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Views Tools, a simple way to design React interfaces is out

over 4 years ago from , UX designer

Hi everyone!

We're launching Views Tools today as part of YC Startup School 2018!

Our long term goal is to simplify development and we're starting with how product teams build their apps today.

Views Tools is a simple way to design React Web and Native interfaces without writing code.

You can try it now at https://views.tools

11 comments

  • Sacha GreifSacha Greif, over 4 years ago

    I would strongly suggest reconsidering the name. Not only does it tell you almost nothing about what the app does, it's also really hard to remember properly because the double plural means two chances to get the name wrong. Even from a purely grammatical point of view it's weird, as it's not clear why "tools" is pluralized since this is a single app.

    11 points
    • Dario Cravero, over 4 years ago

      Thanks for the feedback Sacha! Views comes from the fact that you can make UI views with it (also, our file extension is .view). Tools is there because there are a few tools involved within the app. I take your point though!

      0 points
      • Mike StevensonMike Stevenson, over 4 years ago

        Also tough since this is for React and not Vue, so people will have to be like "No it's V-I-E-W, not V-U-E".

        0 points
  • James FutheyJames Futhey, over 4 years ago

    LEGIT!

    1 point
  • Linton Ye, over 4 years ago

    Check out https://pagedraw.io/, which looks like a more comprehensive approach -- only hope their visual editor is as good as actual design tools

    0 points
    • Dario Cravero, over 4 years ago

      We've done some experiments converting Sketch to Views a while back like PageDraw would do and found that most times the resulting UI needs to be adapted too much for the UI to match what the designers want - the biggest challenge is in the position absolute aspect of Sketch designs and the lack of order of the layers.

      Granted, it can save time if you're starting from a set of high fidelity designs but it really depends on how your flow goes. We're seeing that teams using Views would generally do some some low-res mockups and move onto Views directly because it's faster for them that way.

      Having said that, we may revisit the import at some stage because ultimately what matters is that teams can design and adapt faster to what their users need.

      -1 points
      • Linton Ye, over 4 years ago

        What I'm impressed about PageDraw is actually their tight integration with dev environment, and their compiler approach to encapsulate the UI in a somewhat blackbox.

        Are you guys going similar direction or do you have a different stance?

        0 points
        • Dario Cravero, over 4 years ago

          Yes, Views Tools produces code that is part of your code base and the Views morpher compiles to production ready React code.

          0 points
  • Akash Ramani, over 4 years ago

    What are the chances I'll be able to use it for Flutter in the future?

    0 points
    • Dario Cravero, over 4 years ago

      Views is library agnostic and it could totally work with Flutter! You would need to write a morpher from Views to Flutter like we've done with react-dom and react-native. Let us know if you're interested in doing so and I can give you some pointers on how to go about it. Cheers!

      0 points