Show HN: Dev tools inspired site editor

Show HN: Dev tools inspired site editor(dotling.com)

11 points by dot_michael 4 years ago | 4 comments

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to get feedback on this site editor (I couldn't get on my first try). A lot of it was inspired by modern browser's dev tools. Do you guys think it's intuitive enough? Does it feel good to use? Any feedback would be amazing.

dmje 4 years ago |

Hey. This is really lovely, well done - an amazing, really easy to use, very intuitive tool. With my nerd hat on I definitely want to be able to export - I can't pin anything at all on a hosted service that I have no exit strategy from. I'm sure you'll be around forever - but, you know, there's no way I could build a client site on this or even one for myself without having that available to me.

One thing that would be really nice is to have a "publish to [netlify][github pages][sftp][other]" option...

Also - templating.

But from a UI / ease of use / flexibility point of view - amazing :-)

dot_michael 4 years ago | |

Thank you for the kind words. It seems like export is a popular request. One question for you. If you export, how do you plan on making future edits? Going back to the platform to edit and export again or editing the exported code? I ask this because the export wont be html/css. It will be a small index.html with a large JSON.

Thanks for the publish suggestions. I will do some research to see how easy it is to implement.

When you say templating do you just mean pre-made sections/blocks? That already exist right now (on the second tab in the create menu). Also the ability to make custom pre-made is coming. But when you say templating do you actually mean having a component and when you edit that component, all other copies of the component changes as well?

Thanks for the feed back.

matt_heimer 4 years ago |

Intuitive? I'm not sure. Its still got a learning curve. When you say "inspired by modern browser's dev tools" and given the HN audience I was expecting something that didn't hide the actual HTML as much. For example the element picker in browser's dev tools will show the tag name as the title when you hover over an element vs you abstracting it away to things like "Text" which then have a "Text tag" which has you select a human readable definition of the tag.

Is this dev tools inspired or Wix inspired? It feels more like Wix than dev tools.

Is any of that bad? Maybe not but its what I (because of my background) was expecting; something closer to HTML because there isn't an onboarding story and dev tools was mentioned. I think you need an integrated tutorial as part of the initial experience. Either tutorial overlays or maybe replacing the lipsum with instructional text, something.

The publish site feature, its not well explained what that does. I think some users would expect a site builder tool to be able to provide a zip or even sftp the pages somewhere. I think the only option here is to host with your service but it should be spelled out. Again, probably related to having the editor as a starting point with no on-boarding.

It seems like a slick tool. Basic page editing doesn't seem challenging. I think to really test it would require that the tester build some complex sites with the tool. Consider paying for testers to do that along with post-build interviews. It might help identify workflow issues. If you have some free users building complex pages maybe just offer them a free upgrade if they'll let you pick their brain on a zoom session.

dot_michael 4 years ago | |

Yea, I was inspired by it but with another layer of abstraction. I wanted every element is able to have any style the user wants and hovering over elements will show spacing colors like the dev tools (I find it useful and haven't seen another site builder that does it).

I will definitely add some kind of onboarding, thanks for the suggestion. I just don't want it to be too heavy. I always felt like other users are like me and just skip all tutorials and start playing with the platform, but I'm starting to think its too complicated for that.

Thanks for the great feedback.