to hand-code things. A new version is in the works that is completely created in Webflow, so it's only a matter of time :)

Pretty much all of our other sites (e.g. [1][2]) are already built/hosted/managed on Webflow.

[1] http://tutorials.webflow.com/ [2] http://jobs.webflow.com

What were/are the limitations? Are they things that have since been fixed in the publically-available version of Webflow, or will users run into them?

Your web site is actually pretty terrible. Why do you need those fancy effects? The result is that text starts to fade out if I'm scrolling while I'm reading it, and images don't appear until I've scrolled past where the top of the image would be, so I have to scroll back up to see the top of the image that just appeared. Please, designers, stop trying to be clever for the sake of it. You're guaranteed to make the browsing experience worse for some people.

"Change the World."

Really?

This is what we did with contentactivator.com. We wanted to promote our app through the sites we built. We even used it for our support site at help.contentactivator.com.

I read the pricing FAQ but I'm still a bit confused.

Here's my use case:

I host my own web apps & sites.

I would like to use WebFlow to redesign one of them. Should take me about a month.

Do I only pay for a month, and then export, and then quit paying?

What happens when, 1 year from now, I want to tweak the site? Can WebFlow import old webflow projects? Or do I need to pay for every intervening month to preserve the ability to use WebFlow on that site in the future?

yep, also disappointed/confused by their pricing model.

Yes it's small beer, but I'm baffled that something they give you for free on the cheapest plan (custom domain), they want to charge you for on more expensive plans.

I don't find the pricing confusing at all. Why would they allow users to build a complete website for $14? They make the money on the hosting.

Hi there, Webflow founder here! We actually have a free trial, which lets you design and export as many sites as you'd like in a 2 week period. If you're still working on your site after your trial is over you have the option of upgrading to the Personal plan which gives you the ability to export your sites. You can cancel at any time and we never delete your work, so you can come back a year later and redesign your site again.

1000 form submissions per site and month in the top plan ($840 per year) and $0.01 for each after reaching the limit? They don't mean clicking on the submit button of a HTML form, do they? That would mean that a bot submitting a form every second for 24 hours would add $864 to the bill.

This was my understanding as well. And is by far the most restricting feature on Webflow. Makes even less sense considering the largest "cost" is simply db space.

Funny how the featured website doesn't look like this at all. http://www.cometskateboards.com/

What's new? This is old. Hasn't this startup been featured on HN a couple of times?

I don't think much is new, guessing someone just hasnt managed to see it before.

I did get an email from them last week about their new for pay templates https://webflow.com/templates

So was the webflow website generated in webflow?

i think not - you can only go/do basic stuff with sites like this, at the end of the day some level of coding will be required

(Co-founder of Webflow here...)

Would you say these are basic? (All created with Webflow.)

http://artemis.com/ http://cmplain.com/ http://www.zombi.nl/ http://zombidemos.webflow.com/ https://webflow.com/gallery

did you notice i italicized "basic" on my comment, it depends on your view of "basic"

on HN level, i say they're all basic

I am making audible noises over how beautiful this website is, great job.

I'm a designer and know about them for some time, but I really dislike the pay-every-month plan. That's not how it works for me with design jobs. I might need several projects at once and have no (webdesign)projects after that. I'd rahter see a pay-as-you-go plan. Also: bugfixing. I think I still need someone to do that for me with a service like this.

I have never used webflow, but it seems to me that you could create a project and then when you are happy with it, you could "export" the site. This gives you the css/html/js necessary. Then you could put the site on your own hosting and then cancel your plan. That way you would only pay the months that you are actually using it.

I've always wondered how to make the "scrolling" type responsive websites. Does bootstrap or weebly make that easy?

I'm an iOS dev and I've literally never touched web development.

For images that just stay fixed, background-attachment: fixed does the job nicely. For things like parallax, stuff popping into view, etc, you basically write a function that gets called on scroll events and does what you need. It usually ends up being kind of hacky, with magical equations that take the value from .scrollTop() (jquery) as an input. It's best not to overthink these things.

Bootstrap has an affix function which will help you make nav bars that stick to the top of the page. There are many other 'scrolling frameworks' out there, but I've found them to be a waste of time, myself.

It looks like a modern day dreamweaver, or front page, no doubt a hell of a lot better! Will definitely need to give this a try.

That UI Kit is nice. Anyone know if it is open source or if there is something similar to it out there?

I believe it's using React.

It's too expensive for personal use, I would like to see a pay as you go plan such a flat fee by website. Maybe Pre pay 3, 6, 12 months or any other options to make it a no brainer.

The product itself is very very cool. I'm amazed by what is technically possible in modern web browsers.

I'm mostly a backend dev, who knows basic frontend stuff. If I need to build a marketing website should I choose WebFlow or Startup Design Framework? Does WebFlow uses Bootstrap 3?

I feel like this will bring forth a plague similar to the Dreamwaver one. And people fought so hard to purge that.

Is it a web only tool?

For now, yes, it's a web-only tool. Though we may create a standalone app sometime in the future!

+1 As someone who has used webflow, I would love this.

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