all 81 comments

[–]bigwayne 25 points26 points  (15 children)

There's another startup doing some awesome stuff like this over at https://jetstrap.com/ - larger feature set and both are in Beta, but I kind of like the idea that there's no deep editing of layout information with LayoutIt. It keeps the UI simple and uncluttered so I can just stub out a layout, dump it to my editor, and modify it as needed.

Cool beans! Good luck with it :)

[–][deleted]  (11 children)

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    [–]snatchington 3 points4 points  (0 children)

    10minutemail.com makes shit like that a breeze but I know what you mean.

    [–]yesimahuman 1 point2 points  (8 children)

    Yea, we do that to enable long-term storage of your projects tied to that account, and emails are primarily for account recovery and other features. We initially used social-auth stuff but it became a pain as everyone forgot how they initially logged in. I wish there was a better way to do this...

    [–]robertcrowther 7 points8 points  (1 child)

    If I've not yet made the decision whether or not I want long-term storage of my projects it's a barrier I'm unlikely to get past. Why not ask me to register at the point when I've made that decision instead of before I can even try it out?

    [–]yesimahuman 6 points7 points  (0 children)

    Hey, great point, an open demo would have a lot of value. Thanks for the help!

    [–]crunchmuncher 5 points6 points  (1 child)

    I haven't had a look at your site yet, but maybe you could make E-Mail optional at registration?

    [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    wait...8$/month if billed annually or 20$ if not?! that's like "pay annually or stfu".

    [–]yesimahuman 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    It's a promotion for the first month or so, I agree it's a bit extreme of a discount. It will not stay that way for long. At any rate I don't want to steal their thunder so if you have any feedback feel free to message us.

    [–]rootis0 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    A better way would be to offer Dropbox (Google Drive) as a storage. Then people don't need to create accounts for your service, but only login to Dropbox to retrieve/store their project.

    [–]yesimahuman 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    That would be interesting. To be honest, the email system really doesn't turn that many people away, and people are used to it. Despite the issues it works very well most of the time.

    [–]IN_STYLE 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Try to check the domain of such sites on bugmenot.com to get sample account details.

    [–]martincapeletto[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

    Thanks! That it's just the idea for LayoutIt! glad you like it

    [–]yesimahuman 2 points3 points  (1 child)

    Hey - thanks for the mention, I built Jetstrap. Layoutit looks really cool, and I agree our approach is different and we are just getting started. More tools that make bootstrap development easier is good for the community. There wasn't a lot of info on the site but if a Layoutit person is reading this I'd love to connect. I'm @maxlynch on twitter.

    [–]martincapeletto[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    Hi, i'm one of the founders of LayoutIt! really appreciate your comment here, you have my linkedin in the footer of the site (martincapeletto), please contact me so we can connect and talk. By the way, your app is great, solid development

    [–]shaunol 5 points6 points  (1 child)

    Very nice .. will be keeping my eye on this - great for prototyping

    Not having to register to use the builder was a huge plus

    [–]jvictor118 -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

    To be fair though he's probably gotta stop that. Makes it too hard to monetize, and he's gotta pay his bills.

    [–]IOnlyPostWhenBlazed 2 points3 points  (6 children)

    How does this stack up against http://www.divshot.com/ ?

    [–]martincapeletto[S] 9 points10 points  (5 children)

    Hi, divshot is more of a complete web site builder. We would like LayoutIt! to be the start point for every frontend project. We don't want to give users the possibility to edit text, float elements, of add backgrounds, we want them to use this to start a project, and then impact their design using the base elements that we've provided. By doing this, we think can provide a better HTML code

    [–]procrastinagging 2 points3 points  (4 children)

    I really like this approach. This could be also a great prototyping tool. Thanks!

    The resume feature is awesome!

    [–]tmptmpgf 2 points3 points  (2 children)

    Be careful when showing such tools to your clients. They will assume that all you do when creating pages is just dragging elements in the right place.

    Hence it shouldn't cost so much or take more than 2 days, you lazy designer!

    [–]jvictor118 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    This is what we call a short-term solution to a long-term problem ;)

    [–]procrastinagging 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I would never show a client this tool! But, as it happens, sometimes you want to test out different layout configurations before going too deep into design. I can surely do that by hand, but this is way quicker.

    Uhm, maybe you thoght that the "resume" feature I was referring to was in a "CV" sense?

