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]

Yeah, Hohumm.

[TanaSP]

I've just started using Pinegrow a little and I am liking what I see so far. A few thoughts from using it a couple of times:

• It's not as design friendly as Muse, in that Muse largely copies InDesign. However, Pinegrow's styling tools are more accessible and much more varied than Muse. In comparison to Muse as a straight up design tool, Pinegrow feels only slightly more cumbersome, but this is offset by the ease of styling which is superior to Muse.

• Comparing it to Dreamweaver, Pinegrow is leagues better than DW as a design tool. It manages to offer the wide array of technical access and fine tuning that you can do in DW without DW's klunkiness. Pinegrow feels to me that it offers the under-the-hood power of DW but with far more grace and elegance, which for a professional designer equates into more efficiency and a better bottom line.

• I like how Pinegrow can open any html file, even from sites on the web, and you can start editing right away. This is something that always bothered me about Muse and Dreamweaver. DW people lamented Muse's messy code (which was mostly messy CSS, although that was fairly easy to clean up with a few search and replace sweeps in a text editor). While Muse's code was hard on the eyes, it was ridiculous that DW was incapable of parsing it, which made using the two apps together a chore. Pinegrow opens Muse generated HTML without a problem, as far as I can tell. This means that you could migrate a Muse site to Pinegrow easily by outputting the site as HTML then using that as your working files in Pinegrow. With my albeit limited usage of Pinegrow, it seems to handle the code fine and the Muse generated sites I looked at in Pinegrow looked and acted exactly as I would have expected.

• Pinegrow is an app that sits on your computer, which is something I like. I notice a lot of the newer design apps are accessed online and exist in a cloud. This worries me, as this additional layer of abstraction opens the door to the occasional technical glitch. For whatever reason, it just makes me a little nervous. Pinegrow as an app is quick and responsive; I would say it feels more nimble than both Muse or Dreamwaver. They also offer a subscription price and a straight up pay at once price, which is kind of them to let you choose.

[BenPleysier]

Although I agree that Pinegrow will be a better choice for non-coders than Dreamweaver, there are some comments in your story that need correction.

Comparing it to Dreamweaver, Pinegrow is leagues better than DW as a design tool. It manages to offer the wide array of technical access and fine tuning that you can do in DW without DW's klunkiness. Pinegrow feels to me that it offers the under-the-hood power of DW but with far more grace and elegance, which for a professional designer equates into more efficiency and a better bottom line.

Pinegrow and Dreamweaver are completely different tools. The former is purely for designers and non-coders, while the latter is for code-savvy designers/developers. As an example, how does Pinegrow interact with a database like this video from Wappler?

I like how Pinegrow can open any html file, even from sites on the web, and you can start editing right away. This is something that always bothered me about Muse and Dreamweaver. DW people lamented Muse's messy code (which was mostly messy CSS, although that was fairly easy to clean up with a few search and replace sweeps in a text editor). While Muse's code was hard on the eyes, it was ridiculous that DW was incapable of parsing it, which made using the two apps together a chore.

I do not know what makes you say that Dreamweaver was incapable of parsing the HTML files produced by Muse, namely any text editor, including Dreamweaver, can open an HTML document because it is no more that a text file, no parsing required. Yes, the CSS produced by Muse is extremely messy, reason why code-savvy web developers have never warmed to Muse.

Pinegrow is an app that sits on your computer, which is something I like. I notice a lot of the newer design apps are accessed online and exist in a cloud. This worries me, as this additional layer of abstraction opens the door to the occasional technical glitch. For whatever reason, it just makes me a little nervous. Pinegrow as an app is quick and responsive; I would say it feels more nimble than both Muse or Dreamwaver. They also offer a subscription price and a straight up pay at once price, which is kind of them to let you choose.

Great reasons for non-coders to choose Pinegrow. But keep an open mind, there is also Wappler which can do both front- and back-end development Your First Bootstrap 4 Page - YouTube

[Ussnorway]

as someone that uses Pinegrow and is warming to Wappler (for backend code jobs that I don't do much of now days) is there any reason you see that we can't have both?

[BenPleysier]

I tend to use any tool that assists in developing a website. As an example, I use Dreamweaver, Brackets, Fireworks (CS6), Prepros, Wappler and even the F12 function in Firefox.

