With products like Audition, Photoshop, and inDesign (and eventually Illustrator, but I'm still cutting my teeth on that), the time it takes me to think of what I want done isn't much faster than the time it takes me to get it done, because of all the key rebindings, plug ins, data merge, and other features. Even with premiere and after effects, although I have to google everything before I do it, the solution is usually two or three mouse clicks tops. I even remember googling how to pre-render in Premiere and the answer was "press enter". Compared with Microsoft products, they take a lot longer to learn, and a lot longer to do something basic (like make a text box or word art, for example) but very accurate at understanding exactly what I want, to the pixel, and reaching that perfection in the fewest clicks and key-strokes possible. Let's call this consumer level and professional level. I've even had similar experiences with consumer level and professional level coding. (I never got very good at it, but I grasped the basics well.) Many products, I've noticed the early warning signs, but stuck with them. Warning signs are a things like a feature that behaves in almost the way I'd expect, but not exactly the way I'd expect. Or the computer taking too long to complete a task that should be simple. For the most part, I have ignored the warning signs and continued on until whatever project I was working on had reached the point of no return, and the task I wanted to complete next was literally impossible under the given software. My experiences with Muse have all been warning signs. Sailing out to sea, but hearing the creaking of wood. It's scary, considering my high hopes and aspirations for the site. I have been putting off learning Dreamweaver for ages, but every now and then something reminds me, Muse is consumer level, and it may not always do what I want it to. I've been able to work around its quirks for now. I have buttons with undeletable but empty text boxes attached. I have objects where the X and Y co-ordinates are not integer values, but only the integer value is displayed to me. If I don't pin an object, but stop it from resizing, the mirror image of the behaviour it displays cannot be created at all. It is a purely asymmetrical feature. Whether or not an object moves downwards to accommodate an expanding textbox seems to relate to where I put it, but if I re position it with the arrows, the behaviour doesn't change from where it was. These are all warning signs. Creaking of the wood, so to speak. None of these things are deal breakers yet, but I fear the next one probably will be. Muse is too "helpful", often forcing me to out-think and out-play its "helpful"ness in order to avoid it making the website it wants to make, rather than the website I want to make.
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