Have you ever imagine how would be if Figma and React have a baby?
We are working on an open-source FrontEnd framework called Scalab, which combines visual and programmatic workflows, allowing designers and developers work together, and we believe it looks like the kid of Figma and React.
Please check it, tell us what you think, and give us your comments and feedback.
Trending on Indie Hackers
The main issue with these tools are they sit in no-mans land.
I wouldn't use them for heavy web applications because I can never implement more complex things, web-sockets, analytics, state management, routing, etc... and let's not talk about testing. The quality of the generated code has been improved over the years, but I still spend too much time trying to understand the generated code when I want to change it.
At the same time they're too complex for simple pages, blogs, etc... where I want something super light à la SquareFlow / Webflow.
And I just noticed Adobe still makes DreamWeaver...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Dreamweaver
Thanks for the feedback, that's a good insight.
I agree completely that Scalab is not meant for simple pages as it would be a waste of time and potential from you and the tool to use it but for complex applications, Scalab is perfect for it because it is actually an efficiency, productivity, and collaborative tool, not a low code tool as what you have in mind.
This means that you can use it i.e to do the first template of a new project, you will save a lot of time, you will not have to worry about CSS bugs and then you can export it to React or your favorite framework and keep working in it but actually focus on the complex parts of the project.
But of course, we still need to work a lot to guarantee that you will have a clean code.
Looks impressive. I've seen a few of these tools.
I haven't heard of one that is really popular, simply because developers like to code and don't like the idea of visual programming or generated code.
If you're gonna make a visual tool, go full low or no code and forget about devs.
Just my 2 cents.
Thanks, you have a fair point there.
Really unclear what the output of Scalab is. Why not give us some examples or even a playpen?
We are basically trying to unify web design and web development processes in a single tool.
Normally in a professional environment, designers and developers have noncompatible tools, processes, and languages, making the process of web designing, developing, and deploying really inefficient, so we want to fix this.
The idea is to have a platform in which designers can draw vector freely, these vectors are converted immediately into code and developers can intervene the code. So there is no need of coming back and forth nor of doing handoffs, get lost in translation, etc. That's why we believe Scalab is the kid of Figma (really popular design tool) and React (the most used FrontEnd framework)
Not sure if that gives you a more clear idea. Let me know if you have any doubt.
That deploy part I am not clear. Lets say I have my own component which need to be integrated and deployed to my own server... will Scalab work with that kind of system?
Yes, you can deploy to our global CDN or build Scalab with your existing CI/CD pipelines just like other frameworks.
Input of Scalab = vectors drawn by designers
Output of Scalab = code
What kind of code? React? Why not just give examples of the code or even a playpen? Again no reason for all of these words when you are selling to fellow developers.
JS code and it is compatible with the rest of the frameworks.
Stack = Elm
Also if you want you can Schedule a meeting and we can show you the alfa
So you mean, Framer? There have been a few tools like this, including on IH, where someone created something similar to you, yet they absolutely could not sell it and were wondering what was wrong. This might be useful to go through for your own insights.
No, Framer is for prototyping this is a FrontEnd framework with way more features, you can develop and deploy, testing, connect data, versioning, etc.
The Cruu case is very interesting and there are a lot of insights in the comments, we will take it into account for sure, developers are a difficult target to reach.
I remember this coming from a sort of hackathon when their API came out.