[HN Gopher] Show HN: Randomly create beautiful website layouts
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Show HN: Randomly create beautiful website layouts
Author : kemyd
Score : 236 points
Date : 2021-11-26 10:49 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (shuffle.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (shuffle.dev)
| somebodythere wrote:
| Cool project. I am sure that if you call it AI instead of random
| you will be able to charge more.
| kemyd wrote:
| If we're ever looking for investors, we'll throw something
| about AI into the PowerPoint. ;)
| Crazyontap wrote:
| I see you submitted the same link yesterday but didn't get any
| traction. Genuinely curious if HN allows consecutive re-
| submissions? Couldn't find anything in the guidelines / dang's
| comments either.
|
| Anyway, I'm working on a Show HN myself and it would be great to
| know if it breaks any rules to submit the same project again
| especially if it doesn't get traction previously.
| kemyd wrote:
| Hey, I read in an article that I found on Hacker News that "a
| small number of reposts is ok." They recommended trying with a
| different title and waiting 1-3 days between reposts.
|
| What I can recommend you personally is.. don't use "click bait"
| title. My first submission had this kind of title (even if
| mathematically it has been correct).
| asicsp wrote:
| From FAQ (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)
|
| > _Are reposts ok?_
|
| > _If a story has not had significant attention in the last
| year or so, a small number of reposts is ok. Otherwise we bury
| reposts as duplicates._
|
| > _Please don 't delete and repost the same story. Deletion is
| for things that shouldn't have been submitted in the first
| place._
| mtc010170 wrote:
| This is neat! I'll add it to my box of no/low-code tools.
|
| I do feel like not letting the homepage itself shuffle its layout
| is a missed opportunity for showcasing the product.
| kemyd wrote:
| Interesting idea!
| wink wrote:
| The idea is great, but I was surprised there's not a single "page
| template" that looks like a boring old wordpress blog, i.e. 2
| column layout with maybe a header nav.
| kemyd wrote:
| Hey, in the first release, we focus on general-purpose landing
| pages. We will develop this tool further. No worries! Also, in
| December, we are adding WordPress theme export to our editor.
| This will be a great time to update the configurator with
| "WordPress-like" templates :)
| thomcano wrote:
| This is a great execution on your part, I have been planning to
| create a website, and then I saw this post; I had fun tinkering
| at the shuffle editor. I think I'll consider this one for later.
| kemyd wrote:
| Great! :D
| nauticacom wrote:
| Alternate, more accurate title: Create cookie-cutter website
| layouts that look like every other bland landing page. Bonus
| points if they use Tailwind.
| kemyd wrote:
| Too long
| bladegash wrote:
| Believe it or not, not everything needs to be bleeding-edge
| creative and new.
|
| I have personally found Shuffle to be a fantastic tool for
| personal projects, especially when I cannot or do not want to
| spend much time on design but want things to look halfway
| decent. That was half the appeal of frameworks like Bootstrap
| and I'm not really sure what value your comment adds, if
| anything (on a throwaway, to boot).
| Lucasoato wrote:
| Hi, I haven't perfectly understood what can be exported, how
| would it integrate with Angular? Btw the designs seem very cool!
| kemyd wrote:
| Hey, you can check exported examples in this ZIP archive:
| https://shuffle.dev/static/files/example.zip (the same link is
| available in the editor when exporting a demo project)
| the_arun wrote:
| Why demo site is taking me to a paywall/create account in the
| next click? Couldn't you let us play without signing up? or am I
| missing another flow?
| kemyd wrote:
| Hey, you can use the editor without creating an account:
| https://shuffle.dev/editor
| toinbis wrote:
| Wonderful idea, great implementation!
|
| Would love to see you guys partnering with TailwindUI somehow.
| That's my default go-to ui widgets library (it's not open source,
| so it might be challenging to find a proper partnership model
| with them).
|
| Just bought a lifetime subscription. And as I already do have
| subscription - my last recommendation is to switch to monthly
| subscription model as soon as you can. Monthly subscriptions is
| just so much more profitable pricing model:)
|
| Congrats again on shipping great product!
