124 comments

1. 

   Seb Lee-Delisle

   August 15 2011 @ 12:06PM #

   Hi Elliot,

   I absolutely agree that it’s a bad idea to instil designers with the false sense of security that they don’t need to learn any code at all if they want to make websites. It saddens me that Adobe are still attempting this. They seem to be out of touch with the requirements of people like yourself and web-designers who understand the precise challenges required. Preferring instead to cater for the masses who just wanna chuck out a crappy website for their uncle’s restaurant.

   A small point – although the app is AIR (facepalm) the web preview is rendered in a webkit instance, so it should be accurate.

   kindest

   Seb

2. 

   prisca

   August 15 2011 @ 12:07PM #

   Elliot, nice overview – I had a quick look at the Muse page’s source code – and ran a mile, didn’t even go as far as trying it out… Your post sums up what I expected to see, sadly, and I agree with your thoughts on this entirely.

   Seems that http://projectmeteor.org needs to gain momentum…

3. 

   Chris Harrison

   August 15 2011 @ 12:08PM #

   I’ve got to believe that Adobe wouldn’t invest in creating a tool like this if there wasn’t a market for it. While someone like us might recoil at the thought of using Muse for everyday use (or at all), there are quite a few people whom this tool will help. Just because it can’t do X or does X poorly doesn’t mean Muse will suck for the people it’s intended for.

4. 

   James

   August 15 2011 @ 12:09PM #

   Didn’t manage quite as detailed a response as yours Elliot but I have the same concerns about it apparently being an enormous step backwards. http://t.co/slsoNGo

   J.

5. 

   Tony J.

   August 15 2011 @ 12:09PM #

   Maybe I’m being too short-sighted but while every serious webdev i know has moved to (highly, but self- or community automated) text-based editors, adobe comes up with yet another WYSIWYG editor. Add to it that it does the same thing wrong as all the other WYSIWYG editors do: they don’t even try to assume how you want the generated code to be.
   It seems that companies like Adobe are still looking for the holy grail that Frontpage once was in the late 90’s/early 00’s, but that was when we didn’t know better. We do now, when when will Adobe?

6. 

   Dan

   August 15 2011 @ 12:09PM #

   Couldn’t agree more. Adobe should leave the web (code) space completely alone until they can deliver a solution that wont set us back 20 years.

   As a tool for non-developers, it IS a little better than the alternatives (at least it’s not outputting tables right?), but to get the class/id names based around the content rather than the structure, adobe would have to do a little extra work and I don’t know how their pool of cash is holding up…

7. 

   Mark

   August 15 2011 @ 12:10PM #

   I haven’t used this product myself yet. However, that said, I think it’s a great move by Adobe.

   I got my start in web design & development with NetObjects Fusion 5 – a similar type front-end GUI that generated horrific code. I knew nothing about code, so the resulting mess of javascript and absolutely positioned items meant nothing to me. It got the job done.

   To guys who hand code stuff, it’s always going to be messy code – at least messier than we would normally write.

   However, it’s still an entry-point for newbies to the industry to get their feet wet and start playing. The code isn’t perfect, but it’s not bad, not bad at all. And if someone gets their start with Muse, see’s the appeal and then starts hand-coding sites, great.

   It’s not perfect by our (long-time hand coders) standards, but it’s still a great offering IMO. :)

8. 

   Rory McCawl

   August 15 2011 @ 12:10PM #

   Basically summed up my thoughts for me Elliot. Not a’mused’ by the mark-up either.

9. 

   Alex

   August 15 2011 @ 12:11PM #

   I can do nothing but wholeheartedly agree with you Elliot. While I can almost understand and see where Adobe were going with Muse, and would actually go so far as to congratulate them for being the first to realise an app that could even help those who have no idea of print or web.

   But yes, you’re right, that code is fugly. Is it really that hard, in a time where we have software capable of cleverly editing out that piece of trash from an otherwise picture perfect field, to make software that can right software compliant code?

   The more of us that stand up and shout about this monstrous excuse for an app, hopefully they may realise what a pile of poop it is.

10. 

    Giles Talbot

    August 15 2011 @ 12:12PM #

    First of all… this made me giggle ‘there are people who are passionate about code and there are people who are passionate about design. There is an overlap between the two, but it’s very small.’

    I don’t think we’re seeing anything new here, just another WYSIWYG editor with a face lift. On the positive side, I feel it makes our work all the more superior. It helps draw the line between amateur and professional.

11. 

    David Jones

    August 15 2011 @ 12:13PM #

    I do agree that its mostly a step in the wrong direction however i can see some potential in using it as a prototyping tool. For example rather than showing clients just your artwork you can create a quick and easy prototype website in a Throwaway prototyping kind of way. When the client is happy with the design and barebones functionality then build the site as it should be built?

12. 

    Rob

    August 15 2011 @ 12:14PM #

    Great write up Elliot, I agree with all your points apart from one which is about it being a good introduction for print designers to web.

    Quite frankly if a print designer wants to learn web design, I believe they should do it how we all had to, the hard way. Books, practice and a lot of pain staking hours of testing, failing, and learning the ‘right’ way to do something, not necessarily the quickest.

    If they are not prepared to do the hard work, hire a professional to do the work for them.

    This whole idea to me seems like cheating and it devalues our trade. To top it off, it does not even create elegant, semantic or as you rightly say, fluid markup either!

    Bad move if you ask me.

13. 

    Mehdi

    August 15 2011 @ 12:14PM #

    This has got to be the shittiest software Adobe have ever produced. I’m not saying this as an anti-Adobe blind jackass, but as a Flash developer(well not for long now).

    An absolute disgrace, they have totally lost touch. My 2 year old can make better decisions than that CEO. They have got rid of all native programmers, replaced them with useless project managers and IT douchbags and now they can’t even code a proper program. Seriously, I could do better than that in 2 weeks. just 2 weeks.

    Absolute disgrace.

14. 

    Elliot

    August 15 2011 @ 12:15PM #

    In a word Project Meteor (http://projectmeteor.org). We launched this last week and have been discussing for months about doing something positive. I had no idea Adobe would be launching Muse this week but the timing is perfect in the sense this App is exactly what we don’t want, we could just add Muse to the ‘No’ list!

    In our discussions InDesign came up because of it’s excellent handling of style sheets but print to web is not the answer. I’m more disappointed that Adobe obviously doesn’t understand the industry, they really could have built a proper Web Design app.

15. 

    Alex

    August 15 2011 @ 12:15PM #

    I should really learn to proof-read my comments.

    Write, not right.

16. 

    Rick Monro

    August 15 2011 @ 12:16PM #

    Seems like Adobe wants a clean break from the stigma that Dreamweaver carries with it. What reason do they have for creating a whole new app rather than trying to fix their existing tool?

    The real shock here is that Muse-generated markup appears to validate.

17. 

    Simon Foster

    August 15 2011 @ 12:16PM #

    I’m in agreement here too Elliot. The first thing that screamed out at me was ‘what about responsive/adaptive/multi-device design’ there is a section that mentions fluid design on the site but that to me is just a half measure. And don’t get me started on using images to replace text AARRRGGHHH.

    I agree that this project shouldn’t be led by print designers, surely if they’d of had someone leading it up who understood (and more importantly cared) about web design then they could have avoided all the hideous code and outdated practices.

    I personally have nothing against graphic designers being able to make websites more easily, in fact I applaud it, but helping the inexperienced to create poorly made sites helps no-one.

    If this tool outputted modern clean code that catered for the web in all it’s forms on all devices then great, happy days, but it sadly has completely missed the boat.

18. 

    Christopher Imrie

    August 15 2011 @ 12:17PM #

    Agreed.

    Trying to avoid coding when building a website is like building a house and avoiding learning about architecture. Its possible, but you’ll be reliant on the expertise of others for the rest of your career.

19. 

    Dave Sparks

    August 15 2011 @ 12:17PM #

    I wonder if Adobe had aimed this as a design tool and didn’t have the whole export messy code thing if this tool would actually be useful as a simple design tool?
    From the intro videos (having not played around with it) the actual design tools seem to be based around CSS and HTML elements more than say photoshop, fireworks or InDesign. Surely something a lot of people have called for. As it is thought it seems very much to be dreamweaver updated.

20. 

    Chris Harrison

    August 15 2011 @ 12:17PM #

    Mehdi – Then do it. If you can do better in two weeks, I’m sure all of us would love to see what you come up with.

21. 

    Rob

    August 15 2011 @ 12:17PM #

    Great write up Elliot, I agree with all your points apart from one which is about it being a good introduction for print designers to web.

    Quite frankly if a print designer wants to learn web design, I believe they should do it how we all had to, the hard way. Books, practice and a lot of pain staking hours of testing, failing, and learning the ‘right’ way to do something, not necessarily the quickest.

    If they are not prepared to do the hard work, hire a professional to do the work for them.

    This whole idea to me seems like cheating and it devalues our trade. To top it off, it does not even create elegant, semantic or as you rightly say, fluid markup either!

    Bad move if you ask me.

22. 

    Jacob Lee

    August 15 2011 @ 12:15PM #

    Couldn’t agree more Elliot! The responsiveness aspect of websites these days is so important and this product will never be able to cope with that.

