Thought I’d take the 14 day trial for a test run…and…uhm, not blown away with it completely, and boy has it had some hype!!
It’s a great tool, don’t get me wrong, and it does some really great things, but WebFlow (of course) is just so much more polished, and kind of feels like a ‘pro-tool’ alongside Macaw.
No Google Web Fonts in Macaw yet??? It’s 2014 folks
One thing Macaw has, I think, against WebFlow currently, is the exported code settings options. I’ve asked this question before, and Bryant did make some changes to the exported code, but It would be nice to have a little more control over the resulting code (cmon guys look after your code freaks too!!!)
Glad to hear it discussed here. I’ve had my eye on Macaw and to be honest its been hyped liked crazy without any good peer reviews. What Webflow has done is amazing so far and I hope they can sharpen even further now that competition is out there. I do like the fact that it has a buy out price for a offline desktop download. Right now the feel is very much a cross between Adobe Edge Reflow and Webflow. It does have much more of Adobe Illustrator kind of approach. Now I just have to see how it handles the DOM elements on queries, Adobe Edge Reflow made it rather confusing in their approach.
Yeah, we’ve asked for custom breakpoints since the beginning and I think its on the road map, just not sure when and I have a feeling its deep in the core so it may be a cumbersome endeavor and that’s why its taken a long time, not sure but for now I just add any extra breakpoints after the fact…but of course that’s not easy stuff for folks that don’t know html/css fluently. Hi webflow! you just got “poked!” =)
I downloaded Macaw but never tried it. Pinegrow is also similar. Haven’t really tried it… mostly because personally, i’m not a fan of the UI. But it has some interesting features… and a playground like Webflow.
I hope all these similar apps are taking notes on one another. All could benefit, imo.
I actually Kickstarted Macaw. In Webflow its (for me) quite obvious that your dealing with css and that you have css rules to take into account. Macaw is more like “put things where ever you want and we take care of the rest” kind of style, and when I try to use Macaw as I do in in Sketch for example it doesn’t work. I still believe it can be a good software but then again Webflow already is and improving rapidly.
Its really fun to work with Webflow and I’m glad there is competition in this area now, meaning we are getting better products.
I agree with you @jorn, I find Macaw to be good for some purposes, and in particular, I like the way you can directly assign variables to elements in the UI, this would be a really nice feature to have in Webflow. There are some other nice things too about Macaw such as the way you can create custom breakpoints, but Webflow to me, is still the tool too use by a large margin, and especially since the release of interactions in Webflow, I could not see myself ever switching to Macaw from Webflow, and really, they are two very different animals anyway… I like to think they complicate themselves well. they all have their purpose
Webflow is sooo good though, it will take something pretty damn good to make me want to use something else… and your right… nice to see the quality of tools from different companies raise the bar in development tools… For now, I am a webflow fanboy I guess…
Macaw is a prototyping/mockup tool not a complete web editor so their code will look a little nicer which is why they have more options for export. You are expected to hand it over to a developer so you better have everything they need. It can’t compete with Webflow as an actual web editor because it is not.
Not sure why people think it is a complete web editor? The hints that it is not are all over the website. I also asked them in a Tweet and they said it was for mockups.
I’ve Macaw in my toolbox. I have just been updating it. They are still miles behind. No widget! Bugs! Bugs! Bugs! They are not really sure what the tool would become, so they are playing safe with the tag “mockup” so that they don’t get negative publicity. Webflow is still #1, however Webflow is exploitative in their pricing and approach, especially lack of file format to enable designer keep their files like psd, ai,cdr, etc and lack of FTP to external servers.
I think “exploitative” is unfair. Making a file format at this stage of development would be premature. The Webflow system is evolving too fast. Backwards compatibility between file formats would be too much work for too little reward.
As for FTP, you could do this yourself. Just set up file sync between your local filesystem and your FTP site.
I would not call it exploitive either. They are not forcing you to use the product and you know what you are getting before you even sign up, your choice @topelovely. It also helps them keep everyone on the same page with updates. However I would still love to see a file format, especially for theming (It would be amazing to see a Webflow section on Themeforest.net or Creativemarket.com) and I like the idea of being able to pass it off but I understand that it would conflict with some of their plan features.
Macaw is still years behind, good thing I did not Kickstart it. I was suspiscious since the start, and the public betas were a shame IMHO. Webflow works great. As noted by some other comment above, Macaw does have a more “do anything, we’ll do the rest” approach that I do miss sometimes in Webflow - I can’t place an element anywhere and have it handle the CSS to keep it there for me -, but the overall experience and result is amazing in the latter.
