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Is Reflow still being developed actively?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Wed, 15 Oct 2014 21:34:05 GMT

I loved reflow when it debuted. Within a few months I started designing directly in Reflow and built a workflow around it. But lately it's shortcomings have become really tiresome.

I'd hoped within the last year or so that symbols or some sort of CSS styling might be possible to text tags, but it's the basic interaction with the tool that's become the most exhausting.

The main one thing that's truly maddening is that in what seems like the effort to make the page elements stable it requires constantly adjust items lower in the DOM. I mentioned this a year ago when I talked with the Dev team.

For example: If I have a container (A) with 3 blocks stacked vertically in it and I add a 4th, the objects below don't simply shift down maintaining the margins I already set. Instead the lower containers (B, C, D) all take on ridiculous negative margins staying exactly where they were before adding the 4th block to (A), and container (A) simply goes behind the containers (B). Then I have to correct the margin changes in the B & C & D because they adjust their margins with each change up the DOM to stay where they currently are on the page. If I add a new container the lower ones take on huge negative matins to keep from moving, if I remove a block the subsequent blocks change to huge positive margins remain in the same location on the page. In what possible context would you remove a block from a page but want the subsequent blocks to retain a huge gap?

I don't know how this behavior ever came about because it makes you want to pull your hair out every time you make a change to a complex file. Each addition creates a cascade of corrections just to get reset back to what you already entered in the layout settings. I assume this is to help folks who are using Reflow as a drag and draw tool but that's so ridiculously imprecise I can't imagine any but the most amateur users relying on building layouts via drag and draw via mouse. This behavior makes a complex area like a header with logo, navigation, signup block and meta links in it a mine field every time you change something.

FROONT doesn't seem to suffer from this, once you set a value that value remains the same when changing other objects unless you change it. I don't see how a tool could ever be smart enough to interpret what I want to happen to everything else on the page when I add, remove or change elements. Reflow shouldn't be constantly changing my layout tab settings especially since they cascade down the DOM so that the same fields need to be corrected back to what I entered over and over again during a design. If the page breaks because I add or remove an object I'm aware of the context and can fix it if Reflow wasn't automatically adjusting all dependent objects, but instead I have to find all the fields where the application has decided to make adjustments to keep rest of the page layout from looking different after a change.

Like I said, I've been using Reflow for over a year, and I'd like to continue but I really want to know if I'm wasting my time because these issues are also almost that old so it doesn't seem like Adobe is super committed to Reflow but that it was a side experiment that may have run its course.

Can I add an Icon Font Manually to web fonts?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Sun, 03 Nov 2013 18:14:30 GMT

I want to use an icon font as we do on live sites and avoid the steps invoved in spriting the individual charaters to get the icons into Reflow.

e.g. http://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/

That's not something that's typekit allows you to add so it would have to be local. Is it possible to manually add a font to the app's list of base web fonts so that it's selectable there for use in text spans?

I realize this would have implications for previewing the page in browsers and via Inspect, but that's another bridge to cross…

RELATIVE should be the default position not STATIC

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Mon, 30 Sep 2013 21:01:16 GMT

I feel like the defaulting to static postioning is an approach geared to novices. No one build a website like that, it seems to be an artifact of enabling drag & drop webdesign. But it results in a cascade of issues when you add a new item to the DOM.

If Relative is the default yes the page will initially break untill I set the size, clear and float, but then it all goes back into place neatly.

When static is the default, I move something into a page and it goes about where i want it, but everything around it has changed margins and such to compensate. So I have to go back into things that already worked and reset their values to what I'd already entered. God help you if you did that outside the default breakpoint becuase then you need to reset it across multiple breakpoints.

I realize a page seemingly going haywire becuase of adding an item would be jarring for novices, but frankly if you don't understand positioning then you're not really a WEB-designer, and you're sure as hell not going to understand Reflow. I have a feeling that not understanding basic priciples like positoning are behind a lot of the "Reflow is unusable" posts.

I've said elsewehere on the forum, give us symbols and our firm would use Reflow as our Primary site design tool… The rest of the issues we've had (this one included) are annoyances not feature gaps… I'm using Reflow enough now that I'm skipping fireworks altogther for interior pages but keeping things like navigation, footers and common sidebars up to date and in line with each other is exhausting…

The DOM Hierarchy Viewer needs to be larger

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Sun, 22 Sep 2013 15:32:56 GMT

As I build bigger and more complex files in reflow rearranging things can be a nightmare in the the tiny popup DOM inspector. It only shows a few items at a time and dragging things up and down within it is really hard without accidentally moving out and having it close.

It should be a full height item on the right side of the window like a maximized layers palette in Illustrator or Photoshop. That would allow you to see things in context as well as easily move them around when you're rearranging for various reasons…

At the very least it should be resizable so that you can see more than a few rows at a time and you don't have to constantly toggle parent open and closed to see what's what.

Key Commands to jump to Layout fields

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Wed, 17 Jul 2013 17:43:14 GMT

I'm finding the app works best when you work out a solid percentage grid and enter everything by numbers rather than dragging which has a tendency to be imprecise.

For example one proportional grid we use in Reflow is 8 cols @ 9% each and gutters at 4% (no outside) which allows nice even percentages for 1, 2 and 3 column layouts. I can be sure my three column blocks are right at a glance because they're always 22% wide and have a left margin that's either 0, 9%, or 4% depending on location.

A key command that quickly jumped to the size, margin and padding initial fields so one could hard enter numbers would speed building out a page rather than so much clicking back and forth and dragging then confirming/correcting.

Also on a side note it might be useful if changing a setting like position changed the default from that point forward. Constantly having to change every item from static is tedious.

Is there any way to copy styles to other elements?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Wed, 08 May 2013 08:26:34 GMT

Without some means of copying and applying a style to other elements it seems impractical to design anything on this more complex than a wireframe. At the very least some tag based styling so you could at least design a page based on some semantic content. Otherwise every change needs to be applied over and over. It seems so obvious I feel like I must be missing something?

Fireworks frozen after sleep Mac OSX 10.6

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 16:59:00 GMT

Whenever I return to Fireworks after the computer has been asleep, fireworks is busy doing something for between 5 and 15 mins before I can use it. I can force quit but sometimes I have unsaved changed or I'm unsure if there's anything I don't want to lose by forcing it to quit just so I can start working again.

Activity Monitor show fireworks alone is using between 99 and 103% of CPU usage.

I don't have a slow machine, it's 2.66Ghz i7, with 8gb or RAM and and 250gb SSD.

This is the only CS5 app that seems to do this for me or it's just that I use afireworks a lot and don't notice the others. But it's gotten very frustrating as I've been able to search, then write this message on the forum while waiting and it's still not operable.

Anyone have any ideas other than the most obvious?

Thanks much.