• Dreamweaver because, with the inclusion of extensions, it is the most complete IDE for my business
• Brackets because of its speed, I use it for quick changes to the site
• Trusty old Fireworks for my images because I am too lazy to learn Photoshop
• Prepros for my Sass files and to concatenate the support files, CSS and JS. Dreamweaver does have Sass support, but unfortunately no automatic pre-fixer which is required for Bootstrap 4
• Wappler which is a newcomer and is, at the moment, not as complete as Dreamweaver. I try to use it as much as possible sending feedback to the Wappler Team when I come across a problem/suggestion.
• Firefox to discover and iron out the problems especially server side.

Because of Wappler's speed, I tend to not use Brackets anymore.

That is my pre-amble, now to answer your question. There is no reason not to use both, Pinegrow and Wappler. My view is to use the tools that best suit you. Be careful though that you do not get stuck with proprietary software like Muse or any of the online editors. There will always be an EOL.

[JackD3]

I have just finished trying to download the trial of Pinegrow and my antivirus (Webroot) stops it cold stating it is infected with malware. Did you have that problem?

[rayek.elfin]

Did you download Pinegrow from https://pinegrow.com/  ?

I have no such issues. My antivirus (Avira) has no problems with it.

[TanaSP]

I was able to download it without issues as well.

[atillahun]

Never encountered any problems downloading Pinegrow and it rolls out fairly frequent updates.

[TanaSP]

Ben, I appreciate your perspectives, although I want to address a few things for the sake of those migrating from Muse.

Pinegrow and Dreamweaver are completely different tools. The former is purely for designers and non-coders, while the latter is for code-savvy designers/developers. As an example, how does Pinegrow interact with a database like this video from Wappler?

My point was DW is not a good design tool, although without Muse in place it's really the only "design" tool in the Adobe suite for a professional designer now. You can use it as a design tool, of course, and that probably makes sense if you are heavily into the coding as well. For those of us who spend most of our time designing, a tool like DW is slow and costly. Since this is a thread about replacing Muse, we can assume that most people affected by its cancellation are designers, not coders or developers. Most of us don't need an app that interacts with a database. If we did, we've already found other solutions for it.

I do not know what makes you say that Dreamweaver was incapable of parsing the HTML files produced by Muse, namely any text editor, including Dreamweaver, can open an HTML document because it is no more that a text file, no parsing required. Yes, the CSS produced by Muse is extremely messy, reason why code-savvy web developers have never warmed to Muse.

It's a frequent complaint by DW users that Muse CSS is a mess and is not handled well by DW and thus Muse generated code opened in DW is usually problematic. However, this is as much a failing with DW as it is with Muse, since there is nothing technically wrong with Muse CSS. The fact that Pinegrow can handle it fine is a plus in their favor and deserves to be mentioned for the sake of those migrating from Muse.

Great reasons for non-coders to choose Pinegrow. But keep an open mind, there is also Wappler which can do both front- and back-end development Your First Bootstrap 4 Page - YouTube

Yes, but again, keep in mind this thread is all about those migrating away from Muse. If Muse is an important tool for a designer, then back-end development is probably not a high priority for you. For the work that I do, for instance, it's rare that a client has back-end needs. Most of my work is front end for clients who want beautiful sites to promote their products or services and often quite quickly.

[Illostraight]

We still don't know who you are or who you work for.  Am only trying to help people here with alternatives and not degrade them at every opportunity.

BTW, it shows how you think and are by attacking the large type. I wrote it in notes and copy/pasted. It just came out that way. stop taking everything so personally. Good Grief! Give people a break.

[Robotfist]

Adobe has lost my trust with this one. I have been an Adobe user since the Photoshop V1. I will never trust Adobe with my websites again. What a horrible decision.

[ItsFlybye]

I would like to also state my dissatisfaction.  Muse has always allowed me to get great templates that already had responsive pages.  Id simply edit each page and have a decent looking site in a few days.  Adobe doesn't have a Muse replacement, and it is ridiculous to think someone would pay for an extension to Dreamweaver to make it easier to use for non-coders.

All Adobe needs to do is have a "Novice" or "Pro" mode for Dreamweaver so us Novices can have the simplicity of Muse within Dreamweaver.

