Show HN: Entomic - build websites and see them update live on any device
entomic.com
entomic.com
In regards to the actual product:
at the moment it seems a little too code focused for the designer that does a little code, and a little too visual for a coder who does some design work. I did discover some neat keyboard navigation for the DOM editor and I assume this type of keyboard integration is available across the app. This could go a long way to satisfy the coder.
For me, personally, editing HTML using a visual DOM editor is harder than working with markup, although I can see that if I devoted enough time to remap my muscle memory it could be a faster way to work.
The interface is very busy. You may want to find a way of showing only the information relative to the current context.
The way you've handled responsive design is great, especially in combination with a device preview.
It would be nice to be able to click on the preview section and have the editor jump straight to the DOM node DOM panel.
Overall though, the polish of this app and documentation is excellent. Hope your launch goes well!
For my own curiosity: what are the very large PNG files used for? There are 4 images that come down the wire at 4mb each!
Is there a way to get in touch with you? I'd love to bounce some ideas around and see what you think.
Having that more prominent, even if it's just from detecting the HN referrer, will eliminate a lot of noise.
The "Try It" option is good and may make up a bit for it, but I still think it would be good to have a nice, initial free offering.
If anyone's interested I can set you up with a beta account which will give you full unrestricted access.
While playing around with it I was just thinking that what this is doing is shifting the complexity of web design away from HTML and CSS, into the dynamic IDE. If I were to put the complexity on a scale, starting with raw code at one end and a WYSIWYG editor at the other - I would think that this is still closer to the coding by hand than WYSIWYG.
Where I see Entomic is to make the process of coding faster, to minimize writing bugs, and to get instant feedback on your site as you make it so you can catch any issues before they get too entangled with the project.
That's the plan anyway :)
You can attach Firefox, IE, Safari etc as a preview client to do cross-browser testing as you develop, but I've kept the IDE targetting Chrome for now so I can focus on adding features (still a lot more to do).
You’re doing it wrong -.- (unless you’re doing the “negative publicity is still publicity” routine in which case meh)
:P
Maybe you like spending hours compatibilizing an authoring tool that isn't meant to be mass-consumed (only the output is). Maybe you like spending days continuously testing for other browsers' dumb implementations of the spec. Maybe you actually have the time to fart around and worry about dumb things all day.
These guys don't seem to, though.
Btw, I've tested their tool in Firefox (by spoofing my UA string). From what I can see, it works fine. I recommend testing in Firefox, resolving any issues, and then, including Firefox in the list of supported browsers.