I remember the time when about 3 years ago, I wrote my first article regarding responsive design. At that time, RWD (responsive web design), was just a trend/new wave. Today this is a reality and standard that should not be taken lightly. Raising number of mobile Internet users is growing everyday.
At this article our team will review few responsive web design / prototyping design tools that are extremely powerful and can save a lot of time coding HTML and CSS. I am not quite sure that I can say that those are WYSYWIG tools, as I think here we should use a different term – probably visual RWD editors. I think another term can also be introduced – web design in browser, again new standard for good and fast prototyping and web coding.
Webflow
Quite tidy and very powerful visual editor and prototyping application that offer almost everything that you need.
You can create a free account at https://webflow.com/ and start your new project straight away. There are also several templates for quick start, but there is an option to start new project with blank template. As listed on their website, here are some of the notable features - CSS3 Styles, Custom Forms, Responsive Grid, Web Fonts, Versioning, etc... Website also offer some basic video tutorials that can come handy.
One other thing is that Webflow RWD app is very light and fast, every change can be viewed in lifetime without waiting.
WebmaisterPro can definite recommend this application, even the paid plans – there are 3 plans – free, personal and professional, certainly professional plan can save a lot of time, if your company have high workload and many projects that require custom forms and unlimited pages.
Webflow support majority of most popular browsers, well we tested it in Ubuntu and it seemed that Firefox for Ubuntu was not quite adequate at the moment.
Froont
Flexible and fast web design in browser application, very flexible with some unique features. Though, you should work with Google Chrome as currently this is the only supported browser that can work with this web application. Some notable features are: paste CSS from Photoshop, smart code export, project version control, responsive layouts, templates and Google web fonts.
There are two options for account – free and Pro, some of the features mentioned above are available at Pro version only. Though another great multi-device RWD prototyping tool with impressive features that can save a lot of time and headaches.
Edge Reflow
Another great tool from Adobe, even in preview version, Reflow is one powerful tool that is highly integrated with other Adobe software and cloud applications like Edge Inspect, Edge Code, Edge Animate, Typekit, etc...
The software work as stand alone application ans support Microsoft Windows and MacOS.
There are many notable features including integration with Photoshop, responsive design on webkit surface, media-query breakpoints, share design on devices with Edge Inspect, and many more, for full list of features please visit Reflow page - https://html.adobe.com/edge/reflow/features.html
Which one of these tools to choose? Well, I can't say which is the best one, but definitely you should try all 3. Should you use a responsive web design application or software – definitely YES!
Please share you thoughts and comments. Do you use another application, do you code in browser? Is your website responsive?