    I don’t think they should be able to say it can make professional websites and then start off by talking about Hot-Spots in the introductory video.

    A nice try and I’m sure it’ll help some people out but I don’t think we’ll be looking for new careers any time soon

23. 

    Gavin Strange

    August 15 2011 @ 12:18PM #

    Agree wholeheartedly dude!

24. 

    Paul Sprangers

    August 15 2011 @ 12:20PM #

    I haven’t tried Muse yet, but when I heard about it this was exactly what I was afraid of.

    When I just started on the web my HTML knowledge was limited to what Dreamweaver created for me. Progression in my HTML came from understanding the software better (or getting new features in an upgrade) and not the underlying technology and it’s philosophy.

    It took a couple of years but I finally realized how bad my practices were. You should really understand HTML before you can create good HTML.

    Muse might be great to someone who doesn’t understand HTML and CSS, but it won’t make a better web.

25. 

    Mehdi

    August 15 2011 @ 12:20PM #

    Thanks Chris Harrison,

    Was waiting for you go ahead. Now I will sit and waste 2 weeks on a totally useless concept.

26. 

    Matt King

    August 15 2011 @ 12:21PM #

    Totally agree Elliot — a backward step in terms of web design and development. It’s supporters (and potential customers) however have a different mind-set. For instance these same people would probably say “you don’t look at the source code of an InDesign file as it really doesn’t matter what that looks like”. One of the creators of a Muse showcase site even says;

    “Semantic mark-up and well structured code has it’s place and all that but I do often wonder who’s it actually for, the client or the person that wrote it!”
    Musings on Adobe Muse

    Erm, has he not heard of screen readers for the visually impaired and search engines to name probably the two most important (but certainly not the only) beneficiaries of semantics?

    On top of the mark-up issues, there is also the issue that the web is no longer just about design and layout in the old (dare I say print-based) sense of the words. Muse doesn’t seem to embrace interactivity/user experience above a certain basic level. I’m not sure if this is something Adobe will work on, but it seems to me the app does have an audience even as it is now, unfortunately.

27. 

    Nick Toye

    August 15 2011 @ 12:22PM #

    Elliot, this is exactly my thoughts before I had even tested the app. ’Isn’t this just Dreamweaver?’ And low and behold I was right.

    The fact that they seem so out of touch with our industry is just insulting to the hard work that we do, and also devalues the passion we hold.

    Thank goodness for independent developers.

28. 

    Andy Gott

    August 15 2011 @ 12:25PM #

    It’s a real shame that Adobe haven’t taken this opportunity to innovate. Essentially, this looks like Dreamweaver with (vastly) improved editing features: the code is still awful, and as you point out, it pretty much ignores recent (and very important) developments in areas like responsive design and web typography. WYSIWYG editors are unlikely to ever replace hand-coding – good code is as much art as it is anything else (when we see WYSIWYG editors taking part in forum discussions about the correct semantic use of the element, then we can start to worry about the future of hand-coding!) – but this could, and should, have been a step forward.

29. 

    Shane Stocks

    August 15 2011 @ 12:28PM #

    I agree with the author here. Adobe seems to aiming for a “non-coding world”, in which we can all create websites/applications without any code. That would be a good idea, if coding was bad.

    But I believe coding is a great tool. The only improvement I think we should concentrate on, is to make code simpler for first time users, not eliminate it.

    HTML5, with it’s DOCTYPE alone, has took the correct direction in my opinion, as with the creation of CSS back in the day.

    Dont elimate code, it makes sites what they are.

30. 

    Susie

    August 15 2011 @ 12:32PM #

    Well said, Elliot! Apps like Muse scare me.

31. 

    Eric Haidara

    August 15 2011 @ 12:35PM #

    Very good post that highlights some very “real” issues coming with such a tool. Without having played with Muse too long, i feel that it might actually be worth using as a prototyping tool more than creating websites.

    The “no code necessary” approach is by itself a very bold statement, that has been implemented time and time again with no great success (dreamweaver, fireworks for ex.)
    This feels to me more like an aggressive and somewhat smart approach to a huge market. And that market is not webdesigner (or whatever the label).

    There is a gap between the aspiration of the web community as progressive force, and the day-to-day needs of some business for whom a product like Muse can be a life-saver. They simply don’t have the ressources/budget to “code”.
    Muse, I believe, is trying to fill that gap. But unfortunately, it’s like filling a pothole with quicksand, that’s not really an improvement is it?

32. 

    Dan

    August 15 2011 @ 12:41PM #

    Is this a bad thing? Yes, in the same way Dreamweaver design view is a bad thing. If I were a freelance web designer I’d be a little concerned that the market may get saturated (like it already isn’t) with cheap and cheerful website-for-£200 guys who will poach my business but not to the point where I’d lose sleep.

    Where I’d feel the biggest sting would be right in my pride. I’d feel like Adobe were cheapening my vocation, devaluing my craft.

    You’re not stupid, you know as well as anyone that clients don’t care how pretty your code is. They don’t understand semantic markup or web standards. They want a website and want to pay as little for it as is practical. The fact that Muse will doubtlessly make this a lot more available to clients and that in turn will pollute the internet with poor quality websites would hurt me more than the potential loss of a few tight-arsed clients.

    As for not many people coding websites in the future, that might come about but it would be a real shame. Think of all the amazing experimental stuff that the likes of Chris Coyier are making. That stuff simply wouldn’t be possible without tinkering and coding things line by line. With stuff like this you’re limited to what you can achieve with a set number of drop-down box configurations.

33. 

    Davin Risk

    August 15 2011 @ 12:54PM #

    I’m sort of shocked that this mythical creature — the print designer who must for some reason make a web page — still exists. I was aware of sighting back in the mid–nineties but I was sure they were either extinct or an elaborate hoax.

34. 

    Sido van Gennip

    August 15 2011 @ 01:00PM #

    Haven’t tried the product yet, but already I’ve got to agree with you. Also those great quotes of the intro movie got me in the right mindset.

    The thing that really disappointed me about Muse is the bad markup and total lack of insight of web design. If at least the HTML it created was usable is some form, it could be useful for quick wireframe/mockups. Also I rather have a mockup in HTML, than in photoshop or illustrator.

    Why don’t they embrace commonly stuff out of the industry? For example why not use Modernizr or jQuery? A big chunk of the industry is already using it, so it could a good enough starting point for a front-end developer that way. They really should take a look at the HTML5 boilerplate (http://html5boilerplate.com/) and use that as starting point for the code they create. Also by (Adobe) contributing to these open source projects, they might get some better insights on what would make a great product for the industry.

    Overall pretty disappointing that Adobe just doesn’t get the web.

35. 

    Warren jerzyszek

    August 15 2011 @ 01:08PM #

    Hi Elliot,

    Been waiting to hear your thoughts on Muse, you seem to have raised the same issues me and my work colleagues have been discussing today. It seems acceptable for the ‘Graphic Designer’ as Adobe like to mention in their marketing, it appears to be just an advanced version of their WYSIWYG feature which is not a good thing in my opinion. They have definitely moved back in terms of development of their products. I for one will not be entertaining the idea of using this as general practice and I certainly will not promote this product positively for the people who are thinking about going on the web or who care about good web practice.

36. 

    Chris

    August 15 2011 @ 01:40PM #

    A great summary of the product. I watched the intro video then downloaded the demo. I created a quick page of text and was appalled when I viewed the source and it was an image with all my copy in the alt attribute.

    I can see some benefit in carrying print design conventions, like paragraph and character styles, but this product simply isn’t forward thinking.

    One of the beautiful things about web design is you don’t need any fancy applications to create something, just a text editor. In releasing this application Adobe is taking a snapshot of the industry (a few years outdated already) and people who don’t know better believe this to be fine.

    Web design is always changing and browsers are always changing which allows us to try new things. If in 5 years we aren’t coding anymore how are we going to push the industry as far as we have in the previous 5 years?

    I will say; however, that I do like the interface, so there’s that.

37. 

    James

    August 15 2011 @ 01:57PM #

    “‘there are people who are passionate about code and there are people who are passionate about design. There is an overlap between the two, but it’s very small.’”

    That quote is just offensive and naïve. And a product like Muse is likely to further encourage the divide between design and code; reinforcing all the old stereotypes about code being scary and all that.

    Show a ‘print’ designer properly written semantic code versus the garbage that Muse outputs, and ask them which scares them more.

38. 

    Naomi Urch

    August 15 2011 @ 01:47PM #

    This doesn’t look that great – programs like flux are far better and far more advanced. Its helped me branch out into coding :)

39. 

    Alasdair

    August 15 2011 @ 02:15PM #

    I’ve literally only just opened this, but from a concept point-of-view, I’m going to disagree with most of you.

    I’m not a web designer. In fact, I’m not really a designer at all. I’m a (in fact, THE) marketing guy in an SME without the time or budget (and frankly, skill), to learn to code HTML “the hard way”. I’m largely self-taught in graphic and print design, and occasionally have to create something for the web or (more often) a marketing email.

    So what are my choices?

    Pay a web designer for email design templates every time I want to change the way a campaign looks? Sure, that’s the ideal, but the reality is, I don’t have the budget for that.

