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

[Peter Villevoye]

No Ares, Animate is not a solution.

That's just as silly as advising to use PowerPoint for some animations on a slide, save it as an HTML file, and hope for the best. So I do would like to forget this option...

[pziecina]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Ares+Hovhannesyan  wrote

Don't forget about Animate CC that can export Canvas HTML 5 sites with animation and they are responsive. Try it .. its easy to build one page site and simple website and export as HTML. Now it can replace Edge Animate CC.

Not a very good idea.

The only thing Animate has that is html5, is the doctype and the use of the html5 canvas element.

Using it to produce even a one page web site is almost as bad as using flash, for search engines there is no content, it is completly inaccessible to screen readers and makes a Muse site look small in file size.

[GARRogers]

Lonnie_Kunkel: I’ve been playing around with Sparkle and I’ve seen little imitations of designing responsive websites.

Any more opinions about it?

Thanks so much for mentioning it.

[Lonnie_Kunkel]

They a free trial. It’s definitley not Muse, which is better, but like I said, it’s the closest I’ve found to Muse’s drag and drop positioning.

[GARRogers]

Lonnie_Kunkel

Sparkle for Mac is the only desktop editor that I have found that comes closest to what Muse can do.

Frustration vs Elation - YouTube

This looks wonderful! Does anybody know anything more about it?

[Graham_Barr]

work_at_it I think you make a very valid point re page load times and PHP.   Oh, those waxing machines and the smell of CleanArt.

Terri Stevens Nobody has an attitude towards Ben, but he has come across very 'spiky' on here today. Preaching from his high perch and dismissing anything not related to his favourite Dreamweaver or Wappler.

Nobody is taking the Muse frustrations out on any ACP. We had a great conversation going in relation to the thread title until Ben shot everyone and everything down that didn't conform to 'his' opinion.

BenPleysierThanks for again saying "I'm an incompetent web developer" - You base this assumption on the code that Adobe Muse built for me? The same code that gets me ranked #1 in my area for 'web designer' 

I'll go and hide in my hole now, this thread 'had' been quite constructive and good-natured until the mods turned up.

[LindaFazili]

Hi Preran, I already responded earlier to the horrible news of killing Muse/BC. But today my customer asked what he should do because he received this mail (below) from a competitor. Because of all the discussions and uncertain solution (Spark not being ready) i chose not to pre-inform my customers. This email is aggressive in my opinion. Did Adobe (BC) leak customer lists (URL or emailaddresses) to competition? That would be terrible. Regards, Linda

-------- Oorspronkelijke bericht --------

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Datum:	2018-03-30 12:51
Afzender:	PlanetXTechnologies
Ontvanger:	info@garage(anonymous).nl

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[W_J_T]

LindaFazili  wrote

Hi Preran, I already responded earlier to the horrible news of killing Muse/BC. But today my customer asked what he should do because he received this mail (below) from a competitor. Because of all the discussions and uncertain solution (Spark not being ready) i chose not to pre-inform my customers. This email is aggressive in my opinion. Did Adobe (BC) leak customer lists (URL or emailaddresses) to competition? That would be terrible. Regards, Linda

That company (or others) may just be using this opportunity to scrape source code to find Muse or Business Catalyst related sites and then targeting those owners or businesses with such offers based upon fear. Regardless of their methods that's a pretty low tactic.

[LindaFazili]

Yes, it is a low tactic but how did they collect the URL/email-addresses from Muse/BC websites?

[W_J_T]

LindaFazili  wrote

Yes, it is a low tactic but how did they collect the URL/email-addresses from Muse/BC websites?

I can't say for certain. I don't believe it's a matter of a leak as mentioned in your previous post. I would instead assume they are targeting sites they either know about, or found links to on forums, or showcase sites, etc., which are built with Muse or Business Catalyst. They then simply search for an actual email, contacts, form, or find peoples names listed on the site to create an email address, or use the catch all. Then blast out their spam offer.

[JayneNBunting]

Linda

I am saddened by this Companies unsolicited and shameless approach to poach your Customers. I really do hope that Adobe had nothing to do with providing data to 3rd parties, that truly would be the lowest of the low. If it’s of any consolation to you I read the first few paragraphs of their communication and due to the poor level of their English Grammer my first thought was it’s some dodgy scammer from Nigeria and my second thought was if they can’t even get the English right in a Sales Pitch I most certainly would not want them going anywhere near my business website. I do hope this was just some chancer trying there luck and not a massive attack on all of the Creatives using Muse to build sites for clients, you guys have suffered enough!

Jayne

[W_J_T]

JayneNBunting  wrote

my first thought was it’s some dodgy scammer from Nigeria

Actually India, they probably also low ball quotes on various freelance sites also. -- * Nothing against India or its people.

[Lonnie_Kunkel]

If anyone wants to stick with Adobe, I found this course for Dreamweaver -- it's for visual designers and looks promising. I hope they don't scrap Muse, but if they do, I have every intention of weening Adobe from my life. I just thought some people would rather invest in something that may not be scrapped soon or who don't want to leave Adobe because of their other apps.

https://www.udemy.com/make-money-building-responsive-websites-using-dreamweaver/learn/v4/content

[Jon Fritz]

A word of caution for anyone thinking about a single app subscription to DW in order to run tutorials like the one mentioned above...

DW no longer has a 30 day trial as mentioned on that website, as with most Adobe products, it's only free for 7 days now.

