Hey, I'm Tim and I created Hot Page. This is a long-time side project that I'm now bootstrapping with the help of a couple of friends. The idea is to take the convenience of a drag-and-drop editor (Squarespace, Wix, etc), but never lose the connection to the basic building blocks of web pages: HTML elements, CSS rules, etc. The advent of Web Components makes this a really powerful model.
Although I'm of course pleasantly surprised to see this on the front page of HN, I was planning on waiting a few months to post it myself because we are working on some ways to make the editor much more powerful. We have a long roadmap of new features like:
* more ways to edit CSS properties visually (without losing the 1:1 connection to the CSS generated)
* inline CSS (style attribute) editor for elements that let's you use :hover and media queries
* a library of code "snippets" that lives in the left panel along side the basic elements
* tighter integration with web components
* integrating VS code language servers for accurate auto completion everywhere
* and a whole lot more.
I'm a long time lurker on HN and have long loved the community here. All of your thoughts and feedback are greatly appreciated, especially on our marketing because that is proving to be a real challenge. AMA
edit: roadmap
Are you able to self host what you generate or export it to other web hosting sites? Or is everything created hosted on your end?
We are working on a feature to let paid users download their sites as a zip file or export them to cloud storage buckets (s3/aws, google cloud, etc). So far though it's meant to be used with our hosting. Free accounts have an advertisement for Hot Page itself but they let you connect your own domain for free.
Think about providing your solution as a standalone/offline desktop app as well (I guess Electron-based).
Sorry for spoiling your planned launch on HN. I stumbled across it by accident (such are serendipities on web), thought it was cool and fat fingered it here. Looking forward to things coming in future.
Thanks for posting it! Obviously it's better to launch early and often but I'm much more of a programmer than a marketer and I was afraid it wouldn't get much traction. I've never been so happy to be wrong heh
Our tendency as programmers is to make it perfect (or bust), take the seeing it getting traction as an indicator that you can often release earlier than you thought.
I'm really digging the Hypercard-nod styling, how did you do this?
E.g. Start from zero, or was there a pre-existing CSS kit used as the base?
<3
The editor side of the site has no CSS frameworks, just plain React with Typescript. I used a lot of Hypercard as a kid so that might explain something. Also our designer really loves pixel art and totally ran with the web 1.0 mandate that I gave him. Some of the design choices have been a little controversial, but I'm glad you dig it! Hopefully users don't find it distracting so we can stick with it
I honestly love the design. It's not half-assed fun, it's balls-to-the-wall extremely fun! I am so burned out on sleek flat UIs for Serious Business. You might as well go ALL in if you're going for the look. Please don't change a thing (but feel free to make it MORE crazy!)
Hey Tim! Just wonder if you were inspired by Hot Glue.
https://hotglue.me
I just found out about Hot Glue yesterday from this thread! Hot Page is pretty different in that the idea is to give people a way to edit DOM like they would with a text editor but with a visual UI and drag-and-drop. Hot Glue does have a visual UI but it's an abstraction on a web page that uses absolute positioning instead of the normal document flow. I've seen so many pages like this break on different devices or window sizes that I'm not really a fan of the approach. You can read more about the philosophy behind Hot Page here: https://hot.page/takes/picking-the-right-abstraction
Well since microflash has jumped ahead, let me also jump in.
https://fx.hot.page/ has some of the web components on it. While the slinky one is silly fun, the gallery one is very cool. Looks like it's light weight and easy to use. I was impressed by the annotated source code page where you explain in detail what is going on. While jumping, swirling, multicolored text is your mission, your forte is the documentation you've written. Nice job.
Wow, this comment just made the last 7 months of long hours totally worth it. You have understood and distilled the essence of this project so accurately. This is my first time launching something like this, so it's just a great feeling to know there are people on the other side of the screen who are getting it.
The combination of web components + a visual app builder is a really compelling space. I'm working on something myself, and I love see more approaches our there!
Your style is just obviously incredible. I hope some of that bleeds into your customers sites so there's more fun silly, but also real, things out there on the web.
One thing I'm working on in parallel to a visual builder is a web components catalog and custom elements manifest validator. I hope this will help boost the set of quality web components available to tools like this, and that the catalog will be embeddable in them.
Good luck!
As a plain vanilla enjoyer, I'm loving everything about hot.page, as it is... At last, a web property with character. I second `AstroJetson`'s comment about your communication / documentation. Also your pricing plans and the fact that you have chosen to offer custom domain support even in the free plan. These things tell me y'all are alright people. Rooting for you!