Following on from a discussion in another channel/room/whatever I thought It better to post this over here.
Mobirise, the Free app, has its last day of yet another Black Friday deal (I swear I am going to have to get a flame thrower to clear my inbox of Black Friday deals)
Get to the end and you will see the bit where it says about the important bit about a code editor - which isnât in Mobirise natively.
SO, if you hate code, this may be another way forward too.
If you EVER want to break out of the damned *box model, everything looks so boxy and Bootstrap ish)
Yeah, I responded on the other thread⌠Mobirise is âehâ okay. I mean, itâs free, so you canât complain too much, but to actually do anything serious with it, you have to play for their plug-ins which are actually a bit pricey.
A much better alternative (IMO) is Bootstrap Studio, which is only $60 for the full version with lifetime upgrades (and they do update the program often.) It has a great user community, and the program produces code thatâs just as clean as Pinegrow.
It is, however, limited to Bootstrap, and certain parts of Bootstrap are âlocked downâ so newbies canât break their websites. But, it has a built-in code editor that lets you easily overwrite the static Bootstrap CSS, so if youâre willing to learn CSS and HTML, you can do just about anything with the program. It has a much better selection of icons than PG, built-in animation, and its implementation of Google Fonts is better.
Where it falls short of PG is that it canât open existing HTML pages. It has a relatively small number of templates. Like PG, it doesnât support multiple monitors. It also has a view odd quirks, but the UI is in some ways better than PGâs, and the program feels smoother in operation. Also, itâs âundo/redoâ works the way Pinegrowâs should, but thatâs because you canât have multiple pages open at the same time (however you can have multiple sites open at the same time!) It also has a MUCH simpler way of creating linked components (like navigation, footers) that span multiple pages, and itâs very easy to define and save your own âblocksâ the library. There is also an easily accessible library of other blocks other people have created.
If you could take the best from Bootstrap Studio and combine it with Pinegrow, youâd have a website program for the ages.
oh thatâs in depth! cheers. yes I started to look at it again and once I saw the HUGE Black Friday deal⌠I realised that⌠thatâs all the stuff you need. looked at the normal prices and realised why I never went down that road.
Pinegrow is still the dogs danglies for me.
And, I donât want just a bootstrap app as⌠I think they all look the same/ie/suck a bit
Mobirise is ok if you wish to produce a quick page and do not care about the code. Full of junk and extras.
I would compare Mobirise to Pinegrow like this:
Mobirise = like riding on a bus - will get you there after many stops
Pinegrow = like being the bus driver and owning it - have full control of the ride:)
I used Mobirise to create a site recently, thinking I could throw something together really quickly, so I can share my experienceâŚ
Itâs incredibly easy to build simple Bootstrap pages by dragging in page blocks. But in the end I found myself needing to create quite a bit of custom HTML and CSS to make things look and work the way I wanted, and itâs not that much fun working with the code in their themes. Where it really falls down is if you want a page of text. Nobody wants every paragraph inside its own div, so once again youâre on your own.
But the thing that bothers me the most about Mobirise is the deceptive marketing and pricing. In a marketing email, and in the app itself, the description under the All-in-One Kit clearly states, 'Get ALL current and future Mobirise themes and extensions âŚâ, but an almost hidden FAQ says that you only get new add-ons for 1 year from purchase. Worse still, on this page http://forums.mobirise.com/discussion/18977/is-that-scam a customer is told that if they update the Mobirise app, they have to re-purchase everything (the code editor, themes, etc) all over again.
So itâs an app I might recommend to beginner DIYers if they just use it for free. I donât think the paid themes are worth the price, even with those Black Friday discounts.
Get ALL current and future Mobirise themes and extensions âŚâ, but an almost hidden FAQ says that you only get new add-ons for 1 year from purchase.
Man that is sneaky. Cheers for the heads up.
Thatâs another thing I like about Pinegrow Philosophy is the incredibly transparent pricing and EMPHASIS on explaining that you donât have to worry about paying for a new version update if youâre within your Years payments. And the fact that they help people out who are on Low incomeâŚand do charity work and andâŚ
Bootstrap Studio is Mobirise done correctly. Itâs priced very fairly, and updated regularly. Mobirise is full of âbait-n-switchâ tactics. The âfreeâ version is pretty much useless, and itâs engineered to get you to spend money on optional âfeaturesâ which would be standard in any professional website builder.
No worries. Another sneaky thing Mobirise does is sprinkle Mobirise links throughout your code. Various blocks have elements that link to the Mobirise site by default, so you just have to be careful not to forget to replace these with your own links. It also dynamically inserts some code with a hidden link, so even if you remove all the Mobirise links from your HTML, youâll find some of it magically returns on the published page. (I think I found a way to disable this, but I canât remember what I did now.)
Oh, and if you accidentally create an account with them, thereâs no obvious way to delete it. I learnt the hard way that if you try and sign in with the wrong email address, Mobirise goes ahead and creates another account for you without asking your permission! And the only way to delete it seems to be to email their customer support.
So yes, all in all, the company and software just smells of sneakiness.
