My Evaluation of Adobe Edge Code CC

Question

Pros:
•          Conversion of images for export of assets from PS works well
•          Reflow interface is quite sophisticated and the GUI makes it really easy to conceptualize the how your composition will flow when resizes with all the breakpoints.
•          The artboard has a configurable grid system with gutters.  You can snap objects to the grid.  This is very powerful and would dramatically help with the designers in colouring inside the lines.
•          They provide a pretty good demo for you to poke around and learn from
•          The html it exports can be not bad. See caveat below
•          When presenting the composition to the client, you are meant to present the html export and let them play around with resizing the browser.  You can host this on a server and clients can get a better concept of how it should behave. See Caveat below
Cons:
•          When converting PS to Reflow, it really does a poor job of converting the text positions and dimensions.  You almost have to redo it all.  It could cause a lot of duplication of work
•          When converting PS to Reflow, the group / layer structure all gets lost and you must create the DOM structure by grouping objects. This is time consuming and unintuitive
•          The role of the designer would have to adapt. The designer would have to understand min-width, max width, floating, position absolute/relative, etc.  This might be a really big stretch.
•          Although the export to html works well.  Currently on chrome is supported.  Adapting it to IE8 would take considerable time.
•          The html is not bad, it’s a good starting point, however it is all ID based and there is no reuse of styles by using classes. The html would take a lot of reworking.
•          The css is not bad, however its really verbose, uses non-essential properties, doesn’t use classes and does not reuse common styles. You may be able to borrow components, but not use it entirely
•          If you had to present a static export of the composition to the client, there is currently no way to export as image from reflow a JPG or PDFs. You would have to screenshot the html in each of its form factors
•          You cannot actually design in Reflow, only add divs, text boxes, optimized images, form elements, etc…
Maybe someone can comment on my cons?
Thanks,
David

Answer 1

Hey smartcookie media, some thoughts, also love to get more of your feedback:
When converting PS to Reflow, it really does a poor job of converting the text positions and dimensions.  You almost have to redo it all.  It could cause a lot of duplication of work
We'd love to get a PSD from you where this is causing issues. We're actively trying to find users pain points with PS conversion. If there are discrepencies, especially on text, we want to see it. Feel free to email me a PSD at sewalker at adobe dot com. Can just be the text layers, no need for a big huge file.
When converting PS to Reflow, the group / layer structure all gets lost and you must create the DOM structure by grouping objects. This is time consuming and unintuitive
Do you feel like your PSDs are a good representation of the DOM? I feel like when I design in PS, I'm thinking about the DOM, but I know not all designers work that way. So we've been pretty hands off on converting folders from PS into groups. If you could talk a bit more about your specific usage, that'd be cool.
The role of the designer would have to adapt. The designer would have to understand min-width, max width, floating, position absolute/relative, etc.  This might be a really big stretch.
Y U NO LIKE CSS? We actually think there is a growing group of designers and developers who all simply work on the web, and CSS is their first priority. But it's all in how Reflow is used, we know we need to let people who begin in PS have a really smooth transition. This kind of goes towards your last point, which I'll get to.
Although the export to html works well.  Currently on chrome is supported.  Adapting it to IE8 would take considerable time.
Do you require more browser support? What do you need in order to show clients? We've only focussed on webkit browsers at the moment, but with increased interest, we may look to improve that.
The html is not bad, it’s a good starting point, however it is all ID based and there is no reuse of styles by using classes. The html would take a lot of reworking.
The css is not bad, however its really verbose, uses non-essential properties, doesn’t use classes and does not reuse common styles. You may be able to borrow components, but not use it entirely
Yeah, right now we don't support classes. So most of this feedback is around that issue. We've been working on it, but it adds a lot of complexity. The verbose-ness is definitely something we could take a look at, as well as reusibility if only on the exported styles.
If you had to present a static export of the composition to the client, there is currently no way to export as image from reflow a JPG or PDFs. You would have to screenshot the html in each of its form factors
I think you could do it by using Edge Inspect on your devices. That allows taking screen shots.
You cannot actually design in Reflow, only add divs, text boxes, optimized images, form elements, etc…
I actually would challenge this. I've been working in Reflow a lot recently—obviously, I work on it. But I'm actually getting used to designing with the tool. I associate it more to using InDesign, not Photoshop. Obviously I cannot pixel-edit an image, but for layout and styling its getting pretty good, but we still have a ways to go, no doubt.
This is great feedback, thanks for writing it up. We do add this kind of stuff to our back log and it helps us see priorities for users.