Comments on: Adobe Muse enables great Web layout, no coding required

By: Darryl Manco

Darryl Manco — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 21:08:06 +0000

Muse, a flexible tool for the traditional graphic designer who has clients that want a designer exterior website. No offense intended, but the web is not print or vise versa. Alas, the web isn’t that simplistic. Today’s competing website owner needs to be concerned with the behind because web noise is deafening. Then there is the front; it complements its back. The two become the tool for marketing on the web.

By: Trenton Bria

Trenton Bria — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 18:24:53 +0000

Will there ever be anywhere else We can get facts about this? I’m thinking I might possibly write my term paper on it.

By: Pat Korten

Pat Korten — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 20:19:00 +0000

I would very much like to be able to import an existing website into Muse so that I can work with it there rather than in Dreamweaver. Is there ANY way it can be done?

By: Yve Legler

Yve Legler — Fri, 25 May 2012 18:14:34 +0000

Rob, go to http://www.Lynda.com. They have excellent video Tutorials, including MUSE
Yve

By: Yve Legler

Yve Legler — Fri, 25 May 2012 18:09:17 +0000

I can’t agree with you more, but it is outdated, is having problems and has no more support. As a designer I have been pushing Dreamweaver away as to complicated. Muse seems just what I need as a designer. What about the GoLive built Website? Can it be imported into Muse? Any suggestions?
Thanks
Yve

By: SSS

SSS — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 18:40:46 +0000

Adobe needs to pay attention to the comments on this page. I am extremely interested in Muse, but will NEVER pay a monthly fee for software. If Adobe comes to its senses and offers it for purchase, I will then consider Muse.

By: Jan-Gunnar Kiris

Jan-Gunnar Kiris — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 13:29:44 +0000

Hi,
How are searchengines like Google and Yahoo going to find my website made with Muse but published at another server than Adobe`s? (The site is exported via “Export HTML… in the filesmenu” then pput on the webhotels server using Dreamweaver FTP.
When I looked at the code in the “Head section” there were no “metaname tag”???????????and more.
Am I wrong?
I like Muse EXCEPT for one thing: The rental model.
I miss, and this are two serious things:
1; I can not import an HTML- site build in for ex. Dreamweaver.
2: There is no FTP-engine.
Best regards
Jan-Gunnar

By: Nick Atkinson

Nick Atkinson — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 21:58:16 +0000

Personally I always thought GoLive CS2 was really good! I am still using GoLive 9 on OS X Snow Leopard for some projects.

I don’t really understand why GoLive was terminated after the Macromedia acquisition (other than politics, maybe??!!).

Two problems with Adobe Muse:

First, it is an AIR application. Not a native application experience. Personally I am not prepared to pay money for an application written in Air or indeed Java. I expect a native experience.

Second, the rental model. I agree with other commenters above that this is going to put some people off.

There is a native Mac visual HTML design tool already (if you want a code generator) and that is Softpress Freeway. Which does not have a rental model.

It would be interesting to see a detailed feature comparison between Adobe Muse and Softpress Freeway Pro. That is something I am going to look in to.

By: Jeff Seager

Jeff Seager — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 16:48:08 +0000

I’m with Hans. It’s bad enough that Adobe Air apps are inherently unfriendly to such simple accessibility issues as increasing the size of type in menu items (not all developers are 20-year-olds with perfect vision, after all). Muse and Edge seem to take inaccessibility to a new level.

I don’t understand why Adobe would turn loose a bunch of VISUAL designers (excellent though they may be) in a medium conceived and designed not for print, but for scalability, portability and universal access on an array of devices we haven’t even imagined yet.

I know that the good people at Adobe have heard of graceful degradation and progressive enhancement. So why ignore the fundamentals in the creation of new products? And why now, when more browsers are finally coming into line with standards? Have you learned nothing from the decade-long effort to retrofit accessibility in Acrobat Reader (a product created for print media)? It simply doesn’t work if you don’t begin with an accessible foundation.

By: hans verhaegen

hans verhaegen — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 21:36:37 +0000

