Macaw – Code Savvy Web Development Tools
There’s been many web development tools made during the last few years, many of which aim to let “non-coders” or people who aren’t familiar with code create websites, normally via the use of a visual WYSIWYG editor (colloquially referred to as the Design view) instead of a code editor, the most famous of these being Adobe Dreamweaver. The problems with these type of programs is that the code they produce is normally fairly terrible which has a knock-on effect to other elements of the websites, such as slower loading times, easily broken layouts, dated code snippits among many other bad practices.
Macaw is the latest drop and place web designing application that’s currently in development and is being aimed at web designers, although I can’t help but feel that it will also be attractive for owners of small business trying to save money by doing it themselves. Although these are great applications for said user, since they most likely aren’t very experienced with code, if at all, they do pose a problem the moment their creation breaks. Finding such a problem is very hard by just looking at something visually. So the best thing is to dive into the code to find the problem. Now a user of drop and place and drawing it without the need of code, will probably have no idea what they are looking for! So they may call upon a web developer.
This is where people like us, SketchCode Studio, come in. We’re used to having to fix websites that have been made using web development tools. As our trained web developers are able to read code including HTML(5), CSS(3), PHP, jQuery and Javascript, they can locate such errors fairly quickly assuming the code is clean and laid out in a logical order. This is where the limitations of using drop and place web development tools begin to show themselves. Most of these do it yourself web design applications make the code so complicated, it is impossible to find the error. The only way to find the error would be to sit down and go through the code bit by bit but this could be very costly to the user and thus meaning it is cheaper just for the web developer to start from scratch!
This is the major issue with previous web development tools like this, they don’t think like a human and thus will produce something very illogical and unorganised because it can process it just like that. Alright for them, not for the poor web developer who has to sit there trying to understand it all! This is where Macaw comes in. This new web development tool, which is yet to be released, says it allows an inexperienced coder to draw their website out, just like the current ones on the market, but with a difference. Macaw will produce the code just like a web developer would. The inexperience coder wouldn’t see this when designing their masterpiece but if a web developer looked into it they would be able to see all the code laid out in a nice logical order.
This is very interesting for us, as we’ve had many clients come to us with their own built websites. Most of these have been an absolute mess code wise, and has made our job of fixing their problem almost impossible. We are wondering if Macaw will be the same as the rest of them but from what we have read it won’t and will look forward to having a play with this software, to see if Macaw can really do it like the web developers! Check out Macaw at macaw.co