msarca

You've read me like a book! When you grow up, you should become a detective. Or a business consultant, as you are equally good at figuring out why people buy stuff.

Yeah, it's called "listening to feedback", so don't get into conspiracies with what I have tried :))

Thanks! It's not a secret: we believe this model offers more value to the customer and better fits our vision. We tried subscriptions and had moderate success, but we never felt we were connecting with our users. There is no reason for users to pay us $10, as we offer a 7-day free trial, which is more than enough to animate one SVG. Also, we reset the trial every time we introduce a more important new feature so people can try and assess the software again for free. In the last 3 months we had two trial resets.

Thanks! Funny enough, I'm super-qualified to answer that since my partner and I made that software https://www.linkedin.com/posts/marius-sarca_coming-soon-the-...

Of course, in the meantime, they brought new features and regressions, but the core technology remained the same, so I have an excellent insight into that product. I would say that the main differentiator is the team behind the product. Ours is better, and your experience as a customer will also be better with us.

Great, thanks for the feedback! We'll revise the wording if it generates so much confusion. Drop me a line at [email protected] after you try it and let me know how it went.

Thank you for sharing your opinion. The primary reason people buy Expressive Animator is its high quality. The perpetual license is just a bonus. It's sad to hear words like "deceptive" from a fellow entrepreneur, but don't worry, I've grown a thick skin over the last years.

The product's value is not given by its pricing model, and the future is bright.

Thanks! We primarily focus on SVG animations, while Rive has its proprietary format and player. SVG animations run natively in the browser and don't require a player. By having their own format and player, they are not limited by standards and can, naturally, provide more features. Of course, this comes with disadvantages too, as users get vendor-locked. Also, they have a subscription-based model, while we offer perpetual licenses for a one-off payment.

What is confusing? Since the launch, we have released 10 updates, and we'll continue to release new updates until v1 reaches its EOL. Then, the updates will stop, but you will still be able to use the software. It seems pretty straightforward to me.

No, not yet, but I'm confident our customers will not be confused. We'll see.

Yes, it does

TBH, I'm a bit surprised by this interpretation, as we don't have this problem with customers. Maybe it's an HN thing. I think we were only asked once or twice about how updates work. I'll take a look at CleanShot though. Thanks!

Nope, I like that link!

It is not, because you do get a lifetime license. Of course you don't get free "lifetime updates", but you can keep using the version you have paid for as long as you want.

Sure thing https://expressive.app/expressive-animator/download/

Will do, thanks!

Thanks for your suggestion! We provide a free trial https://expressive.app/expressive-animator/download/

You can't, we don't support Linux, but someone here suggested Synfig as an alternative.

When version 2 is out, you will have the option to upgrade for a fee or to continue to use version 1 for free for as long as you like.

We have exactly the same business model as Affinity.

Thanks for the heads up! I'll fix it

Thanks! I'm glad you like it

A cross-platform, native program would have easily cost us an extra 2000 working hours, and the gains would have been minimal. However, Expressive Animator is a free and open-source program, and you can always contribute, either with code or with money. Cheers!

Unfortunately, Firefox dropped support on PWA. As a result, only Chromium-based browsers are supported.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25972527

Assembler CSS is built on top of Constructable Stylesheets because we believe there is value in this technology. If you haven't heard about constructable stylesheets, here is a link https://dev.to/westbrook/why-would-anyone-use-constructible-... to a short article. If interested, you can find many more with a simple search on Google. When people read about constructable stylesheets, they are like, "Wait, whaaaaat? Constructable Stylesheets is about using JavaScript to generate CSS?". Yeah, dude, welcome to the 21st century! Try not to make a heart attack over this.

Hi, everybody! Full disclaimer: I'm one of the developers behind Expressive Suite. Thank you all for your feedback; it has been beneficial. The first thing I want to address is the browser support. Sadly, Firefox and Safari do not support many of the features that most Chromium-based browsers do. There are a thousand different things that make an application feel like an application: access to the file system, access to local fonts, unrestricted access to the clipboard, etc. Without these features, it is hard to create something great. When Firefox and Safari add support for all of these, we'll gladly support them too. About the features (or the lack of them): what you see is the first pre-release of the software. We'll release a new version every week until the software matures. Unfortunately, Github does not allow us to set milestones at the organization level, so you'll need to watch the other repositories too. https://github.com/ExpressiveSuite/CanvasEngine/milestones

Also, take a look at the opened issues, and you will see what kind of formats we are planning to support. https://github.com/ExpressiveSuite/ExpressiveAnimator/issues

One more thing: we will support video exports somewhere in September. Why September? Because that's when WebCodecs will be available in Chromium-based browsers. I hope this helps.