Hello All - my name is Matt…glad to be here! My response here is a bit longer form, as I wanted to leave a response that might resonate with others who come across it and have been on a similar journey and who are considering Webflow.
I’ve been trying out Webflow for a few months and I really love it. I have been learning how to build sites by hand over the last year or so around a full time job, and have been on the self-taught track for learning HTML, CSS, Javascript, while also dipping into learn PHP and Twig, plus all the other dev-things like Git/Github, the circus involved in setting up a local dev environment, trying all the IDEs and text editors, experimenting with deployment tools, checking out different kinds of hosting, and trying out a bunch of different CMSs including Wordpress, Craft, Grav, Kirby, Processwire, and the like. It’s kinda amazing the endless amount of tools, apps, languages, methods, frameworks, and buzzwords that seem to crop up almost weekly that you have to keep up with if you want to do front end dev as a coder. Even seasoned developers will often admit it’s really hard to keep up, and they’d hate to be starting out now with the overwhelming amount of stuff you are expected to learn and sift through. For fun, I recently quickly sketched out a sort of mental map of all the stuff that’s filled my head, time, and energy while pursuing the self-taught web dev route. This isn’t everything, but you get the idea. You can imagine Webflow being a welcome and refreshing discovery after all this lol.
I find myself at a critical juncture where I could either go down the path of digging deeper into the developer side of things, or I could focus more on using a tool like Webflow and learning more about UX/UI and design. I have a background in fine arts, photography, and communications…and I feel as comfortable in Illustrator, InDesign or Photoshop as I do at the command line or writing out HTML and CSS by hand. All of that is to say that I find Webflow to be a unique synthesis of all those things…it is certainly visual and designer friendly, but it’s also a useful and wonderful tool for those more versed in the coding side of things and whose brains have been conditioned by learning to build that way.
There have been some adjustments for me, however…like retraining my brain to design from large screens downward to mobile instead of a ‘mobile first’ approach, and working with CSS classes ‘visually’ has been a fun adjustment. For me, the next really amazing feature that will seal the deal with using Webflow will be the introduction of CSS grid, which I have grown very fond of and feel is absolutely essential to modern web design. Plus, once you get the hang of the concept, it makes designing a real joy and opens up many possibilities that were previously quite frankly a pain in the ass to achieve, or required some kind of hackathon workaround.
I’ve been struck at the awesomeness of Webflow features such as the ease of using the ‘staging’ and ‘production’ versions of a project, the ease of hosting and all the features and benefits that come with it, and simple things like being able to share the editor view of your project with others while troubleshooting. I’m impressed with the responsiveness of the WF team and the features they are working on, so looks like good things to come. The tutorial documentation and videos are outstanding - and thank you thank you for including a sense of humor in the videos…that makes the learning process so much more enjoyable! The Webflow community is very generous and helpful. I look forward to really learning Webflow, and following all my fellow WFers in this community and the great work you are doing.
Cheers,
Matt