Adobe Muse beta, Hands On

So Adobe launched a beta version of their Adobe Muse today. This is a program where you can “Create websites as easily as you create layouts for print. You can design and publish original HTML pages to the latest web standards without writing code”.

This might sound like heaven to the many people with small businesses in need of a web site. But in all, that is just it. It only Sounds good.

As a web designer / programmer for the past 10 years, I can say that this is absolutely the worst product that Adobe has ever rolled out. Yes. Worse than Contribute! And I am ashamed to admit that before I gave it a test run, I felt somewhat threatened by Adobe Muse. Thankfully that feeling was short lived as I attempted to construct my first site with it.

Adobe Muse actually does what it says. You CAN create websites with ease with out writing code. However, it is what it doesn’t say that it doesn’t do is why I am writing this. After designing a fairly simple site, I went and inspected the code as any good programmer should. What I found was the nightmare of all coding “DONT’S” you could ever imagine. And as far as stating: “You can design and publish original HTML pages to the latest web standards without writing code”- That is a FAR stretch to be claiming as such, as per what I found, listed below:

1. Naming conventions for HTML elements and CSS styles had to be the ugliest thing over all. I had DIV tags with class names like “grpelem” and ids like “n1”, with no explination of what they stand for and absolutely no ability to change them to something I would prefer. In some cases they were given underscores before the name (e.g. _n1). Which is something that I never do in my HTML or CSS.
2. One doctype option. Or rather you don’t get an option. HTML5 “DOCTYPE” is all you get. I don’t mind that, but I know there are many people who still prefer using other doctypes.
3. Styling methods. This drove me nuts. There is no options for percentages or “em” when styling for the size of anything. Pixels is your only option. Which causes the most obsurd CSS coding I have ever seen when it comes to setting an element to 100% in the browser window. First off you have to physicly pull the sides of a rectangle (div) to either side of the page to make it 100%. Once you do that, take a look at the code and this is what you get:
   

   Adobe Muse Generated Code

4. This thing produces code that doesn’t validate. Need I even continue.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. There are other things that plague your pages using Muse. It will add on bloat files, such as unused jqurey files, empty DIVs. And I don’t even want to get into the whole cross browser compatibility thing here! Just expect some major issues with IE. I am, also defiantly sure SEO experts would sh*t a brick trying to work their magic around the code Muse produces.

Of course I can understand that this product was created with extreme beginners in mind. But I think it is inconsiderate of Adobe for giving said beginners a tool that will set their site up for failure.

Don’t take my word for it. After trying Adobe Muse out, I google “Adobe Muse crap” to see what I come up with. It returned with a result from another blogger who felt it didn’t even deserve a  lengthy post as I have written.

Overall I don’t see any benefit for this product, with the exception of quickly throwing up a mock-up site site for your client to review a “concept” of what you could produce for them. I would NEVER recommend Adobe Muse as an option for constructing an actual working site.

#BoomSnickle
@JremyDeaton