Musings on Muse

Question

So I've been perusing the interwebs of late, seeing how Muse's street cred is fairing with all the cool kids in web development. While I don't generally follow the 'trends', I concede there is a certain amount of value in having a broader adoption of a particular standard or tool in this line of work.    
In this designer's humble opinion, Muse is the paradigm shift that the web industry has been crying out for for years, my only hope is that it's not too little too late. Like frogs in boiling water the industry seems to have accepted this state of madness where visual designers spend countless hours designing 'layouts' in photoshop, let me repeat that... LAYOUTS IN PHOTOSHOP for crying out loud, then hand those off to a developer to build the whole thing again from scratch in code.
As a long time print designer who only relatively recently came into the web arena, all I could do was shake my head at the state of affairs in the industry. The idea that the only acceptable way to 'build' a web layout was with thousands of lines of code, yet to build the exact same layout for print required no code at all (and in my experience a lot less time) was just mind boggling. Obviously the web is an interactive medium which requires a different technology to function, but in my mind Muse is to web design what Windows was to DOS... a visual human interface to control an underlying technology, and with the right tools can be just as powerful.
In my travels I've heard coders pan Muse by saying it's not a real dev tool (usually with that same condescending little grin), that its code can't be used by developers etc. Maybe that part is true, but I think they miss the point, whole idea of Muse is that in time, there will be no need to pass a site on to developers at all. ...and maybe that's what they're afraid of. In just two short years Muse has made it possible for a designer with NO coding experience to create a fully functioning website that most viewers wouldn't be able to distinguish from a coded site.
To me the only major issue is the lack of responsive layouts, or more specifically having just one site to maintain, but I'm sure will be sorted out in due course. Once that happens I would ask the question in all seriousness to traditional developers... what else does Muse need before it can be considered it to be a 'real' web design tool? And I don't accept talk about 'clean code' because in reality, everyday viewers out there don't give a hoot about the code. As long as a site loads fast and works as expected for the user that's all that really matters in the end.
So my question is, are they right? Is Muse just a toy for us amateurs pretending to be professional web devs? Or are these the grumblings of the old guard resisting a new and better way of doing things?

Answer 1

I think Muse is a huge step in the right direction. It is absolutely a "real" web design tool - how could it not be? Heck.. any text editor is.
While I'm currently learning to "code for real" (after building sites using GoLive since it was GoLive Cyberstudio!), I can't help but feel that the move toward fast visual layout is gaining support.
As someone said, somewhere, "users don't care about code". (They certainly will care if a site is not working properly, or unduly slow, etc.)
That said, I get that knowing code is obviously important (even for designers) and that we are currently bound by the limits of any particular visual layout tool for web if we choose not to know code. So, I've chosen to dig in and learn code, for two main reasons: 1) It's interesting, and 2) It's necessary to "fix things".
In my opinion, many "serious coders" slight visual layout software and suggest it's not "pro", but there's no denying that any tools that take away some of their claim to expertise - that is, take work away from coders, and reduce the need for their knowledge - is seen as a threat.
Being that my kids can drag stuff onto a screen and publish it in less than a minute is a testament to the idea that the coders are correct
I think Adobe is doing just about everything right.