You cannot compare postscript with code for web design. The way postscript is written is totally irrelevant for the output of a print process: something with fixed dimensions printed on a certain defined surface.
A web site must be accessible on very different platforms and the way code (HTML) is written is of absolute essence. The HTML of a website must be ordered in a way that is meaningful (also for humans, remember accessibility!) to understand.
Postscript is just there for machines to process to get a certain fixed, printed outcome. We do not care how a title of an article is defined in Postscript. It has no effect on the printed outcome.
But in HTML it really needs to be a heading and not some paragraph with some styling just simulating a heading. Web design is so much more than just creating good looking screens.
And why keep up that artificial divide between designers and developers! A lot of web designers are simple fantastic coders. And they know damn sure why.
Please, do not throw away semantics and accessibility because you presume wrongly that coding is a bad thing for designers. Coding is in fact the most efficient and fast way to do proper web design, to really cope with all the complexity involved. If you care to learn, it is a really magical thing, you will love it.
Adobe Muse seems in its beta form nothing more than a prototyping tool. To do quick sketches. Even for that there are other programs that do better (Axure, etc…) and at the same time have the same limitations (no liquid design).
Illustrator, Indesign, Photoshop and even FireWorks are all the wrong programs to do web design. (Please, Adobe, remove all these silly export-as-html features.)
Possibly we might need a new program dedicated more towards web design. But Adobe Muse (beta) is just not good enough because it ignores some fundamental aspects of web design.
Also I think a lot of future users will regret after a while that they didn’t even learn the HTML/CSS basics by using only Muse (no coding view). Another reason why this program is a bit disappointing.
But, hey, it is beta, maybe, we never know, lets see how things go…

By: Rene Hernandez

Rene Hernandez — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 17:18:25 +0000

Amen! The sad part is, will Adobe ever realize the lost sales due to these details. I for one will never switch to a CS suite should they ever base those apps on AIR. AIR apps never feel right.

By: Rene Hernandez

Rene Hernandez — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 17:15:40 +0000

I like that Adobe is thinking about new programs, but I hate to say – AIR based, Adobe GUI’s suck. I had a nightmare the other day that the CS design apps had been converted mainly to being AIR based. I can appreciate Adobe’s desire to “write once” but I use a Mac for its GUI and the touches that Apple brings. And I can appreciate MS’ GUI for windows. Why Adobe insists on developing a 3rd convention on top of these standard GUIs is beyond me. What it does remind me of is when I have looked at UNIX apps that have been ported with all the bad UI elements, or Office 6 on the Mac. Bottom line, AIR based apps never feel right and being a designer and long time Adobe and Mac user, that sucks.

By: Gregory Wostrel

Gregory Wostrel — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 19:48:30 +0000

If one is a very picky, detailed, code-monkey (and in some ways that is a compliment) then tools like Muse will not satisfy. One look at the source code will make you say “meh, terrible code output”. But if the code still meets accessibility needs, renders properly on multiple browsers, and works on mobile devices then its is useful. Let’s see if Adobe can accomplish that.
For the rest, Designers who really are not interested in the complexity of the code level, this is a promising tool. At the risk of sounding like one of those cranky gray-hairs who always point out that someone thought of an idea or product along time ago “back in the day” etc etc I will point out that this concept is a whole lot like Softpress’s Freeway. I first used that back in 1999 or maybe 2000. They started by making an app that looked a lot like and worked like Quark XPress (including keyboard shortcuts). They have steadily developed it and it is a pretty decent app. Doesn’t do everything, the code-monkeys will not like it, but it is work a look too in order to see what a much smaller company has managed to do in the last 10 years.
http://www.softpress.com/

By: Christopher Abbruzzi

Christopher Abbruzzi — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 02:41:45 +0000

I think it is Adobe’s goal to make everything eventually become by subscription. Only time will tell. Get ready for more credit card debt.

By: Alan Gilbertson

Alan Gilbertson — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 00:18:48 +0000

@KC: As one who’s been extremely happy with the 5.5 release, let me say that a) for heavy InDesign users, especially the huge number of us who are willy-nilly getting into ePub, because clients need us to, 5.5 is huge; b) the InDesign –> HTML output improvements are huge; c) the Premiere Pro and After Effects and Dreamweaver improvements are huge.

I understand that you’re not part of the ePub/mobile revolution. Like many other independent designers I know, I don’t have that luxury: I have to satisfy my clients’ needs or I don’t eat. eBooks outsold physical books on Amazon last year, so Adobe’s efforts to keep up with the times are crucial. And if you think “few talk about” or use ePub, I can tell you from immediate personal experience that you’re seriously limiting your own income.

Having moved from GoLive (and seen two businesses’ websites wrecked by careless use of it) to Dreamweaver, I would submit that there are strong reasons why Adobe needed to concentrate resources on the better platform. GoLive’s strength, and its biggest liability, was that a sloppy (read: “unwilling to learn what goes on under the hood”) user could create dreadfully broken sites with it far too easily. I saw it happen, and it was not nice. I would never to back to GoLive, frankly, any more than I’d switch to Quark Xpress.

If 5.5 doesn’t affect your workflow, you don’t need it. For the rest of us, it was a very important and timely step forward. As for Muse, the subscription price I’ve seen mentioned is far less than my Lynda.com subscription. It’s the least of my considerations about the product.