[Lonnie_Kunkel]

True. I should have mentioned that. I was thinking of people who have CC. Thanks.

[allphotokz]

[johnm1885693]

Peran why would Adobe throw you here to field questions you cant answer? We are looking to Adobe for answers.. not be told you don't know. They should have at the very least held this announcement until the new Spark was available.

[rdsimaging]

I looked at the alternatives offered. Adobe XD doesn't build code, Adobe Portfolio can't be customize my website like Muse, and Spark only creates 1 page designs? I just started in with Muse. Spent hours learning how to use it and designing my website, PAID for Business Catalyst to host my site and the Very next day after I published my site, I get this email. VERY DISSATISFIED USER. I honestly want my money back, Adobe should never have allowed new users to set up with a program they are doing away with, that is not how rapport is built. I can't imagine how upset other Adobe Muse clients must be. Those who have invested much of their business here. Is Adobe willing to work out some type of integration for their clients to smoothly transfer their web designs over to a new or existing App? Will XD be modified for building code? Does Adobe have a plan for their Loyal Muse users?

[Peter Villevoye]

Hi RDSimaging. Some replies:

I looked at the alternatives offered. Adobe XD doesn't build code, Adobe Portfolio can't be customize my website like Muse, and Spark only creates 1 page designs? I just started in with Muse. Spent hours learning how to use it and designing my website, PAID for Business Catalyst to host my site and the Very next day after I published my site, I get this email.

Some people have all the luck – you're clearly at the other end of it... 😞

I honestly want my money back.

Although it's probably not within their policy to do so (and certainly not publicly talk about compensating it), you could try contacting Business Catalyst and try to get your order confirmation cancelled. Your case is indeed a very pitiful one...

Adobe should never have allowed new users to set up with a program they are doing away with, that is not how rapport is built.

After the internal decision, they just have to make an announcement some day. And it will never be the right moment, always be frowned upon, and judged as unreasonable, no matter what they would do or offer. So they just bit the bullet and dropped the bomb.

Is Adobe willing to work out some type of integration for their clients to smoothly transfer their web designs over to a new or existing App? [...] Does Adobe have a plan for their Loyal Muse users?

Nope, or not within any foreseeable future. It's better to start moving yourself, in stead of waiting for Adobe ?

Will XD be modified for building code?

Very unlikely. Adobe XD is totally aimed at designers, collaborating within teams, and handing off resources (images, style sheets, specs) to developers. There's no way to let one tool spew out universal code for hundreds of popular frameworks and hundreds of thousands of custom web applications. Such a solution is called "a developer".

[Beachcolonist]

I suggest that users initiate a class action lawsuit against Adobe. This would at the least delay discontinuation, perhaps for years. Leverage is always preferable to begging.

[pziecina]

I'm going to throw something into this discussion that has been overlooked, and that is the subject of hosting of web sites, and domain names.

Adobe has given everyone a years notice of the closing down of the BC servers, if anyone is moving to another program I would strongly advise against including hosting, and that company holding the domain name in such an agreement.

The reason I say that is, if a company that is hosting your site(s) should for whatever reason close down, you may not get any notice of them doing so. That would mean if you have not saved the latest version of the site and your client is not the registered holder of the www address, you cannot transfer the site to another host.

It may be a little extra work for you, but you have already experienced a program being discontinued, and hosting being stopped, (with a years notice). Imagine what it would be like with no or almost no notice and the loss of your clients domain name, (the www address).

[Nancy OShea]

pziecina  wrote

I would strongly advise against including hosting, and that company holding the domain name in such an agreement.

Good point!.  I always keep my domain name registrars (Network Solutions, etc...) and SSL certs separate from hosting.   If the host goes out of business (it has happened to me before) then I can move the site files, domain and SSL certs to another server.

[Graham_Barr]

pxlgk Hi - I was so nearly sold on Webflow, but I have noticed issues with page loading scores.

I created a duplicate of my Homepage using Webflow and the code generated is a quarter of that generated by Muse - great!

However, my Muse page has 250KB of content. https://rugbywebdesign.co.uk/

Identical Webflow page has 786KB of content https://rugbywebdesign.co.uk/webflow/index.html

Please, could you explain why the Webflow page is far more bloated? (same assets).  By far the biggest culprit is images, 11kB in Muse vs 516KB in Webflow.  Puzzling.

[pxlgk]

I'm happy to help take a look into this

Here was a test on your current site:

https://tools.pingdom.com/#!/dC7Nl9/https://rugbywebdesign.co.uk/

Here was a test on the Webflow exported version:

Website speed test

Quick comparison screenshot:

Image 2018-03-30 at 4.01.06 PM.png

They both seem to have the same amount of client-side loaded content, but the Webflow version loads a bit faster with less requests.

What tool are you using to test your load times?

[rayek.elfin]

Graham, all your images aren't optimized at all. For example, your main header image is 527kb, which I easily reduced without visual degradation to 135kb. The price tag: 35kb-->10.5kb.

responsive-u651172-fr.png 212kb-->117kb.

Just these three images: from 774kb down to 263kb. That is quite a difference all by itself. Resaving the SVG logo in another application (PhotoLine) got it down by a third. A bit of extra optimization, and I can probably get that down to half or less.

Optimize your images first. And don't rely on Adobe software to optimize PNG images. There are far better tools out there, for example ColorQuantizer. Color quantizer