    Use and edit a free email template (like some of Elliot’s that are available on sites like campaignmonitory)? Yep, I do that already – but the nature of free is that I get what I’m given (which is fair enough).

    Use massively simplistic html pages that I CAN code with the knowledge I can dredge of from school? I’d rather not, thanks – no better way to scupper my finely-honed message than to deliver it using my crappy coding-from-scratch skills.

    So if a WYSIWYG editor comes along that allows me to design good-looking emails in a way that I’m already familiar with from the work I do with InDesign or Photoshop, great.

    The code that comes out the other end isn’t the best, that doesn’t worry me all that much.

    Just a point of view from what is probably the target market for Muse.

40. 

    Simon Cox

    August 15 2011 @ 02:24PM #

    Hi Elliot. Actually I disagree in some part with you. Muse appears to be aimed at the market that would buy Dreamweaver anyway – not at people who handcode sites. There is a market for this and it’s bigger than those of us crafting superb cutting edge websites. For a lot of people this will get them on the web cheaply and that’s more people to sell ones web building services to in the future when they want something better and more effective. I recently had an email from someone who refuses to move away from table layouts for building websites. Is he wrong? Of course he is but from a businesses point of view pehaps not especially if it gives them access to a market they never had before. It’s better to get your produce to market on a donkey than not get it to market at all because later they can afford a horse – or a van, with tricked out wheels and sliders.

    Yes it is doing a diservice but Word has been able to create web pages for years – no-one in the web business uses Word to create sites do they.

41. 

    Mikey

    August 15 2011 @ 02:37PM #

    As someone who hand-writes code as opposed to using these GUI type things, it took me (a web developer!) a few minutes to get my head around what to do with Muse and how to even add some content, but once I did I did realise that it could be a semi good prototyping tool (as has already been mentioned), useful for generating throwaway code to demonstrate a layout to a client.

    Other than that, nah. Not useful.

42. 

    Matt Wilcox

    August 15 2011 @ 02:41PM #

    Adobe clearly sees more profit in the amateur segment of the market than in the professional segment. More profit in people “having a go” at building “a website” than in helping professionals build them. And, it would seem, they don’t have any feelings with regard to making the web better. They’re happy spitting any old code out there and damn whether it’s good or not as long as it looks like the visual. Adobe, frankly, are a dinosaur when it comes to their attitude toward the web in general.

    What we are still crying out for is a proper web-focused design tool from the likes of Adobe. Not Photoshop, not Fireworks, not Dreamweaver. Something that doesn’t generate any code, something that instead works on the same foundations and with the same principles as web designers.

    There’s an old post about a wishlist for such a program that one of the A-list bloggers wrote, but I can’t for the life of me remember who it was.

43. 

    Tom

    August 15 2011 @ 02:50PM #

    With Muse, designers now have the capability to prototype using the correct material. They can create and experiment with the web, instead of being trapped inside of flat Photoshop comps, a Flash mockup or a video explaining how they would like the roll over effect to work.

    Think of the benefits of an entire design team being able to rapidly prototype ideas for navigation and structure instead of asking “Is this possible?”

44. 

    Dona House

    August 15 2011 @ 02:58PM #

    I find Adobe as a very useful app and I use it really very often , just I have not taken the newest version yet!

45. 

    Göran Söderström

    August 15 2011 @ 03:11PM #

    The first WYSIWYG editors for print were not that good either. We did use code for print too, once upon a time. Perhaps we will see the same evolution on the web like with print in a couple of years?

    “Early minicomputer-based typesetting software introduced in the 1970s and early 1980s such as Datalogics Pager, Penta, Miles 33, Xyvision, troff from Bell Labs, and IBM’s Script product with CRT terminals, were better able to drive these electro-mechanical devices, and used text markup languages to describe type and other page formatting information. The descendants of these text markup languages include SGML, XML and HTML”

    Not really an opinion, just an observation :)

46. 

    Martin Bean

    August 15 2011 @ 03:21PM #

    Just because Muse renders web designs in div tags doesn’t make it semantic, nor any better than FrontPage. And I haven’t a clue why it renders one block of mark-up for Internet Explorer 9 and above, and an entirely separate block of HTML for IE versions below 9.

47. 

    Elliot Lings

    August 15 2011 @ 03:39PM #

    I wouldn’t say it’s a step in the wrong direction but a step in the right direction. Compare it to Dreamweaver; who uses that? Personally I think it’s time for Adobe to end Dreamweaver and begin moving to new up-to-date projects such as Muse.

48. 

    Dr Z

    August 15 2011 @ 03:59PM #

    There is a market for non coders out there for whatever reason. Asking for it to be ignored because professional coders don’t need it, is a bit selfish. Although I agree they probably could have done a better job. I suppose we will just have to wait for the later versions.

49. 

    Rick Hurst

    August 15 2011 @ 04:06PM #

    I’m sure you can guess that I agree with your article Elliot, but it’s not the first time a company has created a tool for outputting web code, which although it doesn’t stack up when compared to a hand coded site, still creates a website. 1000’s of low paid agency staff will use tools like these to output web pages in the same way they output print content for leaflets, catalogues, reports, brochures etc. These aren’t award winning designers, and never will be, but they need tools. If they could all be taught to hand code web pages to current standards then great, but in the meantime they will use tools like this alongside whatever they use to create print materials. As an analogy, carpenters create beautiful bespoke furniture using accepted standard techniques, but most people get their mass produced furniture from ikea, which is crudely bolted together, but works. I’ve built plenty of ikea furniture, but don’t claim to be a carpenter – as many of the people who would use muse wouldn’t claim to be web designers (ok, some will!).

    I often get into a conversation with clients about why I hand code web pages rather than use a “WYSIWYG” tool, and when I explain, they ask me why a software company can’t just create something that does it “right”, but to create HTML / CSS that passes inspection by a decent web developer/ designer needs a human behind it, because nearly everything we do is a workaround based on lots of trial and error, and it just isn’t possible to have a bit of software do the same to code up a layout. /2p

50. 

    Liam McKay

    August 15 2011 @ 04:32PM #

    I don’t think it’s a step in the wrong direction. It’s simply another path, another tool, and another option. There’s no one way of doing things, and I like the fact that there’s people out there prepared to work on an alternative method.

    That being said, there’s a lot wrong with it, that much is true. But in terms of a direction, I think it’s heading in the right place. Not as a replacement, or a better way of doing things, but as a viable option and tool that even if you don’t want to create a full website on, might still prove a valuable time-saver for even smaller tasks…

51. 

    Moeed Mohammad

    August 15 2011 @ 04:44PM #

    Spot on.

    Adobe’s efforts should be spent or optimizing Photoshop and making it more practical for web designers to use.

    And on Jason Prozora-Plein’s point that 5 to 10 years from now we won’t be coding a website … that already happened. It was GeoCities. It was a big mistake and now its gone.

52. 

    Brad Birdsall

    August 15 2011 @ 04:54PM #

    I love how the exported code you made has two different layouts:

    One for modern browsers and one for IE8 and below. Thats a semantic way to code the web. Duplicate content and then style appropriately (sarcasm).

    This is an interesting attempt by Adobe but delivers a less than desirable result for 2011+ web design.

53. 

    Ian Davenport

    August 15 2011 @ 03:46PM #

    Two words… Adobe GoLive.

    (OK, three if you don’t count camel-case…)

54. 

    Robert Visser

    August 15 2011 @ 05:47PM #

    We can only hope that input Adobe might garner on reviews and comments by crowd-sourcing public Beta releases of both Edge and Muse is heeded. While I would agree Edge is an improvement over Flash, neither Edge nor Muse move in a direction which could be viewed as beneficial for creating a successful search matrices. The solutions Adobe has chosen to implement in these Betas does not optimize content [text] visibility to search engines. In Edge text in animations is placed in javascript. Text should remain in HTML and be referenced by element or id. In Muse pages have <!DOCTYPE html>, tagging them as HTML5. Yet, none of the elements new to HTML5 are utilized. Any semantic benefit is lost. If one would choose to export to HTML5 rather than publish to Adobe Business Catalyst text is converted to images, rendering the maximum ‘content is king’ mute. Inline CSS, iframes, etc are both bloated and not in the spirit of moving web standards forward. While some of the pages on http://muse.adobe.com do validate on http://validator.w3.org all of the pages I tested have zero compliance on http://validator.w3.org/mobile/ .

55. 

    Del Olds

    August 15 2011 @ 06:37PM #

    For a real chuckle – look at the source for the Muse site … and then scroll down to the bottom to see how IE 9 is handled. Double the code for half the fun. And as pointed out in the article, this seems like Dreamweaver code all over again.

56. 

    chris gillis

    August 15 2011 @ 07:46PM #

    I hear ya Elliot BUT what if this tool was fixed and all the problems you mentioned above were solved without the designer having to learn all the crap code that we all put up with on a daily basis – wouldn’t that be progress? Isn’t this a perfect chance for someone in our industry to make a nice check from Adobe?

    If there was a product that replaced a CSS/Xhtml slicer and I could rely on it from standards point of view, I’d buy it in a second – I’ve been banging my head in this junk for 10 years and the design is all I care about not trying to figure out if I should use a li vs an ol

57. 