|
| Edit: typos.
| kemyd wrote:
| Thanks for the kind word and your insights! We're investing in
| our UI libraries, and I hope we become your "default go-to UI
| widgets library" soon ;)
| toinbis wrote:
| Haha - wonderful, good plan, fingers croseed! :)
| bladegash wrote:
| You used to be able to import TailwindUI's components to
| Shuffle's VSCode extension, but I'm not sure if that is still
| the case (or if it was ever condoned).
| kemyd wrote:
| Hey, we allowed uploading Tailwind UI (as a ZIP archive) into
| our editor if you had a license and access to sources. Of
| course, we didn't sell access to their library.
|
| We will open this feature to any UI library in the future.
| However, we put it on hold because (1) it supports just one
| format (ZIP archive with category -> components in separated
| HTML files), (2) development of our UI libraries is more
| important to us at this moment :)
| bladegash wrote:
| Oh yes, didn't mean to imply it was anything nefarious and
| I really enjoyed having that flexibility/using your
| product! Have had a lifetime license for around 6 months
| now and you guys are doing a great job!
| pokepim wrote:
| How about other open source component libraries like
| Vuetify? Do you plan adding them in the future?
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I believe tailwind ui's license agreement specifically
| forbids using it in website generators
| bladegash wrote:
| It was not really a website generator when in the VSCode
| extension. It was more of a copy and paste into your
| editor, with a easier way of viewing the components
| available (e.g., via dropdown in the editor).
| nvilcins wrote:
| Dummy question from a non-front-end dev:
|
| What is the simplest way to host this project as it is on the
| web? (as a static page, no additional functionality)
| codetrotter wrote:
| I've been self-hosting websites for years on a VPS but as I
| have been using Cloudflare for DNS management and for their CDN
| features, I made the jump over to Cloudflare Pages a few days
| ago.
|
| Cloudflare Pages was trivially easy to set up, complete with
| GitHub integration and I can heartily recommend it.
|
| https://pages.cloudflare.com/
|
| The sites I'm hosting are plain old static sites. I have a
| separate private repository for each site on GitHub, with all
| of the html files and the few images and such that the sites
| have, just as I always had, but now when I push commits to
| these repos they are automatically pulled and deployed by
| Cloudflare Pages and basically all I had to do was to enable
| GitHub integration, choose the repository, tell Cloudflare how
| to "build" it, which because everything is static the "build"
| command in my case is simply: cp -R htdocs
| dist
|
| With htdocs just being a directory of static content inside of
| any of my website repositories for the site in question, to
| keep the content I want to serve separate from things like the
| README.md and other files that I also have in each repo.
|
| Then I told Cloudflare Pages that the "build" output is in the
| "dist" directory.
|
| It's great!
| Dangeranger wrote:
| Try out Netlify, their developer experience is excellent and
| the platform can grow with you if you need more features beyond
| the free tier.
| kemyd wrote:
| Hey,
|
| We export standard HTML/CSS files (or JS / JSX for Material-UI
| libraries).
|
| You can publish them via Netlify (as mentioned above) or any
| other hosting for static pages. You can check examples of
| exported sources here:
| https://shuffle.dev/static/files/example.zip (the link is also
| available in our editor when exporting a project)
| guzik wrote:
| I've been a shuffle.dev user for a very long period. After some
| time I learned the CSS and HTML to the point I no longer need
| Shuffle, but still - one of my fav web builders.
| kemyd wrote:
| Good for you! And thanks for the kind word.
|
| Just for clarification for other readers: Shuffle is not just a
| low-code builder. We also have a catalog of UI libraries, so
| you also don't need to know how to design things. :)
| EGreg wrote:
| It looks amazing, but how do I actually EDIT the contents of
| things in the editor?
| kemyd wrote:
| You can edit the content by clicking on the desired item in the
| editor :)
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| So the output is markup, CSS and JS and I can take that and do
| whatever I want with it? Similar to Bootstrap Studio, if you're
| familiar with that tool?