[Nancy OShea]

ItsFlybye  wrote

All Adobe needs to do is have a "Novice" or "Pro" mode for Dreamweaver so us Novices can have the simplicity of Muse within Dreamweaver.

That won't happen.  In terms of programming and operation,  Muse and Dreamweaver have about as much in common as elephants and tea leaves.   DW is aimed at people who want to work with code while MU was for people with absolutely no interest in coding.  Very different products for different types of users.  

Optional 3rd party extensions for DW will automate some of the tedious coding tasks for you thus reducing production time, but you still need to understand code basics to get the most out of DW. 

[Peter Villevoye]

My dear fellow web designers, Muse users, ACEs & ACIs, there's another sign that Adobe is dedicated to take a totally different approach on the commercial value of their tools and services:

Free Adobe XD CC Plan | the UX/UI design, prototyping & collaboration tool

And with the Sparkle  Adobe Spark (pre-release) sibling in the works (a more consumer/prosumer oriented online web design application), I'm pretty sure that they're planning on a home-run in both the professional web industry and the consumer/prosumer area. After all, it's hard to compete with largely "free" products, especially when they're not that bad at all !

Another thought of mine is that all this would have made much more sense if the new Sparkle app  Adobe Spark (pre-release) would have been available already. So my guess is that this new tool just wasn't ready yet, but the management probably didn't want to wait any longer with axing Muse and freeing up XD. So maybe there's a bigger thought behind it all... ?

One remark about Duncan's funny tweet, claiming that HTML is dead.

Maybe we don't like to see HTML (and CSS and JavaScript) code, and if you're a designer you don't need to anymore (as long as you know some crucial HTML principles and CSS rules). But in the production of midsize to larger websites, coding isn't dead at all. In fact, most of the coding has nothing to do with design, but with hooking web designs and content up to various frameworks and systems. No WYSIWYG tool can cater and code for them all.

[Moderator edited for clarity in product names.  Spark is not the same as Sparkle.]

[Nancy OShea]

Peter, I'm not sure if you mean Adobe Spark (pre-release) or Sparkle which is a Mac only desktop app by a competing company. 

[Peter Villevoye]

Oops made a typo there – and I can't edit it anymore...

I definitely meant Adobe Spark. Thanks for catching it

[Nancy OShea]

No worries.  I took the liberty of editing your post so as not to confuse Spark with Sparkle.

[rayek.elfin]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Peter+Villevoye  wrote

My dear fellow web designers, Muse users, ACEs & ACIs, there's another sign that Adobe is dedicated to take a totally different approach on the commercial value of their tools and services:

Free Adobe XD CC Plan | the UX/UI design, prototyping & collaboration tool

And with the Sparkle  Adobe Spark (pre-release) sibling in the works (a more consumer/prosumer oriented online web design application), I'm pretty sure that they're planning on a home-run in both the professional web industry and the consumer/prosumer area. After all, it's hard to compete with largely "free" products, especially when they're not that bad at all !

Well, I for one am not surprised Adobe XD is free now. Not only is the competition light years ahead of XD and essential features requested by users over a year ago still remain in limbo, but XD as a prototyping tool is absolute rubbish. I'd go one step further, and state here that XD as a user experience design/GUI by itself is a train-wreck, if I ever saw one. XD is going straight for the scrapheap, just like Muse did. There's been almost no development on XD - compare a small company like the one behind Pinegrow or Sparkle.

No wonder Adobe is giving it away for "free" - meaning you will have to sign up for the Creative Cloud, and be exposed to their marketing. What. A. Farce. And people keep buying into this? Amazing and terrifying.

Same for Spark: gods, what a piece of ...

Sorry if I sound harsh. But the signs are on the wall here.

Stay well away.

[Peter Villevoye]

Thanks on your comments about Adobe XD ! Let me state first that I'm not very familiar with the obvious and earlier tools for UX/UI design (like Sketch, Invision, Axure, and those dozens of plugins). I'm just observing and reporting Adobe's actions and intentions, and I think I can see a pattern in it.