    Rahul

    August 15 2011 @ 06:52PM #

    Money quote: “There isn’t one world-class web designer working right now who doesn’t know how to code” – this is so true, and the number of designers who know code will only increase as the rest of us follow the leaders’ examples. Great observation.

58. 

    Mike McDonald

    August 15 2011 @ 07:52PM #

    It’s always been a great idea to create products that remove the need to know code from web design. Unfortunately it remains just an idea, even in Muse, and one that will continue to miss the mark time and time again when it comes to the execution of these products.

    For now and for the foreseeable future, hand-coding is still the preferred method. Muse isn’t going to change that, and I don’t think any product will really get it right any time soon.

59. 

    Brian Artka

    August 15 2011 @ 08:11PM #

    Spot on Elliot. I could not agree with your post more. This is going to teach the newcomers the backwards way of transitioning from a print designer to a web designer. If you dont know code, or even understand how it works (and I mean HTML, CSS, and maybe Javascript), you are not a web designer. Muse isn’t helping this situation.

60. 

    Brian Artka

    August 15 2011 @ 08:19PM #

    When is Adobe going to design a software package so provocative that it designs the design for us! just click the create button. (hell, they may have already done this..)

    Completely removing the human element from software is going to far. Software is suppose to be a tool to allow humans, not machines, create and present their ideas.

    Design solves problems and can be aesthetically pleasing; code is simply poetry. Both of these elements, which DEFINE the modern web, need to be hand crafted to work, and work well.

    I don’t see any machine or algorithm replacing this formula anytime soon… and when it does, we’ll be worrying about how to defeat Skynet.

61. 

    Chris

    August 15 2011 @ 08:20PM #

    Slightly different take:

    While its obvious that I would never use Muse to create a full website, perhaps I can find a place for it in my daily workflow.

    One quote from the video that did ring true was the fact that most designers (myself included) don’t like to be bothered with remembering CSS property names. I’m the copy-and-paste web designer… I understand, conceptually, what I want my code to do, but for whatever reason I struggle with the vocabulary. I can look at code and critique it for semantics, but I struggle to write it from memory.

    That said, I can see where something like Muse would be helpful to me in prototyping small bits of my projects: a CSS3 button for example, where I can simply change the properties of something and end up with an instant, visual representation for it’s different states. Doing this by hand for some of you is probably incredibly easy, but for me – the designer who moved into code and not the other way around – its the slowest part of my development workflow.

    Even if Muse isn’t the “right” program, I like some of the concepts. I would love a program that takes, say, a set of InDesign paragraph styles within the scope of a design and outputs some CSS for them. Is there such a program out there? I have not come across one… ?

    I’ll continue to code by (copy-and-paste) hand, but I think Muse may have certain features that are appealing. I do wish, however, they had targeted the more professional audience with a more streamlined tool, as opposed to a full-blown, all-in-one program.

62. 

    jaymz

    August 15 2011 @ 08:33PM #

    For a company the size of Adobe I’m frankly amazed this made it out the door, with their recent rhetoric of wanting to support the web this has just shown a remarkably poor level of understanding.

    I would be embarrassed to be an adobe engineer that had anything to do with that project.

63. 

    andy

    August 15 2011 @ 08:58PM #

    I agree with Alastair 100%. This is not aimed at you. Its aimed at the likes of me. Most of the comments here sound, for the most part, pompous and self-serving.
    I can almost smell the fear.

64. 

    Chris Gannon

    August 15 2011 @ 09:02PM #

    I’d be interested to know how many of you who are complaining about Muse actually use/buy any software from Adobe? I’ll wager it’s very few.

    It also seems to me that this is actually striking fear into some of you, that the comfort of technical obfuscation that your jobs allow is somehow undermined by the sudden ability for ‘novices’ to bypass your services altogether and build something themselves. I am genuinely fascinated by the defensive nature of some of these posts (as a Flash developer I went through this crisis when idiotic animation components started hitting the web several years ago seemingly making real animators redundant. They didn’t :).

65. 

    Hassan Sørensen

    August 15 2011 @ 09:39PM #

    I think you’re right about a lot of things here, but, I hate to say, I think you’re barking up the wrong tree. Adobe Muse is obviously not contesting Dreamweaver or handcoding, but aiming at the crowd making micro-sites or small temporary event-sites using Apple’s iWeb, exporting HTML from Outlook etc. – the same customers Adobe Flash Catalyst are aiming for.
    I’m a web designer my self, handcoding with ease and joy, but I’ll start using Muse right away for mug-up’s, the way I have been using Fireworks untill now, and when my mom asks me how she can make an easy website for her line-dance class (she’s 81), I’ll recoment Muse without hesitation.
    The keyword is Target Marked.

66. 

    Sam Swenson

    August 15 2011 @ 09:47PM #

    The thing that is important to keep in mind here is that it ‘has’ a market. The designer-needing-to-be-enabled-to-develop-a-website-for-some-reason market is large.

    I think it’s also important to consider how that market might use this tool:

    1. The designer that wants to be able to convey their ideas beyond a flat comp, and dive into UI and user experience, with the intention of handing over his example to a dev team that may not ever use his code but ‘understands’ clearly the concept based on the designer’s efforts.

    2. A designer who wouldn’t have used a developer anyway.

    In essence, I hear a lot of people saying that this tool isn’t for you, and that this tool is useless in a skilled developer’s hands.

    In both cases, you’re right. Just as Adobe most-likely intended it to be that way.

67. 

    Paul Neave

    August 15 2011 @ 09:50PM #

    According to Doug Winnie, Principle Product Manager at Adobe, Muse is not intended for pro developers. See: http://twitter.com/sfdesigner/status/103194754585600000

    I think if Adobe had better marketed this product at launch, developers wouldn’t be so much up in arms.

    @Chris Gannon – You’re right, we are fearful. But not that Muse will replace the need for us, but that what we’ve worked for in our careers, the stuff Elliot mentioned, will be for nothing and we will be back to square one with div soup, poor semantics and spaghetti (Dreamweaver WYSIWYG) code. We don’t want to step backwards.

    I think we all would welcome a tool that could help us as developers create beautifully designed, super semantically marked-up website all with a click of a few buttons. I applaud Adobe in this lofty goal. But I’m very skeptical that it can be achieved.

    To Adobe – get the developers onboard. Muse doesn’t need its users to write code, but the code it produces doesn’t need to be utter crap either!

68. 

    Quentin

    August 15 2011 @ 10:17PM #

    I see lots of individuals are commenting in favor of Elliott’s viewpoint. So my question is, how many coders and web developers out there that might ever want to build a professional piece like a brochure or booklet or poster for their company or their manager or their uncle for that matter? OK, now out of those, how many have the proper, skills to make a finished product, that won’t need ANY pre-flighting at the print vendor? And was it created using Microsoft Word template, or PPT, or Apple Pages etc, or was InDesign/Quark used? Are the bleeds all correct, the photos properly converted to CMYK and sized, is a suitable paper and finish chosen? Did that individual select the first vendor they could find in the directory, or did they actually send out request for quotations and ask for print samples and references? Did that person inspect and endorse the finished product before saying it was acceptable to give to the client?

69. 

    Quentin

    August 15 2011 @ 10:23PM #

    I see lots of individuals are commenting in favor of Elliott’s viewpoint. So my question is, how many coders and web developers out there that might ever want to build a professional piece like a brochure or booklet or poster for their company or their manager or their uncle for that matter? OK, now out of those, how many have the proper, skills to make a finished product, that won’t need ANY pre-flighting at the print vendor? And was it created using Microsoft Word template, or PPT, or Apple Pages etc, or was InDesign/Quark used? Are the bleeds all correct, the photos properly converted to CMYK and sized, is a suitable paper and finish chosen? Did that individual select the first vendor they could find in the directory, or did they actually send out request for quotations and ask for print samples and references? Did that person inspect and endorse the finished product before saying it was acceptable to give to the client?

70. 

    Wolf

    August 15 2011 @ 10:21PM #

    I posted my opinion on my website: http://wolfslittlestore.be/2011/08/15/adobe-muse-first-impressions/

    Elliot, basically I think you’re approaching this from the wrong angle. We all want a godly webdesign tool to save us from the current design workflow, but it’s not going to happen anytime soon. This is a step in the right direction for amateurs. Pros will keep coding. Full argumentation in the aforementioned post.

71. 

    Quentin

    August 15 2011 @ 10:36PM #

    I see lots of individuals are commenting in favor of Elliott’s viewpoint. So my question is, how many coders and web developers out there that might ever want to build a professional piece like a brochure or booklet or poster for their company or their manager or their uncle for that matter? OK, now out of those, how many have the proper, skills to make a finished product, that won’t need ANY pre-flighting at the print vendor? And was it created using Microsoft Word template, or PPT, or Apple Pages etc, or was InDesign/Quark used? Are the bleeds all correct, the photos properly converted to CMYK and sized, is a suitable paper and finish chosen? Did that individual select the first vendor they could find in the directory, or did they actually send out request for quotations and ask for print samples and references? Did that person inspect and endorse the finished product before saying it was acceptable to give to the client?

72. 

    Stephanie (Sullivan) Rewis

    August 15 2011 @ 10:42PM #

    I agree with Elliot and think the place to utilize Muse best is in live prototyping.

