Amused with Adobe MUSE beta.

The folks in the Adobe labs have been busy latey with Adobe MUSE beta, a WYSIWYG website building application, and is an interesting first step towards codeless site building. "Codeless" in that users are not required to understand code in order to build useable and interesting sites. Think of it as combination of Photoshop meets MS Word.

There are some designers whom think that this application is a step in the wrong direction. That codeless building is forcing designers into a fixed playpen, thus hampering creativity. However, I tend to reserve my own opinion on software that is still in beta, and only after I've given it a full measure of testing.

While I agree that codeless editors can be confining, there is a lot of folks out there whom know not a lick of code, nor have the time or care to learn it. We are busy people and despite all the fancy creativity one can extract from Dreamweaver. When the end game is to have a useable site that effectively communicates a message by tommorrow morning? This application will do it. It's a great tool to have for the most basic of sites, and can be used as a sketch pad of sorts for prototyping with clients.

Mind you, it's beta, and features are still in the works. While you can paste code to embed video from YouTube or similiar sites. Things like shopping carts and mp3 players, etc. are not there yet. While the software is currently gratis until 'early 2012', purchase will be available on a subscription basis only. They also offer a connected hosting solution, but I was able to export the entire site in HTML, and then use Dreamweaver (or any FTP application) to upload to my own server.

Working with the software was quick and easy, and I managed to produce the sample website in a single day, spending around eight hours of button hunts and simply trying things out. Much of that time was figuring out the software itself vs. creative piece work, so I'm certain punching out a prototype for client review could be easily done in a day or less.

While being easy to use, there were some nuiances:

1. The application has a site map, but it lacks templates. However you can copy and paste elements and entire pages to reduce repetitive work.

2. While working in layers is possible, the application is in dire need of a dedicated layer pallet. Many times I had to move things out the way in oder to gain focus of elements beneath. It also lacks a few basic editing tools such as a line tool.

3. While you can import Photoshop files, two things I found annoying. 1) They have to be in 8bit -a personal gripe for someone whom likes 16bit and would have to save two version of each file, and 2) changes in the Photoshop file don't automatically update in MUSE, and required manual replacement.

So whose this for anyway? If you really want a cheap and codeless way to create a web presence, there's a lot of free blog software out there like Wordpress and Blogger, and these include a huge library of ready made templates and control panels that allow for customizations. However, If you want to sell yourself as a website designer without having to learn code... me thinks that software is not your real issue.

Finally, it's still in beta and much will depend just how much functionality Adobe will put into this and if folks are willing to pay rent on yet another WYSIWYG editor.

Adobe MUSE beta site.

Update 1/8/2012: I have taken my Muse sample site down, as it was conflicting with my main site with regards to portfolio, contact and information.

Keep shooting.

-Pete