Adobe Muse EOL announcement - Alternatives to Adobe Muse?

[Preran]

Hi all,

For those of you that haven't received the email around the Adobe Muse EOL, see the FAQ Product Announcement that tries to answer some the common questions around the announcement including the reasons behind the decision.

Before we proceed with discussing alternatives, the Muse application will continue to open on your computer. You will be able to continue to edit existing or create new websites with the application. Adobe Muse will continue to be supported until May 20, 2019 and will deliver compatibility updates with the Mac and Windows OS or fix any bugs that might crop up when publishing Muse sites to the web. However, it is quite possible that web standards and browsers will continue to change after Adobe stops support for the application.

While there is no 1:1 replacement for Adobe Muse at this stage, the FAQ link above provides some alternatives. Also, Adobe is making our own investment in DIY website creation and welcomes all Muse customers to join our upcoming pre-release program for a new format that will be introduced this year as part of Adobe Spark. Build a beautiful website—in minutes | Adobe Spark

That being said, I would like to open up this discussion for discussing other solutions and migration paths. It would be ideal if we could focus our efforts on the topic at hand.

Thanks,

Preran

[EZEZ1]

True, true.

[pziecina]

EZEZ1​

I don't think anyone is ignorant of the problems of (ex)Muse users trying to find a replacement, just that no one can find a product that can do even half of what Muse was capable of doing without the designer at some point learning at least the basics of html and css.

What does amaze me is those suggesting that Muse users use Dreamweaver or some other program in conjunction with Bootstrap or Wordpress, and thinking they are an easy to learn alternative. As a coder, (yes, I admit I am) both Bootstrap and Wordpress use/produce code that is little better than that produced by Muse, (that's my opinion), and the only difference between Dreamweaver, (bootstrap) and Muse is that one is almost drag and drop, whilst the other is click to insert.

Unless someone can suggest a previously undiscussed replacement for Muse, and are not 'self promoting' their own product, (or one they are assosiated with in some way) then I think this discussion should be locked, as it no longer serves any usefull purpose.

[W_J_T]

pziecina  wrote

I don't think anyone is ignorant of the problems of (ex)Muse users

Sounds similar regarding the plight of the un-professional Muse users who think they are web designers that you mentioned earlier ?   ( just kidding )

[pziecina]

W_J_T  wrote

Sounds similar regarding the plight of the un-professional Muse users who think they are web designers that Re: Is Dreamweaver the next to go?  ?   ( just kidding )

I have not changed my opinion or position.

If someone calls themselves a web designer, then as far as I am concerned they should know how to code html, css and have a good idea about using javascript. If someone just calls themselves a designer and admits they know nothing about code, that person is being honest and is hopefully not trying to sell themselves as a web designer, (if they are I don't want to know or help them).

[Duncan Wilcox]

If someone calls themselves a web designer, then as far as I am concerned they should know how to code html, css and have a good idea about using javascript. If someone just calls themselves a designer and admits they know nothing about code, that person is being honest and is hopefully not trying to sell themselves as a web designer, (if they are I don't want to know or help them).

So what do you call someone who doesn't code but made a living with 10s to 100s of Muse websites?

Duncan

[pziecina]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Duncan+Wilcox  wrote

If someone calls themselves a web designer, then as far as I am concerned they should know how to code html, css and have a good idea about using javascript. If someone just calls themselves a designer and admits they know nothing about code, that person is being honest and is hopefully not trying to sell themselves as a web designer, (if they are I don't want to know or help them).

So what do you call someone who doesn't code but made a living with 10s to 100s of Muse websites?

Duncan

A designer if they do not know how to code. If someone is using Muse and does know how to code then finding a replacement to produce web pages/sites will be much easier, inconvenient maybe, but easier.

[Duncan Wilcox]

A designer if they do not know how to code. If someone is using Muse and does know how to code then finding a replacement to produce web pages/sites will be much easier, inconvenient maybe, but easier.

I guess I have a bit of a different opinion on this.

I think someone who can produce something that is published to the web, and looks/feels web native, is a web developer.

- someone who is a great illustrator, and puts their work on the web

- someone who is a great sales person, and can sell their web design work

- someone who is a great writer, and produces must read content (on the web)

- someone who is a great photographer, every photo is worth a thousand lines of code

- someone who is a great florist, and has a normal florist website

Code kind of feels marginal in many scenarios, and in fact just an added burden in so many. Muse addressed it pretty well.