    I come from the specialization camp. I do not design (I used to but I’m a tweakaholic). I do not do backend/database work. I am a front-end developer. While I understand the other portions of web design, I don’t feel the need to try to do them all and to be all things to all clients. For that reason I chose to spend my time developing my skills in a certain area. I see no reason for a designer to feel they MUST put their visual ideas on the web if that’s not something that they want to learn how to properly do. It’s akin to an architect believing because he drew beautiful plans for the house, he should be allowed to build it with the “Instant House” tool that makes the house look, on the outside, just like his plans. Never mind the structure—that doesn’t matter. But he forgot that people need to live in the house, not just look at it. They need to use it without it falling apart (ie: increase text size, view w/o Javascript, have strong organic SEO).

    I wanted to mention also that those of you putting DW into the same basket as Muse, or that have said this is a step in the right direction AWAY from DW clearly haven’t looked at DW since about DW MX 2004 (which was a gawd-awful dog of a program). However, bit by bit, DW has stripped OUT the craptastic code ability. So much so that IMHO, Muse probably came from people saying DW is “too professional and hard to learn”. Nowadays, DW writes exactly what you write—if that’s crap, you may get some crap, but nothing like the old days. And if you’re a web professional, DW’s code view area with code completion/hinting/inspecting/CMS integration/jQuery & jQMobile integration/etc, and the ability to immediately view right there in the built-in Webkit may surprise you.

    While it matters not to me what editor people choose to use, as a professional, I can assure you, giving anyone flack for using a modern version of DW is akin to making fun of them using Coda or any other editor. I know many “internet famous” people who use (or have recently returned to) DW due to its time-saving features. The tool doesn’t think, you do. Which brings me full circle to my problem with Muse, and it’s fugly code output—I realize its in beta, but so far, it’s certainly not “smart enough” to write acceptable code. As such, it should be left for prototyping only and not real web output.

73. 

    Quentin

    August 15 2011 @ 10:44PM #

    I see lots of individuals are commenting in favor of Elliott’s viewpoint. So my question is, how many coders and web developers out there that might ever want to build a professional piece like a brochure or booklet or poster for their company or their manager or their uncle for that matter? OK, now out of those, how many have the proper, skills to make a finished product, that won’t need ANY pre-flighting at the print vendor? And was it created using Microsoft Word template, or PPT, or Apple Pages etc, or was InDesign/Quark used? Are the bleeds all correct, the photos properly converted to CMYK and sized, is a suitable paper and finish chosen? Did that individual select the first vendor they could find in the directory, or did they actually send out request for quotations and ask for print samples and references? Did that person inspect and endorse the finished product before saying it was acceptable to give to the client?

74. 

    Sam

    August 15 2011 @ 11:13PM #

    I think is not a step in the wrong direction.. for Adobe because among web developers this software will not last, you can already read it here.

    I think no one professional will put a finger on Adobe Muse but people who doesn’t know how to build professional, optimized web solutions will I mean this software is not intended for professionals – even it comes from Adobe – so why complain against it, just let Adobe sell their mirrors.

75. 

    Peter

    August 15 2011 @ 11:36PM #

    I think Muse will die a quite death – the subscription factor will see to that.
    I work mainly in print design, but I do websites as well. Every tool I have has its limitations and I have learned to work within them. Programs like Flux (Mac), Goldfish 3.6 (WIndows & Mac) and Freeway 5.5 (Mac) are getting better every day and if you want nice templates that work on many devices, then Project Seven Plugins (for Dreamweaver) are the way to go.

    I have always wanted an easy option for exporting brochure content designed in Indesign to the web, but sadly Adobe have always missed the boat on that one.

76. 

    tgroff

    August 16 2011 @ 12:04AM #

    Nevermind the code, I’ll pass because the pricing model is subscription-only, http://muse.adobe.com/pricing.html I don’t see this ever gaining much traction in the market.

77. 

    Brian Artka

    August 16 2011 @ 12:05AM #

    This isn’t just about the crappy code the BETA Muse spits out, and the fact that it will make psuedo web designers ala Geocities again, its also about the fact that web design is seriously different than traditional print design. Many of the same principles apply to both, yes, but designing for the web, as any serious WEB designer and WEB developer knows, is completely different than designing for paper.

    Just as Quentin so carefully pointed out(I think 5 or 6 times), print has its set of specific technical aspects, along with design; the web does too. First off, its interactive; beyond the hover states you can have fluid grids, fluid images, media queries, mobile sites, different browser version quarks, a user interface (yo know, because people actually touch or click on objects of the page), and so on. I’m pretty sure I am preaching to most of the choir here.

    The problem with Muse, and its targeted audience (I’m seeing print designers), is that it does not aim to teach these users the differences between the two fields. It seems to be approaching them with a software package that says, “Look! no need to know code or understand the nuances of web design; just keep doing what you did for print… on the web!”

    This; in my opinion is the problem.

78. 

    David Moulton

    August 16 2011 @ 12:05AM #

    Not surprised at all, this is the same company that put out Dreamweaver {gag}. Thanks for the review.

79. 

    jay

    August 16 2011 @ 01:31AM #

    I was excited to see this new Muse app from Adobe. I happily downloaded it and watched the video of excited engineer blow their loads.

    I have most of Adobes apps. I am a senior print designer and web developer and was sad when GoLive was dropped after CS2. It was a really solid HTML editor and I still use it today on HTML sites I build. Of course I remove some of the code generated as it has a habit of getting cancer and growing code all on it’s own. Muse however is different. It grows trees where seeds were planted. Now while I appreciate that the InDesign Team is a very talented and intelligent bunch of guys. I would appreciate an application that could background code PHP visually so I can get rid of 80% of the programmers who waste more time and money getting it wrong than I can count.

    So how bout it Adobe. Revive GoLive. Design a PHP app that is visual and has no issues and that programmers can edit. Then you’ll make a lot of us “DESIGNERS” very happy

80. 

    jay

    August 16 2011 @ 01:32AM #

    I was excited to see this new Muse app from Adobe. I happily downloaded it and watched the video of excited engineer blow their loads.

    I have most of Adobes apps. I am a senior print designer and web developer and was sad when GoLive was dropped after CS2. It was a really solid HTML editor and I still use it today on HTML sites I build. Of course I remove some of the code generated as it has a habit of getting cancer and growing code all on it’s own. Muse however is different. It grows trees where seeds were planted. Now while I appreciate that the InDesign Team is a very talented and intelligent bunch of guys. I would appreciate an application that could background code PHP visually so I can get rid of 80% of the programmers who waste more time and money getting it wrong than I can count.

    So how bout it Adobe. Revive GoLive. Design a PHP app that is visual and has no issues and that programmers can edit. Then you’ll make a lot of us “DESIGNERS” very happy

81. 

    Phillipe Calmet Williams

    August 16 2011 @ 03:38AM #

    I also agree that this tool generates messy code and will not be useful to the ones that already know how to code some CSS and JS, but, as some said before, it will definitely be a lot of help to the people who don’t.

    Also, i guess we cannot ask too much from an auto-generated code… :P

82. 

    Jack Keller

    August 16 2011 @ 04:16AM #

    I agree, Adobe is heading in the wrong direction. I’m all for creating tools that may ease certain functions for me or likewise developers but I’m not a fan of tools that create such horrible output (OMG ID’s).

83. 

    Mary Baum

    August 16 2011 @ 06:07AM #

    Nearly five years ago Adobe did me the great favor of pulling GoLive from the Creative Suite and replacing it with Dreamweaver, thus forcing me to learn to code. Actually, to learn markup.

    Code is php and Ruby, and my level of proficiency there is to stare at a couple of lines of php for ten minutes, cut or copy and paste, then celebrate with a Trader Joe’s chocolate bar when the manipulation of such code actually works without blowing up in my face. (My Italian’s not much better.)

    But my css is fairly lean by now, and I never use DW’s dialogue boxes. If it weren’t for my fondness for @font-face andotherCSS3 goodies, the stuff would actually validate, and i’m just about to dive into HTML5. I’ve downloaded Boilerplate and a WordPress framework with 5 baked in.

    In other words, I’ve done what ever designer should do in the course of making the transition from print to web. The only difference is that I put off the real learning for about ten years and didn’t get started until I was 47. That’s practically dead in the eyes of creatives on the cutting edge. (Except, in about five minutes, you too will be 50, learning a cutting-edge technology that was invented by a kid who was born when you were in high school. Failing weaponized smallpox, nobody’s going anywhere.)

    And that’s my point. The last thing most of us old bats need is one more reason to put off the inevitable. And the last thing young designers in school need is a false sense of security, that they can somehow work in this medium without learning to write real markup. Or learn the next big thing after that.

    Eliot, thank you for pointing out that Adobe can’t put clothes on all the emperors.

    Adobe, we’ll always need Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign, and maybe BC. And I think Dreamweaver is a fine coding environment. Support us in doing the right thing, not in coddling people who think they can’t learn. They can. Even if they think they’re too old, or too non-linear, or whatever.

    Sign me – The Carrie Nation of converts to coding.

    Mary Baum

84. 

    Kilian

    August 16 2011 @ 07:14AM #

    I feel so sorry for all the web designers who will have to deal with that code mess when users come and cry to mama (i.e. to real web designers) once their MUSE created site completely falls apart.