Although it's a logical inquiry and human reaction to know "which is the best" or to declare something as the best (which worked well in the trade of desktop publishing and print media, in which gradually Adobe ruled and eventually held and still holds all the trumps), the designers and their tools for the digital age are less prone to this knee-jerk behaviour to standardise. Any (self) acclaimed standard flips and mixes almost every year, which is a good thing in an era and area where technologies and their applications are unlikely or even impossible (and undesirably) to be set in stone yet.

So might it be that while Adobe XD is (according to you) certainly not as good as current others, that Adobe just hopefully tries to get at least a part of the action by serving their current customers and a newer generation of (web) designers to take a look at their web and app design tool ? Does it matter what tool a designer uses, as long as it works and works in a team ?

My current observation of the web and app design industry, is that it's not about the best workflow regarding efficiency and elegance, but about pragmatic approaches for the best result for the user.

Note to moderators: I hope this is not going too much off-topic. If it does, I apologise – please kick me !

[Duncan Wilcox]

No WYSIWYG tool can cater and code for them all.

Yet

The point though is that while you can easily find examples where code is required, that doesn't automatically disqualify all and every WYSIWYG website builder. Case in point, Muse. Many many people, including presumably the vocal ones in this forum, used Muse to produce perfectly functional websites.

It's fine, by the way, we're in agreement. Coding is still needed in many cases. Just not all.

I guess a tweet isn't enough to convey the full message. Perhaps you've heard expressions such as "peak microsoft", to signify that while microsoft is still prevalent, the days of relevance and huge growth are behind us.

What I meant with the tweet is that, within the context of consumer websites, hand coding is increasingly a thing of the past. I back that claim noting over 30% of internet websites being based on wordpress, which in turn are likely to be in large majority based on a template and zero coding. Arguably a significant portion of the remaining sites are built without code. Peak hand coding, if you will.

Duncan

[ALsp]

You make a very good point. Unfortunately, the age of start-up software companies peaked years ago. Look for Microsoft or Adobe to (finally) figure out how to make the next big thing in web dev apps... Unless WordPress figures out how to make a desktop UI.

[Peter Villevoye]

It wasn't my intention to take your tweet ("WYSIWYG is the future and hardcoding HTML is dead") out of its context, but let's not quote me either out of its context ("No WYSIWYG tool can cater and code for them all").

To be absolutely clear on this, I was addressing the need for coding for mid-sized to larger websites, which require all kinds of scripts, queries, frameworks, and APIs to be technically integrated into the development of a website, and to have these aspects appropriately customised within the design. Such projects and tasks require a huge amount of hand-coding !

Muse hit a sweet-spot, but got stuck in the middle. Smaller websites were going to online DIY services, and larger ones were split up across a team of assorted disciplines. Add the myriad of problems with responsive and the "rogue" characteristic of Muse to the calculation (an app not chiming in with Adobe's goal to hook the tool up in its scheme of marketing services), and you understand why it had to go down...

[Duncan Wilcox]

Apologies for the out of context quote, it was mainly for humor. I continue to believe we are in agreement.

I do however believe that visual tools are eating the low end of the market. In fact squarespace, etc have been for a while.

It takes someone more enlightened than Adobe to pursue this fully, pushing the need for hand coding upmarket. It has happened in countless other markets, full of people saying "it can't be done" (the "echo chamber").

Duncan

[Peter Villevoye]

Thank goodness !! I thought you really believed a WYSIWYG tool is feasible... Is it ?

We seem to agree, largely – wholly, perhaps. Maybe not on the color of the Spark icons.

You're very right about that "echo chamber", BTW.

People laughed and said it can't be done, to do professional print design on a measly $3000 computer (tadaaa: PageMaker). Professionals thought you can't blend pixels and vectors and simply fill apparent closed areas between open lines (yo and behold: Flash). Designers think you really need a good computer and specialised pricy applications to do layouts and infographics (hello Canva.com). Whatever seemingly impossible tool or feature the larger public wants, they'll get their hands on it, some day.

That's why it was so nice to see Muse take care of so many things...

Hey, I've got an electrical bike, without a bulky battery and the usual jungle of cables and stuff !

Never thought I'd live the day to see that happen. Next wish/request: I want to fly it like a drone.

[This must surely be getting off-topic. I'll behave, leave for now, and get on my bike and ride...]