While I don't agree with the recent inflammatory tone, there has been abundant condescending and patronizing attitude from coders, portraying coding as the "one true way" or the "inevitable direction". There are many venues for that, this is where visual website building was discussed.

Duncan

[Path11]

"...coders, portraying coding as the "one true way"

Amen, just look at websites during the days of coding being the only means and today with an explosion of beautiful sites that convey thoughts, processes, products. Night and day. But, it takes that backend coder to take it to the next step of being a site with little to no growth limit. So, tip-o-the-hat to both ends...when we all recognize that the front end designer frees the backend designer to focus on what they are good at and, it takes the back end designer to free up the front end designer to focus on their creative talent. try to do it all today and both ends aren't going to be what they could have been if you were to spread yourself over both tasks.

So, back to the topic - as I would be needing a lot of pages of information that could be organized in similar topic that would suit a database, as a coder, would you rather be handed the front end done and the database populated so that you could code the heavy dynamics (like Wappler) or, would you rather have the straight HTML from the front end person and the database information separate (like Pinegrow)?

[pziecina]

We just have different views on what a web designer is Duncan, so lets leave that part of the discussion alone as it brings nothing to help others.

I do not agree that creating pages/sites for the web can only be done by a coder, but I do agree with the sentiment that diy or other types of page/site creation tools, (of which Muse was one, and also the best) have redundancy at some point in the future built in. That is mainly because such programs will always be created with the 'standards' at the time of the original programs conception, and those may not be valid a few years later.

[claygoldstein]

Back in the day, when cars were identified by letters like "model T" and "Model A" a driver had to be a mechanic too.

Then drivers had to know manual transmission, had to shift gears with a clutch.

They still can but they don't have to... Not anymore.

We still use mechanics when needed, manual shift if we want to. Coders are the mechanics of web design. Some are also good drivers.

Muse was like one of the first, workable, good, automatic transmission cars.

What's the next? I hope it's Muse ....

[BenPleysier]

To add to that, I liken myself to a builder that follows the directions of the architect. In my case I develop a website that my designer hands to me. Like an architect, he (the designer) keeps a close watch on the outcome and re-instructs where necessary.

This has many advantages like

• the expertise is kept where it should be
• the time is spent wisely, the designer can concentrate on his work, I on mine
• we have great fun times arguing each others cases, his design and my outcomes

Along comes Muse which my designer starts using by building his own site, HOME. He was no longer reliant on me to produce his website. So I showed him that I did not need him for my site, http://pleysier.com.au/. We both had a good laugh as we compared each other's website. There was something not quite right/missing on each of our sites.

We are now back as a team and enjoying ourselves, doing what we are most comfortable with.

You could liken Muse to a 3D printer. The architect designs, presses a button and the printer builds the house. No builders (web developers) required.

[Ussnorway]

you don't do much 3d printing do you Ben

[BenPleysier]

What? And make myself redundant?

[bernwa]

Actually, I worked with Dreamweaver pretty much from version 3 on... when they were still Macromedia owned.  I built many sites in DW so I do know code to a certain degree.  I wouldn't call myself a coder but I do understand it enough to get into the bones of it.  But when I discovered Muse it was so refreshing to put my emphasis on designing sites without the burden of manipulating DW.  I've always prided myself with the look and feel of my websites and my clients have been pleased.  Muse was/is the prefect answer for me.

[Path11]

I think that just gets into semantics. When you get down to it, there is front end, and there is back end. If you are a small shop you can do both, if you want to but...there are only so many hours in a day and you just have to break things down and specialize if you are going to grow, I'm in that situation right now but, I recognize that coordinating a team is more efficient and, whether, from end or back end, I consider them designers. Coding is an art form, just as graphics are, just give the artists the content and direction they need and get out of their way and get yourself back in front of new, and old,  customers for sales and income steam. I think the days of doing everything are done except for those that are comfortable with being a smaller web shop. Treating someone that doesn't do it all as being something less, or a fake, is like bad mouthing Yo-Yo MA because he only plays the cello.

[pziecina]

Path11  wrote

Treating someone that doesn't do it all as being something less, or a fake, is like bad mouthing Yo-Yo MA because he only plays the cello.

where have I said or even implied what you are saying.

As for there being no difference between a designer, a web designer and a back-end coder, try getting a job as a web designer or back-end coder without knowing code.