85. 

    grant

    August 16 2011 @ 08:51AM #

    I was excited when I saw the five minute preview video, however as I read through this forum I am quick to grasp many of the complaints voiced so far and see their validity. Still, I feel that Muse has a lot to offer, though it may be overpriced and its target market probably does not include most of the people who post on this forum. I don’t know very much about web design, and as little about coding, so this is an ideal product for me—although it’s limitations, as described, are already frustrating.

    Here’s my question, and I hope I did not skim over the answer, DOES Adobe Muse integrate with Adobe Edge? That is to say, if I developed some fancy little html5 banner for my website in EDGE, would I be able to import it into Muse? I haven’t had any luck at that.

    Also, are Muse projects compatible with Dreamweaver for furthering editing and customization? I also haven’t had any luck there either.

    Thanks in advance for any feedback.

86. 

    Dylan

    August 16 2011 @ 09:00AM #

    I’m a print designer. I need to learn more web design in order to broaden my available services. I’ve played around with Dreamweaver, learned the basics of coding, semantics and markup. Downloaded Muse today and redid my homepage that needed a refresh after ignoring it forever while I got around to coding it.

    I hate code. I think and create visually and coding is nothing but a pain. Muse helps build the site without bothing with code.

    Is it bloated? Sure. I’m sure a few people here remember MS DOS before GUI was rolled out. We forget that everything is still code, but is now GUI. Well, thats changing for web folks. The hourly rates for coders has dropped and these kinds of programs will only drive that down further.

    Everyone loves CS suites because we can live without them, but hate it because everyone’s nephew with a laptop and a pirated copy of CS5 is a ‘designer’. Good design is good design. I can live with a little messy code if I am able to make something look great. Backend web folks forget that someone is still looking at the surface of this and the fundamentals of good aesthetic design are the same. Code is just code.

    Would I use this for a high dollar client? Sure would, but I would have the code cleaned up for stability. For lower end clients, this saves the hassle of having to deal with hiring coders and ensures more profit on each job. Do I still need to know code? Yes, but many here (like most tech people) make it out to be rocket science when it is not.

    I do see many improvements needed with Muse, but design is all aeathetics and visual. Code is just making that design work. Web design is going to change since the same menu bars and layouts and generic templates becone incredibly stale. This is how I want it to look and flow, you make it happen or else someone else will.

87. 

    Kristian

    August 16 2011 @ 09:30AM #

    I think Adobe is marketing Muse as a production app, and should rather position Muse as a prototyping tool for web design.

    Photoshop is utter shite for designing websites, same with Illustrator and InDesign is mostly print only (with a tiny web alibi thrown in on top for good meassure). What Muse can do is help prototyping ideas in the design process of webdesign and have clients better understand interactivity ideas. What it currently won’t do is provide good final websites, but quick ideas.

88. 

    Philipp Schilling

    August 16 2011 @ 11:18AM #

    Maybe we should see it from the other side: Someone who ever tried to build a responsive layout with muse will cherish the work of a real webdesigner/developer even more.

89. 

    Patrick H. Lauke

    August 16 2011 @ 11:23AM #

    I love how many of the commenters here don’t get it: it’s not about whether or not non-coders should be allowed to build sites…they will, yes there is a market, and I find it great that there are easier tools out there now for them to use. However, these users must be able to trust the software to actually output solid, good code. THEY don’t know any better and just assume that what comes out at the other end is sound. The fact that this tool currently vomits out highly dubious code is not just something that irks code purists…it has real adverse consequences (for instance in terms of accessibility – look at all those empty ‘a’ elements, for crying out loud!). Sure, I want to be able to give my wife/dad/etc a simple program for them to get on the web and build stuff…but it needs to be of good quality, otherwise they may as well do their site in Word and export to HTML.

90. 

    Waggit

    August 16 2011 @ 12:44PM #

    Like any Adobe product, it’s never going to be perfect. I’m sure they have the capabilities to make it perfect but if they did that, how would they ever create a better/newer version of it for us to buy or update to? I’m pretty sure in a couple of years when they release Muse V4 they will have something worth talking about

91. 

    Fabio Fidanza

    August 16 2011 @ 01:02PM #

    Totally agree.
    In my opinion it looks like a Dreamweaver for the cool-art-directors, maybe with even worst generated code.
    And it miseducates designers on new best practices like using web fonts embedding in place of images, responsive design, and so on.
    I do really think that we’ll never have a WYSIWYG editor producing human-like quality code.
    Web is not like print, code matters, and we should educate designers and editors to understand that.

    (someone ever tried LaTex instead of Word? :D )

92. 

    Joe Golike

    August 15 2011 @ 11:33PM #

    I really wish Adobe would design a tool that brings designers closer to the medium of the web. But instead, by abtracting away all of the technical parts, I think they’re doing print designers a huge disservice and pushing them away from the very medium print designers are wanting to learn.

    I can’t see anyone using this tool to create first-class web experiences, and I don’t understand why Adobe has poured so much effort into making what amounts to Frontpage 2011.

93. 

    Ray Richards

    August 15 2011 @ 11:13PM #

    I have to say that I disagree with 90% of the sentiments expressed within both the article and the blog. The fact that this beta version outputs inelegant code is neither here nor there… if it validates and is search engine friendly; what do I care how ugly it is? I understand there are a few problems with this early version which I am certain will be rectified in time.

    If my toaster uses an extra few watts of electricity, but does it faster, and produces toast that looks and tastes the same as its more energy efficient predecessor, which toaster am I going to stick with — bearing in mind I don’t want to waste my precious time waiting for toast?

    Frankly a lot of folks posting here make me think of what the conversation must have been when Guttenberg came on the scene. I’m certain all the scribes were up in arms about how everything looked the same, there was little artistic merit in what was being produced, and how they could produce a better, more original product. Well, we all know who won that war.

    Look, I’m a coder (C, C++, Objective C, Python etc. as well as markup), but I’m also a business man. If I can get a result that has a presentation layer which is the same to the user as hand-generated code, in less time and for less expenditure, I don’t so much care about the underlying inefficient code (which I am certain Adobe and its competitors will address in time). Time is money, and paying both a designer and a coder is way more costly than paying for design only… which is all the end-user cares about.

    Adobe may not have accomplished this goal with the beta version, but I applaud their efforts, and look forward to the inevitable time when they do.

94. 

    Ryan Wang

    August 16 2011 @ 03:17PM #

    When digital camera & imaging was first introduced, we said it was crap, arguing that the analog way – film and darkroom is how you do proper photography.

    But see where we are today.

    Technical difficulty will inevitably lower over time, It will compromise our advantages as skilled design professional. Same things happened to photography; happened to graphic design, unfortunately this is how things evolve, we simply got to be more context driven to stay strong in this line. To the end of the day, what really matter is professional attitude and of course, creativity.

    Muse have lot of flaws, but I believe it is a right direction.

95. 

    Tudor

    August 16 2011 @ 03:33PM #

    Ray Richards said: “if it validates and is search engine friendly; what do I care how ugly it is?”

    Maybe you don’t care, but your clients will, when they will want to update the markup and find a zillion of

    everywhere. Or very search-engine-unfriendly stuff like

    instead of proper headings. And that’s really, really basic stuff.

    And the worst thing is you won’t even know what’s wrong because, hey, Muse does all the code for you and you don’t have to learn HTML and CSS.

96. 

    kim_chee

    August 16 2011 @ 04:06PM #

    It seems to me this is not a product targeted at, or intended for, developers. Where I see Muse being exceedingly useful is in the early creative, conceptual stages. For a designer – yeah, probably with a print background – to be able to take a concept through to a working demonstration, by himself, is extremely valuable. Once the concept is approved, then a developer still comes in and rebuilds the thing and does it right.

    The same thing happens in print. Certainly in the ad world, most art directors struggle with the mechanics of proper print production. But their job is to be creatively brilliant – and that’s why there are studios full of production artists to make things right after the concept has been sold. So why not a similar process in the digital realm?

    I think this is brilliant. Muse is a creative tool, not a technical solution.

97. 

    Elliot Ross

    August 17 2011 @ 12:46AM #

    you know when print designers get all up tight about ‘screen’ designers doing print artwork but not bothering to learn about the print process, and the result looking a mess?

    looks like they got the last laugh..

98. 

    John

    August 17 2011 @ 01:25AM #

    I am a PHP developer and have been coding sites since ’96. I was originally a print designer / art worker.

    When I first started in the design/artwork biz I cut a pasted artwork together using a scalpel, bromides, wax, acetate and typesetting. Typesetting was done on specific machines that used a markup language to output type.

    This was 1988. A mac nerd at heart I was one of the guys that pushed and pushed for the transition into digital artwork and implemented this in a few companies (I even used Illustrator version 1.0 ).

    When was the last time you saw a piece of cut and paste artwork?

    I think Muse will be a good prototyping tool and is no way near replacing code yet, but don’t discount it, others did with Quark Xpress, Illustrator, Final Cut and inDesign. In the same way that Adobe changed the design and Video industries, this could be next. I have watched many stand at the sideline and say “It will never replace xxx”, but they did.