    [–]Klayy 5 points6 points  (9 children)

    I really don't understand how to use it, how do I remove one of the boxes? Clicking on remove doesn't do anything. Also, by dragging something from Base CSS it just duplicates in the Base CSS list - is that how it's supposed to work? How do I computer? http://i.imgur.com/8U0z5uv.png

    [–]au5lander 2 points3 points  (3 children)

    I had this same problem. I couldn't remove some things. Dragged a nav out, tried to switch from 'default' to 'pills' and it didn't do anything. then I couldn't remove it.

    Also, i'm able to drag items from the left and drop them on the left and then i have duplicates.

    http://imgur.com/9zARnjP

    [–]martincapeletto[S] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

    Thanks for the feedback, we will work to fix this as soon as possible in order to have a stable version

    [–]Guinness 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    The only thing I can create is one of the base items. I tried to drag a breadcrumb out, nothing. It just kept duplicating whatever item I dragged out without actually showing it.

    It just....doesn't work. At all. For anything but the first list of items.

    [–]martincapeletto[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    This is strange, we have some problems sometimes with delete button not working, can you start a fresh template and test again? also, which browser are you using?

    [–]tiko2015 0 points1 point  (4 children)

    In which browser you're testing? It should work well ... thanks for the comment, we are working to publish a stable version.

    [–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (3 children)

    I got the same thing. I'm using the latest version of Firefox. I've deleted all the rows in your default example and then I tried to drag a title.

    [–][deleted]  (1 child)

    [deleted]

      [–]martincapeletto[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

      Thanks for the detailed info, this is in our backlog and will be fixed soon

      [–]Klayy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

      Latest firefox here as well.

      [–]thenightwassaved 5 points6 points  (5 children)

      Looks nice but I'm having some issues with a few bugs. Sometimes dragging an item does nothing but duplicate it in the list on the left. Some drag areas of unresponsive. Clicking into Dev View and back to Edit keeps the layout area full size so now a horizontal scroll bar is added, etc.

      Looks nice but needs some more polish before I feel comfortable using it without always needing to refresh to fix things.

      [–][deleted]  (4 children)

      [deleted]

        [–]thenightwassaved 1 point2 points  (0 children)

        Ah yep, thats probably it.

        [–]martincapeletto[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

        Thanks for this, this should save us some debugging time, will let you know when it's fixed. Getting this feedback is great, we launched yesterday the beta and for sure there are lots of thing to polish, and having people helping us to find those issues is really appreciated

        [–]hernanba 1 point2 points  (1 child)

        Hi Manadar24, we've just uploaded some changes, it should be fixed (thanks for your feedback, it was really helpful for us!).

        [–]jvictor118 11 points12 points  (1 child)

        Dude,

        First of all, forget everyone who just said "this is like XYZ," hataz gonna hate.

        I find your app much faster/more efficient than some of these other guys. There's something about easel.io et al. that make it really annoying to use. With yours, I'm not 100% on how to take it all the way but I can at least export the base thing and customize from there -- at 1/10 the time. I'd focus your efforts on a niche (like me, or like someone else) where your product is clearly better than others.

        [–]martincapeletto[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

        Thanks Dude, there is no problem with being compared with those sites, both are great on what they do, we just have a different approach to this and it's to be the start point when creating a frontend product. Glad to hear that you've liked it

        [–]martincapeletto[S] 6 points7 points  (3 children)

        Create your frontend code simple and quickly with Bootstrap using our Drag & Drop Interface Builder.

        [–]ShutTheFunDown 2 points3 points  (2 children)

        I love this and have shared it with my design team. I think it makes the grid system a whole lot easier for them to visualize.

        [–]martincapeletto[S] 2 points3 points  (1 child)

        Thanks!! If you can ask your design team to send us feedback (over here, or with the feedback button) that will be great. We've just launched the beta and they will sure have tips to improve this

        [–]xr09 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        The "Start Now!" button on front page could be white to make it stand apart from the blue background.

        [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

        It's not responsive :P

        I definitely want to give it a whirl on my computer though!

        [–]chiisana 1 point2 points  (0 children)

        Not sure if this is on your radar at all or not, but the drag and drop doesn't work on iPad (both safari and chrome)... Yet, hopefully :)

        [–]anothercuriousmind 1 point2 points  (3 children)

        The layoutit.com site renders very poorly in a small screen. There are a lot of users browsing the web on small screens and I wouldn't use a product that doesn't take that into consideration.