[dpwalsh_6]

The fact that I'm responding to a 2 year old post is not lost on me...

I think it's curious that some forget the very specific marketing Adobe produced and promoted around how you could give "clients" acccess to edit and update the Muse websites you created for/with them. Even created a walk through on how to set it up and use it. If this was never intended as a "serious" tool for creating quality "real-world" work then why push that "works with clients" angle? Why would Adobe offer up that functionality AND promote it on their site as a feature if they never really thought that Muse could be a pro level tool? They also provided customer insights and use cases about agencies and orginizations that were using Muse to quickly create and iterate long and short form web content. The whole angle for a while was that this was the "short cut" for busy agencies and newsrooms to create robust and engaging content. I dont ever remember anything that ever felt like them saying this was a tool for lazy designers to make money.  

The other headscratcher is that some in here have been saying that becuse there was a robust plugin marketplace around Muse that it somehow meant that the Muse feature set was lacking or that that was the writing on the wall... and then they go on to suggest that if users of Indesign and Photoshop weren't using scripting that they were somhow not using those products correctly? Isn't that sort of saying the same thing? Have you been to the Chrome or Firefox stores? There's an entire multi-million dollar industry arround Photoshop and Illustrator plugins. The other thing with the plugins was that quite often a small company or individual could create a plugin that extened or added a feature faster than a giant company with shareholders and release schedules could. That's just the reality of steering a giant ship like Adobe. 

For me, sometimes I want to paint a picture and not have to crate the canvas, make the paint and build a brush from scratch before can even start to create that painting. That's what the coding thing felt like to me. I get that it's important and that some people just understand it. I was always envious of people that just got it. I didn't and it wasn't that I was lazy or scared to change. I think the coolest thing about using Muse, for me, was that as a person that tried and failed a few times to get the hang of writing code, it was starting to make sense - slowly- I was getting excited to see what was happening behind the scenes with stuff that I was building in Muse and becuse I could make the connection between the visual "thing" and the code it was starting to click. I was able to see first-hand the relationship between the code and the object. 

To be fair, I wasn't ever building full sites with Muse. Actually, I was building and hosting small interactive pieces that I would plug in to other things as i-frames. I've moved on to Infogram to build some of these same items and even Indesign with the IN5 plugin from Ajar. My org already has a website and I have no use for any of the template build-a-site products. Even Ceros (which to be honest feels a lot like Muse) would do the trick but that's way more money than I can justify for what I'm building. I don't have time or money to build out an experience in XD and then find and pay someone to build it. TBH some of the things I work on need to be built in days or even hours sometimes. Muse was a great fit but it's headed out to pasture so I've moved on. I can honestly say that 3 or 4 times a week I'll be working on sometime and think to myself "this would be so much easier in Muse."

Also, FWW, Spark is pretty clunky at best and Portfolio is ok for what it is, but it's no replacement for Muse. 

[Nancy OShea]

"If this was never intended as a "serious" tool for creating quality "real-world" work then why push that "works with clients" angle? "

For the very same reasons Adobe's marketing dept sang lofty praises about the then Edge product line, Contribute, InContext Editing, GoLive and PageMill.   Those were the "must have" tools of the day.  And as long as they were sustainable, Adobe kept developing and marketing to whoever would listen. That's what software companies do.

[dpwalsh_6]

Oh ok. Thanks. I thought I saw someone mention "hobby."  Excuse me for being wrong like so many others in your wake! 

[greenskin]

Try out the Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer (and soon Affinity Publisher) product range and you won't be chained to Adobe anymore!
- Affinity - Professional creative software  -

[JustiBru]

Can you provide more clarity?

Will Muse run on computers after May 2019?

Will Spark be as robust or will it be limited to one-page sites?

I'm really shocked by this decision and the very negative impact it will have on the company.

[Preran]

You can continue using Adobe Muse as long as its code is supported by web standards and web browsers, and the OS you are running it on. OS fixes will be provided for a year. I have already replied to the question around Spark.

[MartinaLotter]

I have updated to 2018.1 and encounterd the MISSING Files issue again!!!!!!!!! How do we fix this. Also I cannot create a new temporary site to Business catalyst. How can I publish temporary sites for my clients

[sstuart48]

They've already started shutting down. The ship is sinking we all need to get the hell off ASAP. I've given them until 6pm GMT and then I am done and taking my team to Webflow.

[Anders_Vikhult]

I have the same problem. SOLVE IT, ADOBE!!!!