mrbogle

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.

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.

Thanks for the comment. We appreciate the kind words on the ui.

To address your concerns:

- The stylesheet from the demo seems to work as expected. It mixes absolutely positioned elements and elements inside containers. The goal of that demo is to show the flexibility. I suppose the usage of absolutely positioned elements isnt obvious.

- When using the bootstrap containers, elements snap to bootstrap's grid systems. When you dont use the containers, you can use the built in grid. Under the grid menu, you can turn on/off the grid and a 960gs grid system.

- I'd like to know more about the bugs. We'll fix the issue with the upgrade path. I didnt see your email address in your hn profile. Please email me at ben@easel.io and let me know which features dont work and which ones are an eyesore.

-- did the bootstrap dropdown not work? There should be 2 other options: 'Easel Pack' and 'Icons'

-- We'll think about the best way to allow hiding/resizing of the inspector.

Thanks again for the comment.

We want you to design in the browser. We want you to do that experimentation in your browser with easel. :) The ultimate goal of easel is to be the tool for designing websites.

If it's a nav bar with positioning set to fixed-top, it will be z-index'd on top of the container. The container will need top margin to bring it out from under the nav bar. This is something we should probably do automatically, but right now we're using the vanilla bootstrap behavior.

This is one of our next features. We've had a lot of feature requests for a better font integration. If you have a typekit account, we will soon be able to use that. Email me: ben@easel.io and we'll set it up.

To answer the original question, we offer 2 things beyond the competitors:

More flexibility: You can style elements, and you dont need to use the bootstrap containers (or bootstrap) if you dont want to. This is cool as we've been able to design all of easel inside of easel itself.

Collaboration: A very central part of the design process. You can share designs with your team, create clickable prototypes to test your ideas, and everyone invited can leave comments.

Our goal is to make easel awesome for all your web work in a professional team setting.

Sorry about your demo document on signup not loading. All should be fixed now.

And Max (yesimhuman) is right: it's pretty early, and we're all approaching the problem from different perspectives.

The welcome note is only on the bootstrap demo. You can signup from the homepage: http://easel.io , or from the 'I want an account' button on the demo. Documents you create with your own account wont have the welcome popup.

Is there any way to get any existing data on the iphone into the app (preferably without too much pain)? I assume it's already logging my info: http://petewarden.github.com/iPhoneTracker/

You can do this today with the http://easel.io chrome extension.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/deejobgbijaihniifc...

It uses html/css, so you can even edit the things you import.

Thanks!

Did you try control key instead of command?

Apologies for the apple key on the demo. We'll fix it soon. In non-mac environments, the control key is substituted for all key commands.

Thank you. Please email me at ben@easel.io

email me at ben@easel.io and I'll speed that invite up.

Interesting. Using canvas allows us to do a couple things:

- draw vector shapes

- export images on the client side

- filters/effects in the future

- pixelated zoom (not implemented, yet, though)

It does export pieces of the design in html/css.

Sorry for the confusion. It's just what mkl said: the apple keys are hardcoded into the demo page.

Thanks for the feedback.

The apple keys are part of the design so sadly wont change.

Shift should work for selecting multiple items, so thats a bug. We admittedly haven't done much testing on other platforms.

Grouping and making elements should definitely be in the right click menu. There are some (probably esoteric) icons on the inspector/property panel for these functions.

We'll look into the chrometouch extension and see how we can make it work with the app. I didnt know it was capturing the middle mouse button. Will fix.

Thanks again for the feedback.

Thanks.

Ooh, Thanks.

Thanks. That is the intent. Design prototyping, but with tools that allow the dev to build it more quickly.

Yeah, I have some plans on how that will fit into your workflow with the rest of the guys. Will email soon.

Noted. We'll work on making this more clear and maybe direct people to click rather than use the hotkeys.

Thanks. We agree with you. It will be so much easier when the tools understand the process.

Many designers definitely need more than the tool currently provides. I'm curious, what would it need for you to use easel?

Right. That's a human problem, though. Many designers have told us they feel very restricted in wysiwyg tools, so refuse to use them.

You should email me. ben@easel.io

It can. But things will all be absolutely positioned. The intent is to generate pieces of html and css that fit into your dev environment. The code generation is still very much in-flux, but from what we're seeing, programmers dont want the entire thing generated.

The intent at this point is to not generate layout html/css. Humans are much better at this right now than the editor could be. And the assumption is that the programmer will want to write the layout code himself anyway, being careful to place it in nice modules that fit with their dev environment.

We could build an entire product just trying to generate semantic, reflowable markup from a design.