    Don’t get me wrong, I love coding, but Muse is in beta, it will get better or it may die a horrible death. It will be interesting to see how this pans out over the next few years. Although I think Muse will always be a couple of steps behind the latest web technologies.

    In the design industry designers rarely know how to produce accurate ‘print-ready’ artwork. There will always a requirement for experts to clean up the mess and turn it into something that works.

99. 

    July S.

    August 17 2011 @ 03:48AM #

    Kids that sells layout designs in web games will be very happy, they will get their virtual money or items easily.

100. 

     Tudor

     August 16 2011 @ 03:37PM #

     Oh well, it looks like the HTML code was automatically removed from my message.

101. 

     CJ

     August 17 2011 @ 02:13PM #

     Thank you for your post. It is good to listen to everyones thoughts.

     “Muse” is a Beta…
     I can’t wait when HTML5 has converged with “Muse” and both are fully matured…this is step in the right direction. It’s about time we redefine the way we “Design” for the web…across all platforms.

102. 

     Weston McWhorter

     August 17 2011 @ 04:33PM #

     Great article, Elliot.

     I was party to a private “reveal” of the Muse product last year at an AIGA leadership retreat, and quite frankly, your thoughts here echoed mine almost exactly at the time.

     But rather than rail against the quality of the mark-up, or the real necessity for another WYSIWYG product on the market, I’m most concerned about how products like this, and Edge, and Dreamweaver to a lesser extent, serve to undermine the professionalism we as designers/developers who are very well versed on both sides of the issue have worked hard to attain.

     For a time, I was teaching “web design” at a university here in New Orleans, and sourced two books for the class – “Sexy Web Design” and “Designing with Web Standards”. Over the course of the semester, we looked at examples of great web design and execution to serve as inspiration, but ultimately, my students were responsible for designing and building their own sites – by hand – from the doctype up. Maybe they weren’t the most beautiful things in the world, but I truly feel like some of those kids had a deeper understanding of the complexity involved in creating truly innovative websites. I hired one of them as a junior developer at my agency.

     Adobe is in the business of making money, but it’s not in the business of making creative professionals. That’s the burden that you and I and all these folks above bear.

     Leave Muse and Edge to the folks who want to hack their way onto the web at all costs. They’ll always be playing catch-up to those who are truly innovating. As for me, I’ll take Fireworks and Coda any day.

103. 

     Brian Purkiss

     August 17 2011 @ 05:39PM #

     The Adobe Muse website is a pretty darn simple site. Wouldn’t take much code to build, even if you used no flash.

     But Muse generated 598 divs for muse.adobe.com

     That’s ridiculous!

104. 

     R Long

     August 18 2011 @ 04:20AM #

     Is it me or has anyone noticed since the opening of the Mac App Store (and the subsequent releases of Flux and Hype), that Adobe “all of a sudden” created apps that work in those very same creative spaces in such similar fashions?

     Guess since the two aforementioned apps are Mac-only, they figured to put something out there to service the Windows market (in nearly the same way) and make a few bucks while doing it. Which would be a good idea…if not for the 598 divs on muse.adobe.com

     Interesting…

105. 

     Mike

     August 18 2011 @ 09:58AM #

     well, just look at the apple’s own discussions for iWeb. so many desperate people looking for easy to learn, drag & drop solution. even that number of costumers would be worth to move over muse.

     for example lightroom in its early days was treated as a joke to a much bigger players in that time – phase one, aperture etc. and look at it now. hats off to a fantastic application which evolved to grown and super easy to use software.

     I do believe adobe is not a dumb and will carefully think over each comment they read and receive from costumers. lightroom or even aftereffects is a proof, that adobe is able to adjust some applications to people’s need. with muse I do look forward to use it and will be watching its life cycle. there is a big potential and as a designer I see a big gap in transforming ideas easily done in AE, FC or Motion with simple time line, why do I need to ever write code.

     with all the respect to programmers and people who commented the birth of this app with a bitter tone, I’d echo Jay’s comment “I would appreciate an application that could background code PHP visually so I can get rid of 80% of the programmers who waste more time and money getting it wrong than I can count.”

106. 

     R Long

     August 18 2011 @ 04:21AM #

     Is it me or has anyone noticed since the opening of the Mac App Store (and the subsequent releases of Flux and Hype), that Adobe “all of a sudden” created apps that work in those very same creative spaces in such similar fashions?

     Guess since the two aforementioned apps are Mac-only, they figured to put something out there to service the Windows market (in nearly the same way) and make a few bucks while doing it. Which would be a good idea…if not for the 598 divs on muse.adobe.com

     Interesting…

107. 

     Slade

     August 18 2011 @ 10:44PM #

     I’m going to come at this from a different point of view—

     If you look back over the years of technology it is always the same.

     I am a photographer and shoot large format 4×5 negatives, hand processed and printed myself with my personally mixed chemicals. Good for me :)

     How many of you use digital cameras? Sort of the same thing isn’t it? When digital came along and all the rave was being able to produce professional prints without getting your hands dirty or having to learn about optics, exposure, development…etc. I was speaking just like most of you.

     We all love to know something that other don’t and if someone wants to do what we do then they better go through all the years of hard work to learn it like we did.

     The first digital attempts that came out had me laughing. “They will NEVER be as good as what I can produce!” “look at the optics, look at the crappy paper they print on, they have no idea what they are doing!”

     There came a day not that long ago that the technology did improve and the quality did begin to look pretty darn good. I hated this fact. But, I sat back and looked hard at what I was standing firm on.

     A print on the wall.

     Who cares that I know the zone system? Who cares that I can mix chemicals to produce subtle effects in a print? Who cares if I carry a 60lb pack full of gear and it takes me an hour for a single shot? Nobody. What they care about is what is hanging on the wall. If it looks great to them…..that is all that matters.

     There are still times when my method is better. If someone asks for a 80 × 60 inch print, mine will still win. That happens about once every 5 years.

     I now use digital for a lot of my work. I have found that I can produce more and do a better job at a lot of the details I couldn’t touch before. I still love the process of shooting a large format camera but it doesn’t make the final print that sells any better. The pleasure is just for me.

     So…..if any of you that are ranting about technology that is beginning to creep into your “I know something they don’t’” world….just wait. It will be as good and like it or not you will probably turn to it from time to time.

     If you use a digital camera for any of your work? Shame on you!!!! Kidding :-)

108. 

     Dan

     August 19 2011 @ 05:45AM #

     The app is beta so it’s far from perfect. Nobody was expecting it to be a killer app. But I applaud Adobe for giving it a go.

109. 

     Jermiane

     August 19 2011 @ 10:39AM #

     I remember when FrontPage was popular, Adobe Muse is noting more that and update version of it, if any client come to me with this, I will simple refuse to fix all the problems.

110. 

     Chad

     August 19 2011 @ 03:39PM #

     Spot on with your observations Elliot.

111. 

     sam

     August 19 2011 @ 05:43PM #

     Designers are not coders and vice versa. A lot of websites couldn’t be produced by designers anyway. They don’t know good code from bad code. I don’t care about code. Most designers don’t care about code. They just want go deign, like they design using InDesign, for graphic designers its a neat bit of web design software and be sure they will use it. This is just the beginning. They will develop this software and a lot of graphic designers will be using it. We do not appreciate coding and we never will. I think the nearest we will get to coding will be script plug-ins. I can get a website up in no time with this – thats all I want to do. I know it seems like sacrelige to you coders but designers are happy with it. This is the beginning of the end.

112. 

     Ted

     August 20 2011 @ 04:34PM #

     Muse won’t satisfy a hand coder or DW jockey, but it just helped this print designer double my money on three clients who wanted simple sites that looked just like their print campaigns. Instead of wrestling with it for a week, sites were done in A DAY. No, the code behind it ain’t pretty. But it works and I didn’t have to grapple with a new app learning curve— Muse is like InDesign-lite, and tools, settings and style controls where I expect them to be.
     For clients who don’t need, can’t afford or want a full blown site, this is perfect. And just think my true-web-designer friends: these are the idiot low-ballers you don’t have to mess with :-)

113. 

     Dylan

     August 20 2011 @ 06:10PM #

     Just because the code that Muse puts out is messy now, it does not mean someone cannot:

     1. Offer a service to clean it up
     2. Write a book about how to clean it up
     3. Learn themselves how to clean it up
     4. Wait for Adobe to churn out better code with software updates

114. 

     Steven Harte

     August 21 2011 @ 03:16AM #

     All this discussion could have been easily predicted beforehand. Web developers/ programmers who have put in voluminous time and energy to learn industry standard code pooh-pooh any attempt to make it easier for the non-iniated.

     Bravo and my deepest respect for you purist coders. But we freelancers value software like Muse that make our lives easier when having to produce the full package on our own. Right, Muse’s code is sub-par but it does the job. Some of us don’ t have the luxury of specializing in code or handing off our design to a programmer as apart of a design firm.

     Seems like many of these type of forums invite juvenile responses. Hopefully we as a web design community can see that there are a myriad of contributors for the well being of the Internet. Yes, I quake somewhat, at Muse’s ability to offer easy web design to everyone. But isn’t it a possibly great tool to us struggling freelancers who find ourselves pitted between developing our design skills vs. our coding skills? I value all my extra time to the people who count the most to me, my family. You go Muse, thanks for making me more available to my family.

