Firedrop: A website builder that does everything for you

Re:Firedrop: A website builder that does everything for you by iverjo on Sunday July 31, 2016 @05:23PM (#12198947)

Designing websites with the help of AI methods is hard. thegrid.io is competing in this space, and I'm not impressed with what they have achieved so far. Initially they stated that they would launch some time in the spring last year. It's been over a year now, and they still haven't given all the beta users access. Yesterday, The Grid featured a website [0] created with their tool. That website takes around 25 seconds to load, even with my speedy internet connection. Also, I wasn't impressed by the menu, which was merely a hamburger button. I think they need to focus more on UX and faster loading times and less on fancy image processing and color matching algorithms. I wish Firedrop luck going forward, and hope that they learn from The Grid's mistakes.

[0] http://curlqueen.salon/

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Re:Firedrop: A website builder that does everything for you by spiderfarmer on Sunday July 31, 2016 @05:33PM (#12198992)

The approach they took looks to be fundamentally wrong. If they had started with some solid base templates and made some parts changeable depending on the content, they would have had a product that came close to what they promised.

The source code for this page is bad in so many ways..

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Re:Firedrop: A website builder that does everything for you by notahacker on Sunday July 31, 2016 @07:18PM (#12199392)

The ironic thing is despite apparently not using solid base templates, the end result looks like it was knocked up by a teenager (ab)using a generic modern WordPress template anyway... until you check View Source and burst into tears

The worst design issue isn't so much the questionable taste as the fact the "AI" doesn't seem to have figured out that the primary purpose of the website - to book appointments - probably shouldn't be hidden away in a hamburger menu.

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Re:Firedrop: A website builder that does everything for you by foota on Sunday July 31, 2016 @05:58PM (#12199106)

Dear god do not view this site on a phone with a data cap.

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Re:Firedrop: A website builder that does everything for you by timdorr on Sunday July 31, 2016 @06:09PM (#12199165)

50 reqs, 41MB transferred (!), full load in 23.06s, DOMContentLoaded: 1.11s.

Insane.

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Re:Firedrop: A website builder that does everything for you by rbinv on Sunday July 31, 2016 @05:46PM (#12199052)

Wow. That page loads 41 MB.

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Re:Firedrop: A website builder that does everything for you by rickycook on Sunday July 31, 2016 @07:22PM (#12199402)

the AI has clearly found the trend with pages over the years and is trying to make the page feel more futuristic

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Re:Firedrop: A website builder that does everything for you by heyts on Sunday July 31, 2016 @06:03PM (#12199126)

Including one 18.9Mb gif and no less than 6 jpgs clocking between 1.9 and 5.9 Mb. Looks like counter-optimization at this stage.

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Re:Firedrop: A website builder that does everything for you by rhizome on Sunday July 31, 2016 @07:17PM (#12199389)

At least you can assume that all of your images will always be full-resolution.

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Re:Firedrop: A website builder that does everything for you by kuschku on Sunday July 31, 2016 @05:49PM (#12199069)

Can you upload a video or a bunch of screenshots of that website? It’s been 6 minutes on my 100/40 connection and it still hasn’t loaded more than the logo.

I’m quite sure at this point a 4K video showing the site would load faster.

EDIT: It has loaded right now. I checked with speedtest.net and fast.com just to check if maybe my connection is at fault, but nope, that site is just horribly slow.

And react.js? For a static site? WTF

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Re:Firedrop: A website builder that does everything for you by rhizome on Sunday July 31, 2016 @07:18PM (#12199393)

Resume Driven Development

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