Edge v. Adobe Muse

For Edge Reflow, we try to bring a more familiar drawing surface to web design. Then we also have UI that helps with CSS properties. Reflow is primarily a design tool. It's in preview mode, which means it's not meant to be a complete product yet. We've got a lot of features left to create.

That said, Reflow is probably (a little) more on the technical end of the spectrum when compared to products like Muse.

There's a lot of good video material you could peruse to get more familiar with Reflow, Muse and other products.

For Reflow you'll want to check out Paul Trani's videos for the January 2014 release:

http://tv.adobe.com/watch/adobe-edge-reflow/overview-of-reflow/

Be sure to check them all out! Let me know if that helps.

Hi Seth,

I think one of the challenges is which audience are you designing for. For example, Muse has some nice features and pretty good integration to Business Catalyst, bot no ability to modify the code at that level, so for me (and I have spent a few days using it) its too restricted and yet, also limited as  design tool.

Currenly I am tetsing both Macaw and Reflow. There is a lot to like about both products, but the question is when does it stop being a productive web design tool with ability to display responsive web designs and when does it become a coding tool.

Now, with the release of the Open Developers Platforms we are using Business Catalyst. We are also using Foundation5 framework, so for us, I cannot see us using much of the CSS or HTML generated from either of these products right now, we see that code for presentation only until such times you fully support frameworks, SASS, JQuery etc. 

Right now I, and I am sure many others, need a superb and efficient web and layout tool to build fully designed prototypes and demonstrate how the overall design should look in browsers and get sign-off, Photoshop is not it, muse is not it either, but gets closer on many fronts. But Reflow and Macaw are really exciting to me and have great possibilities. But I worry, because I see lots of people wanting more code, development and integration features, (and I understand why i really do) before the regular needs of the designer have even been fully addresses.

So for me( and I know I am being really selfish), first I would like Reflow to be better software at meeting the needs for visual web designers (who also understand HTMl/CSS), re-usable assets, layout elements, master templates that can be applied to pages,  (muse is good here and its sitemap pages are nice) swatches, text styles (h1, H2, P, small etc) all that I can globally update per project. 

What Photoshop is for bitmap image editing, I hope Reflow needs to be for visual web designers. Efficient, fast, productive and allows us to show the customer and web development teams, how this website should look and behave.

Thanks for your thoughts David,

Reflow definitely sits in the middle of design and development for a lot of users. So we've got a challenge to provide some of both, even though Reflow is primarily meant for design.

We've heard overwhelmingly that we need to provide better support for exporting. So we're working on that for our next release. But also look for an improved UI, copy/paste among other things.

Interesting conversation!  I have built a current site with Adobe Muse and REALLY like the tool.  I am a designer first. The one thing I don't like about it is having to add content in for each of the three layouts (desktop, tablet, phone).  Seems like Reflow handles that much better.  It's seems to be a more complicated tool but not so complicated that someone who has used Muse would move over simply for the ease of building sites for multiple platforms.  I guess what I am saying is that it seems like Muse will be go away???  Wishing that Muse had just had the Reflow features added to it vs creating a new tool. 

@lickteig, Muse is certainly not going away! Muse is getting some super awesome new features coming soon

@Madjacko I would recommend using Muse for your template-based web design. If you want some templates to choose from http://www.muse-themes.com  would be the place to find them.

Muse is primarily a tool to create websites without worrying about the code quality. Reflow is a tool for creating almost functional prototypes of your designs that you can then enhance for production in your code editor (or give it to a Developer to fit into a CMS). Reflow is way to visualize how your designs can translate responsively and amend them to make sure they translate well. It also makes it obvious to the developer what values change responsively. I would say Reflow is something you would use if Web Design is something you work on professionally.

They should combine Reflow and Muse so that designers who know a little code and want to do UX/UI can use the best of both.  Glad that Muse (recently discovered for me) has an interface similar in style to Indesign because before that I had to quickly build a portfolio in WIX just because of low learning curve when I needed a portfolio site in a day. I know plenty of Indesigners using like web builders squarespace or WIX just for convenience when they would rather have something similar to Indesign where they can have more control.  Look forward to updates.

In the mean time it would be nice to be able to export a design created in ReFlow into muse.  ReFlow kicks *** on designing the site according to this XARA fan of many years.  Muse is strong with whole site layout.  It would be nice to do my individual pages in ReFlow and pull them into Muse for whole site management.

I have really been waiting to read a post like this and give my two bits....  I have used MUSE to build sites, and I have built templates in MUSE, exported the html and built CMS templates from them, but what is lacking out of all my sites to date (mainly because I don't write enough hard code) is a responsive design workflow.  I have used Reflow to concept this ability, but since the code can not yet be used in a production environment I am stuck in this step in my workflow and I know I am not the only one.  Anyway, I too am really waiting to see what happens with the relationship between Muse and Reflow and look forward to the day it happens. In my ideal workflow here is how I see Adobe making this work:

1.  Photoshop is the design tool with Generate

2.  Edge Animate is the animation tool for embedding those type of needs into Muse

3.  Edge Reflow is the creation tool for responsive template designs and programming

4.  Muse is the website page layout and programming tool

The relationship above of #3 and #4 as I see it is that Edge Reflow "template" files should be able to be imported into Muse and assigned into Master pages. I know this is just my view of this right now, but I can only hope that Adobe is listening and sees the same or better relationship between these programs and gets it all working soon.  Reflow has been available in beta form for years now and I am just waiting, not so patiently anymore for it.

Please Adobe, finish this symphony of a new age workflow that you have started so we designers and programmers can put it all to good use:)

I would like to see a workflow that exports into ColdFusion templates too.  But I don't make those decisions for Adobe...