I wouldnât say itâs useless. A friend of mine, who has no coding experience whatsoever, was trying to build something in WordPress when he really didnât need all that bloat. I suggested he try Mobirise (I warned him about some of the things discussed) and he was able to produce a very attractive and usable site without paying a cent. So it has its niche, as Iâve yet to find any other desktop software that makes it so easy for non-coders. I guess thatâs the gap Pinegrowâs âseedling appâ will hopefully fill when itâs releasedâand no doubt do it better.
Bootstrap Studio does look quite good. Iâve not used it in production (only tested it), but one thing I didnât love was the lack of round-trip code editingâthat is, to edit the HTML, components need to be converted to HTML, and then you lose all ability to modify using the GUI. (It sounds like the new Pinegrow app may have similar limitations.) I also found some other annoyances, like the temperamental nature of the undo shortcut (at least on the Mac), the publish feature, and again, the inability to easily create and edit a continuous flow of text without having to drag and drop paragraphs one at a time. Why do all these apps take something that should be easy, and make it painful?
They also do website painter. Non responsive.
the first is free and creates responsive websites apparently.
basic but free. and maybe fun.
I might just check it out.
Slightly off piste, but just adding to the basic for a friend who doesnât code kind of thing.
Also, with regards Wordpress sites, I am wondering
what will happen with Gutenberg and how that will shake things up in the non coders world of website creation.
I think it might be great.
but its certainly going to mess with some of the builders.
I was wondering about the likes of beaver builder etc and our PG WP theme dev version.
Lately Iâve been finding this site kind of usefulâŚ
Finding a 100% free website building app that builds modern, responsive sites with no coding required and absolutely no strings attached is like finding the goose that lays golden eggs. Iâm not sure such an animal exists.
As for your issues with Bootstrap Studio (BS), itâs true that it doesnât allow direct editing of the HTML, and this is by design, so that beginners canât easily âbreakâ their sites. They also lock-down the raw Bootstrap CSS, but it does have a built in CSS editor, so you can easily write new rules to override the stock Bootstrap. Without that ability, Iâd find the program too restrictive, but being able to write custom CSS pretty much lets you do anything you want, since virtually all the HTML objects are available for drag-n-drop.
I donât use the internal publishing (FTP to their server) as I have my own server, but the export feature works perfectly and then I use FIlezilla. Undo has never given me any problems, but Iâm on a PC. Iâm not sure what youâre referring to re: âedit a continuous flow of text.â If you mean creating paragraphs in a single
item, you have to hold the shift+enter to get a . The program doesnât have a built-in non-breaking space which users have been clamouring for for years now. THAT I do find frustrating.
BS is my go-to program after Pinegrow. Itâs ability to quickly and easily create reusable âblocksâ in a user library, complete with linked CSS and images, is ingenious. I can rough out a site for a client in a day thanks to this.
The quantity and variety of apps we have available to us these days is the double-edged sword isnât it. Itâs great to have choices, but I can see another day getting swallowed up by testing more of these things! As it is, I tested over 15 apps (including some prototyping apps) and Pinegrow came out on top for me overall.
Yep, I just mean you ought to be able to hit return/enter at the end of the paragraph to generate another one. Pretty basic stuff, and something weâve been doing in every other text-based app since the 18th century. But in some of these apps, each paragraph has to be dragged and dropped, while hitting return/enter just generates a <br>, not a new paragraph.
In typesetting, itâs pretty standard for a shift+return to generate a soft return or line break ( <br> in HTML terms), so if thatâs what Bootstrap Studio does to generate a new paragraph, I find that a bit back-to-front.
Text on a web page is not the same as text in typesetting. There are reasons for splitting paragraphs with the <p> tag as opposed to using a <br>. For example, if you use the <br> to create paragraphs and then change the line-height, you will also change the spacing between paragraphs. That spacing is better controlled by using margin or padding rules. The <br> tag has its uses (a poem, or an address for example) but best practices is to separate paragraphs using the <p> tag.
Youâre preaching to the converted mate. Line breaks (<br>) should be used very sparingly indeed (regardless of whether youâre typesetting a book or coding a web page). I think you misunderstood my last point, which is the expected behaviour is:
Enter/Return key = new paragraph
Shift + Enter/Return key = line break
Iâm not sure why any app would want to reverse this behaviour, and require you to enter Shift + Enter/Return to generate a new paragraph.
Well BS doesnât reverse it. Shift+enter = <br> and plain âenterâ exits the editor. I agree itâs not expected behavior if youâre used to the way regular text editors work, but I have encountered it in other builders. I presume there is a method to their madness.
Okay, then I misunderstood. When you said âcreating paragraphs in a single itemâ, I assumed you meant genuine <p> paragraphs.
In that case yes, itâs the behaviour Iâve noticed in various builders too. I donât know about âmethodâ but Iâll agree that itâs âmadnessâ that you canât easily generate a new paragraph by pressing Enter/Return. Thatâs the Return keyâs purpose! Itâs just bad design IMO.
Line breaks (