|
| I'm intrigued :) Two questions:
|
| - On the VS Code page a coming WordPress integration (?) is
| mentioned. Can you elaborate on what that is, and went it might
| ship?
|
| https://shuffle.dev/visual-studio-code
|
| - I didn't see any mention of accessibility. Can you speak to
| that? Please :)
|
| --
|
| I love this idea. Simply put there are far too many "web
| designers" (read: don't know a span from a div) that simply don't
| add much value. This feels like their far more worthy
| replacement. Cheers!
| kemyd wrote:
| Hey,
|
| Yes, we export HTML/CSS and source files (Scss or Tailwind JS
| config).
|
| Here you have example projects exported:
| https://shuffle.dev/static/files/example.zip
|
| We will release the WordPress theme export in December. It
| won't be an integration / WordPress plugin. You'll still use
| Shuffle online, and when exporting the project, it has the
| format supported by WordPress (support for navigations, posts,
| etc.)
|
| Accessibility - There is vast room for improvement.
|
| I recommend you to check the ZIP archive above (you can
| download it from our website when exporting a project, too) and
| verify it will work for you.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| All good answers. I certainly under it's a WIP. Thanks.
| uxcolumbo wrote:
| Congrats for launching - looking good.
|
| One of the designs though needs some tweaking, i.e.
|
| "Get perfect app for your project"
|
| It's missing a 'the'... Get the perfect app...
| kemyd wrote:
| Good eye! Thanks!
| jhvkjhk wrote:
| Are there any similar tools but for simple blogs? I find it very
| hard to design a simple but not dull blog layout because you
| don't have many pictures to show like a commercial website.
| kemyd wrote:
| Hey, you can browse the full catalog of UI components available
| in our editor via this URL: https://shuffle.dev/components
|
| Maybe you'll find designs for your next project!
|
| Especially, check categories Blog and Content:
|
| * https://shuffle.dev/components/all/all/blog
|
| * https://shuffle.dev/components/all/all/content
| mawise wrote:
| This looks really cool--I'm interested to try using it. On
| signup, Firefox warns me that you'll share my email with
| Facebook. Do you know what's up with that? Is there any way to
| opt-out?
| kemyd wrote:
| We use Facebook Pixel, and I think that message is related to
| it. I'm guessing that any ad block or strict privacy settings
| in Firefox should block this.
| stanislavb wrote:
| ...linking to the homepage https://shuffle.dev/ so that
| alternative options mentioned here can be picked up by SaaSHub
| https://www.saashub.com/shuffle-dev-reviews
| jawmes9 wrote:
| Love to see Bulma in the mix, it is my favorite CSS framework.
| Thanks!
| triptych wrote:
| I literally bought a license just now because you support Bulma
| marban wrote:
| A million layouts that will make you look like everybody else ;)
| kemyd wrote:
| Plot twist -> You can customize it in our visual editor ;)
| sandGorgon wrote:
| this is awesome! can you not export to nextjs ?
| kemyd wrote:
| Hey, we don't have a direct export to nextjs at this moment,
| but it is on our radar, of course :)
| TruthWillHurt wrote:
| Why does every layout, template and site-builder tool assumes all
| websites are a three-page thing, with big blocks of images and
| one or two products?
|
| Do you actually visit such sites on a daily basis? Last time I
| did it was a page for a hip local barber shop.
|
| How about a bit more complexity for the sake of realism?
| shaolinspirit wrote:
| this is crazy good, I love it
| SMAAART wrote:
| Disruption by randomness!
| kemyd wrote:
| That's what we said!
| kemyd wrote:
| Hey!
|
| We wondered what to do to make building layouts even faster while
| adding more fun elements to our daily work. After a while, the
| inspiration came! Why not randomize the components while having
| fun, like at a slot machine in a casino?
|
| The idea generator combines available UI components into finished
| layouts. You choose the technology, the library, click "Shuffle!"