115. 

     m8

     August 21 2011 @ 07:47PM #

     I think that Muse is not meant for current web designers who know how to design and how to code. I’m pretty sure that Muse is for people who know how to design things, but have never been able to make a website (except maybe in Flash), because they don’t know how to code. In other words, Muse isn’t for people who already know how to do things on the web. It’s for “the rest of us”, i.e. those who currently have no way of making a decent website. Those “mortals” without coding skills should now be able to be able to make great web designs without having to learn to code. This will (maybe) result in a new “breed” of web designers and websites, more people who can create content, and more time to learn other things.

     I think coding is absolutely necessary, but coming from the Flash world, I’ve seen what’s possible without much coding, and I don’t want to go backwards, and open a plain text editor and just start typing away. I think that the best websites will still be made by people who code a lot. But I’m not great with coding as that’s not my profession, and I’d still like to be able to make a decent personal website. For me, possibly, Muse might just be the right thing, as I’m someone who wouldn’t even make a website at all if I had to code most of it.

     Think of Muse as a point-and-shoot camera. A random person going on vacation isn’t going to learn how to use an SLR. Sure, SLRs take better photos, but point-and-shoot cameras are easier to use. They allow non-photographers to take decent photos. And Muse allows non-professionals to make decent websites (I hope).

116. 

     Mega Volkan

     August 22 2011 @ 09:54AM #

     In web business there are craftsmen (coders) and there are artsmen (designers). Each project aims one simple thing: Great design with a brilliantly crafted code beneath. But in the end the end-result, to the viewers eye is just the design itself. If you do it for art (counting the code is also an art in it’s own habitat) and aim to get a wow from fellow coders then we’re okay. But if it is a business then the result always beats the craftsmenship. You see, our clients do not give a s*** about the code (talking as a designer not coder). They wouldn’t care less if we could make an interactive clickable photoshop jpeg that acts like a web page. In the end Muse (with its cons and pros) is a business oriented product. It’s not a a step at the wrong direction, but it is a step.

117. 

     Benno

     August 22 2011 @ 05:27PM #

     Guys I have been looking for something like Muse for years. It seems that for people like me, a designer trained primarily in print, that web design is becoming more and more an expected skillset, but is too technically complicated to learn. Now this product comes along and it seems all that might have been turned on its head. I hope so as perhaps it will mean that designers can concentrate on design again and not have to worry about being techno boffins. Maybe all the negative comments on here are from people scared for their jobs if some software will be able to do it?

118. 

     Randi

     August 23 2011 @ 01:05AM #

     I’ve read so many posts about Muse setting the stage for sub-standard design, yet I see a gazillion very poorly designed hand-coded sites created by programmers who think they are designers. Why aren’t they given a hard time? Does InDesign produce bad design because users don’t write postscript? It only produces bad design if the person working in it is not a professional and good designer. It’s important to have a basic understanding of coding, but software programs are production tools, they don’t make you better designers or coders if you aren’t either to begin with. And on a side note, it’s interesting that no one mentions having to understand and incorporate marketing as a component of an effective web site or print piece. Design and marketing go together.

     Muse intrigues me, but has a way to go to achieve professional credibility (cleaner coding, CMS, integration with other web programs (importing/exporting sites w/o recreating the wheel), having the flexibility to hand off to an advanced programmer as a site grows and requires more complex needs than Muse can provide, and having the option of hand-coding if needed. I’m concerned that Adobe doesn’t really want it to be too good because then it will compete with Dreamweaver. What we professional designers need is Dreamweaver with an InDesign interface/work environment. I want to place elements where I want them and be done with it. I am a print designer crossing over, I have to or I’ll become a dinosaur. Currently, I design sites in Fireworks and hand my files over to programmers. Muse would enable me to work faster and more efficiently at what I’m very good at—design. I’d have more control over my pricing, and be more competitive which I have to be in this economic climate. I’d really like to see Muse take off. There will always be a place for advanced programmers.

119. 

     Robert Nauta Studios

     August 22 2011 @ 07:19PM #

     I think that Muse is a great asset to designers. Having been a designer for over 25 years, having dominated Dreamweaver and flash, but in no way am I a coding expert I am a design expert, I have always felt restricted unto what I could or could not do in dreamweaver, and have found that Muse has addressed a lot of the issues i hvae had over the years and as they well say, Muse is to allow designers by thet they mean traditional designers to focus on design and not on coding, I can tell you that for regular designers this has been an issue it would be the same as if they forced coding expert designers that in order to use photshop or illustrator they would need to not only learn the tools of the program but learn a new language that to many of us looks like chineese. At least for me it has made me look at web design in a complete new way, no restrictions, less time to produce a site, less room for errors and as it allows me to be quicker I can focus on creativity do deliver better looking sites. I can certainly see as this does become a threat to web designers who have learnt all the intricacies of coding, but so far I can see that knowing some coding is still neede in muse since as you export it to html and want to add some features not yet supplied by muse , such as forms and other interactive features need to be coded and added. So, bottom line if you are a traditional designer with codiign knowledge this will definatley let you prepare sites quicker, if you are a designer with no coding at all it will allow you to offer site designs without fear.

120. 

     Benno

     August 23 2011 @ 02:02PM #

     “Brian Purkiss
     AUGUST 17 2011 @ 05:39PM #

     The Adobe Muse website is a pretty darn simple site. Wouldn’t take much code to build, even if you used no flash.

     But Muse generated 598 divs for muse.adobe.com

     That’s ridiculous!"

     Brian, guess what. IT DOESN"T MATTER!! I love the fact that all of a sudden the tables have turned and now it’s designers are in the ascendancy and techies are getting worried. Because no one cares how the canvas and paint were made on the Mona Lisa, it’s the picture they want to see.

121. 

     Michael Zajac

     August 24 2011 @ 06:38AM #

     Benno, if Leonardo hadn’t cared about pigment chemistry, brushstrokes, glazing, perspective, and so on, then none of would ever have heard of any Mona Lisa.

122. 

     aladdin

     August 24 2011 @ 10:05AM #

     I don’t go through all the response, so I am not sure if anybody mentioned this.

     But Adobe can’t make money from producing pro tool for pro web designer. They can only make money from producing tool for average print designer. Think about some company creating pro tool for world-class architecture building team, and their contrary part: BOSE. Which make big money.

     Pro is never a good market for mass-marketing company. Period. And context-sensitive tool is much much harder to build, much much more resources needed in such project.

123. 

     Jake Steed

     August 24 2011 @ 05:56PM #

     Elliot – You complain about MUSE’s limitations, but what about your limitation on innovation? You’re mad that MUSE wasn’t available years ago. Had this product been available when you started building websites you would be singing a different tune.

     Your gripe comes from the fact that you took so long to learn how to build websites, and now that anybody can do it, it irks you.

124. 

     Marcelo

     August 24 2011 @ 10:06PM #

     In my opinion, take it or leave it, and since I’m a nobody, no one will really care, the problem lies in the following:

     When people think of website design, they think of something that engages with an audience, that attracts the users attention to the content, and if the website creator is mindful, it will be through a smooth, clean and consistent experience. The important things about the site are its content, the engagement with the audience and etc… The colors, images and layout will help that content to do what it’s ultimately intended to do.

     It has absolutely zero to do with code. What code does is allow the content, experience, images, colors to be translated from 1s and 0s to something real, like a photo and/or color.

     Code is a must have for anything related to computer, however, it’s not the ultimate important thing about the website. It’s the foundation.

     When I’m building my home, I’ll want to have an architect design it, not a contractor, not the guy who builds the foundation. That’s how clients think.

     They’ll look for a designer to do it for them.

     Now, an architect can be fully experienced in digging up the ground and laying foundation, but if he can hire someone to do it (because they will do it better for them), they will. Do they have to have knowledge of how to build a house? Obviously so. They have the limitations of physics (they can’t build a leaning house, unless they figure out a solution that doesn’t break the law of physics, but they don’t need to be a physicist).

     So, when a designer doesn’t code, they can hire a coder to do it, and as long as there’s mutual understanding and plenty of communication, the site will come out as intended, and perhaps the designer will learn a thing or two from the coder for future projects.

     Now, in comes Muse. It attempts to be that coder. It does that inefficiently today, but that’s not to say that future versions of it will be inefficient.

     A true designer should not be focused on 1s and 0s, they should focus on how a site looks visually and how you experience it (and that’s a big part of it as well). It will benefit knowing the 1s and 0s, but that’s about it.

     Environmental designers build the most amazing displays out there for trade shows, exhibits, etc… Do you think they manufacture the materials they want to use? But they have an understanding of what materials work better for the display (and more often than not, will be subject to the help of outside vendors that pre-fabricate such materials).

     So, web designers need to have an understanding of code TODAY, because the auto-coding features of software really suck.

     Maybe the beta version of Muse sucks, but when Muse 3 or 4 comes out with everything that we know to be right about web design embedded and automatic, why then should we need to learn how to code?

     How many computer users use DOS or linux to throw a file to the trash bin? If it just works and works perfectly the way it’s intended to, I don’t need to know the code for perfoming that action.

     Pure and simple. The future will come and put most of you out of work. Watch out.