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Adobe has created software that can allow
anyone to design a web site without knowing a lick of code, but critics wonder
if this is such a good idea. Adobe, which already makes the award-winning
programs InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop, has been the leader for decades
in making the tools digital artists and graphic designers use to create
practically every image you’ve ever seen in print or on the Web. Adobe
prides itself on making graphic designers happy, and that’s how Adobe
makes its money. Therefore it comes as no surprise that their latest
product, Muse, aspires to make life even simpler for designers who work in
more traditional mediums like photography and print design, but who are being
tapped to take on more web-based projects, which has been the trend in that
industry for the past six years. The
product is an ultra-simplified, graphically focused tool for making
websites.-Muse's greatest advantage and the point that will make it sell like
hotcakes, no doubt, is that designers don't have to learn code like HTML, CSS,
or Javascript in order to break out of strictly print design, and start
designing web sites for the Internet. Joe Shankar, Muse’s engineering
architect, announces in the introductory video, "We're going to change the way
websites are built for graphic designers."-Muse presents an interface that will
be familiar to users of Abobe's InDesign, allowing designers to quickly and
easily create websites as a collection of dynamic documents which automatically
generate the necessary HTML code for them to be published online. Elements
such as navigation bars and pull-down menus that need to be part of a web site typically
involve complicated Javascript writing, or at least tweaking. In Muse, these
are included as a series of drag and drop widgets that can easily be
incorporated into a page without the designer having to even see the code. This
is quite an achievement from a technological standpoint. Sean Foley, a graphic
designer who knows a little HTML and CSS but doesn't consider himself to be
especially fluent in them, was stunned that he was able to finish the
tutorial and complete the entire tutorial website in under three
hours. "I believe it's important for a web designer to understand markup," says
Foley. "But for people who don’t enjoy that option, I think this has huge
potential.” Must could come in handy for smaller firms that
don’t have the resources to hire separate web designers and graphic
designers. |