| and boom, ready-made layout. Click again, and you have a new
| layout.
|
| Based on our No AI(r), and No Blockchain(r), and Pure Random(r)
| technology. ;)
|
| What do you think?
| awestroke wrote:
| How many layers do you use for your Pure Random network? How do
| you train the randomness? How big is your random seed?
|
| Also, I have heard that NoBlockchain is web scale. Can you
| confirm this?
| kemyd wrote:
| Tough questions! I would have to ask our CTO, but here in
| Poland, it's already Friday evening, so I'll leave him alone
| for now ;)
|
| From my side, I can say that Shuffle contains 3,700 UI
| components, and combinations are formed using them.
| lfnoise wrote:
| Why do you start every reply with "Hey"? This thread reads like
| astroturf promotion.
| kemyd wrote:
| I didn't expect this post to be so popular, so I said "hey"
| to the first people and then didn't want others to be sad
| that I didn't say "hey" to them.
| arendtio wrote:
| Wow!
|
| I like the idea and the execution very much.
|
| However, the pricing model is not so much my taste. The
| Lifetime license seems somewhat cheap, but $24 per month feels
| a bit expensive for a casual user.
| kemyd wrote:
| Hey, thanks for your feedback. We have plans to remove
| lifetime licenses early next year.
| triptych wrote:
| Glad I got in on lifetime before you stopped offering it :)
| rambambram wrote:
| Very nice! I like the idea of randomness.
|
| For my website business I made something alike. It combines
| some general styles with random colors. Some very ugly things
| are possible with it. ;) But it also has some preset templates
| that give you an idea of how nice it can look.
|
| https://try.hellowebsite.online/quickdesign/ (best tested on a
| screen bigger than your smartphone)
| kemyd wrote:
| Good luck with your project! :)
| kleiba wrote:
| I think it's a great idea, but perhaps it's not different
| enough from a collection of templates that you can scroll
| through (which are also in some "random" order, of course)?
| kemyd wrote:
| Hey, if you don't trust our random algorithms, you can browse
| all our UI components linearly here:
| https://shuffle.dev/components
| pokepim wrote:
| I spent whole afternoon today thinking which template kit
| to buy so that I get nice set of component with neat
| design. There were so many of them so it was tough choice.
| But i think i'm going to get lifetime access to your
| service instead. I just wonder if you are planning on
| adding more components in different design style? Like the
| Tailwind CSS brutalist style (i think codeacademy uses
| something similar)
| kemyd wrote:
| We add new UI libraries every month, and we will create
| them in different styles, for sure. At the moment, Cronos
| UI may be closest to the style you're looking for:
| https://shuffle.dev/components/all/cronos/headers
| jcynix wrote:
| > What do you think?
|
| Doesn't load in the DuckDuck<Go browser app (Android), simpky
| kerps spinning its wheels ...
| kemyd wrote:
| Hey, thanks for reporting!
| jcynix wrote:
| To be more specific: works fine under DuckDuckGo (app
| v5.102.3) on Android 11 (phone) but not under DuckDuckGo
| (app v5.102.3) tablet on Android 9.
|
| The four buttons on the left could use some tooltips to
| explain their jobs, btw.
| onassar wrote:
| Really gr8. Clever idea :)
| kemyd wrote:
| Thanks!
| deft wrote:
| Its called shuffle.dev because the website keeps pivoting too.
| kemyd wrote:
| It's funny, but it's not true ;)
|
| We keep adding new features, but the central point (the visual
| editor) is the same.
|
| Today, you can start a new project:
|
| * Classically, by opening the editor:
| https://shuffle.dev/editor
|
| * From our components gallery: https://shuffle.dev/components
|
| * From URL in this Show HN. Using our new project configurator:
| https://shuffle.dev/setup
|
| The goal is to help our users choose the best UI library for
| their next project.
| deft wrote:
| just a light joke :). I really like your stuff please don't
| get rid of any of it! Been a paying customer for months,
| mostly using the editor.
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(page generated 2021-11-26 23:01 UTC)