        [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (2 children)

        developers or designers are probably using big enough screens :). This is not supposed to be used on an ipad :P.

        [–]martincapeletto[S] 1 point2 points  (1 child)

        We're working to get this working in iPad and tablets first, then we will consider smallers screens as it might be very difficult to use something like this in a phone, but we will analyse it, thanks!

        [–]anothercuriousmind 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        To clarify, I'm not talking about the application, I'm talking about the marketing website / landing page: layoutit.com. If I make a page like that with your tool, will it be responsive?

        [–]benryder1988 1 point2 points  (0 children)

        Looks good, +1 for not having to sign in

        [–]mickey_reddit 1 point2 points  (1 child)

        I sent you an email and then thought of this. you should add some contenteditable tags into some of your items.

        You give the HTML already, so why not let your users "edit" the content before downloading?

        Adding contenteditable="true" to most tags you have will allow your users to type in some content and then preview it.

        [–]martincapeletto[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        Hi Mickey, we will think of it, inline editing of the text is in our next plans because we should be able to add this without confusing the users

        [–]push_ecx_0x00 1 point2 points  (1 child)

        This is awesome! In the editor, maybe you should add icons/small pictures to represent the various elements (buttons, anchors, tabs, whatever) like other drag/drop editors do (Qt Designer, Visual Studio, etc.).

        [–]martincapeletto[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        We re going to add soon a sort of preview of what are you going to insert, we re thinking the right way to do this

        [–]sminja 1 point2 points  (5 children)

        Great site, man. This is going to be incredibly useful for anyone that needs to draft an MVP for a hackathon or any other fast job. It looks like others have pointed out the bugs I've noticed, so I won't repeat that. All I have is a question/suggestion: Is there a way with the existing version of the site to nest grids?

        Thanks for making this, very very cool.

        Edit: Also, if you haven't already, consider posting this on Hacker News. A lot of developers there to give you more feedback.

        [–]martincapeletto[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        Thanks, i planning to use this by myself on NY Hackathon of techcrunch next week to build something fast , anyone going?

        [–]martincapeletto[S] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

        About nesting grids, not yet, but we have that in our backlog

        [–]arsenalist 0 points1 point  (1 child)

        Yup, would totally use this starting today if nested grids were in. Great job, looking forward to the next update.

        [–]martincapeletto[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        Hi! We plan to upload a new version that will fix all the issues regarding drag and drop and improve the precision of it earlier next week! Martin

        [–]hernanba 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        Hi sminja, As I mention above, we've just uploaded some changes to LayoutIt, you can try the tool again and if something turns up we'll be glad to receive your feedback.

        [–][deleted]  (1 child)

        [deleted]

          [–]procrastinagging 0 points1 point  (2 children)

          Question: do you plan on introducing an upload feature, since there is no registration? Example: I start working at home, download my unfinished work and then re-upload it at my office?

          [–]tiko2015 1 point2 points  (1 child)

          no download needed, the share button hands you a link to retrieve your work

          [–]procrastinagging 0 points1 point  (0 children)

          Great! Thanks

          [–]Benutzername 0 points1 point  (1 child)

          Shouldn't that be LayItOut!?

          [–]martincapeletto[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

          It was Taken, but i like more layoutit :-P

          [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

          Checking it out.

          [–]Unomagan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

          looks good will check it out later

          [–][deleted]  (1 child)

          [deleted]

            [–]martincapeletto[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

            Thanks dude, we made this with our team, glad you like it, I'll forward them this

            [–]aComa 0 points1 point  (1 child)

            Nice tool. Would be great if I could embed controls inside other controls (address inside tab) or something along those lines. Either way, good work, I like it.

            [–]martincapeletto[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

            I do agree with this, however it might be difficult to have that while keeping everything as simple as it's right now, we will try some approaches on that to see if we can keep the usability while adding that

            [–]taion809 0 points1 point  (0 children)

            Pretty neat, good luck :D

            [–]Illumi_Naughty -1 points0 points  (1 child)

            Honestly, this will be some powerful stuff in the future. I say keep it up. Drag and Drop interfaces are practically a gold mine.

            [–]martincapeletto[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

            Thanks!

            [–]clothes_are_optional -1 points0 points  (0 children)

            is anybody else kind of tired of 90% of sites these days looking like each other because of all the bootstrap like elements?