Even though it's only January, this year has already been very interesting for me. And since most of these interesting things are products on the web, and me being unhappy with design tooling for web products, I decided to build something different, something that fills in my needs primarily, but perhaps is able to help others as well.
Still in very early stage, today I am putting it partially out there for interested folks to provide feedback or even subscribe to progress notifications.
But first, let me tell you what it is.
I have been working on the web for very long time and I think today we are likely very close to a dreamland from a web developer perspective.
No, I don’t mean all the JavaScript libraries out there that mostly do nothing else than bloat pages with unnessecary JavaScript, or frameworks like Tailwind which don’t do much else than hide the actual abilities of CSS and create hardly maintainable HTML and CSS, not to mention covering up the actual browser features which are generally far richer that whatever these libs provide.
What I do mean is the bliss of pure CSS and JavaScript, the automated, built-in, hydration abilities of custom elements and web components, the ability to use features like dynamic type scales and space scales in your design, all the doen in a way that the statical canvas in Figma is simply oevrly limited to even immitate.
I think it’s time for us to have tooling which enables designers and developers to work together, not siloed in their own tooling, while using the web as a common “drawing canvas”.
In more detail—I would like to provide designers a tool that allows them to design, end to end, in CSS and HTML without the need of learning any of that, or maybe just a little of it.
I want designers to be able to test with customers, to create amazing brands, using the full power of the web. And then, make their work’s output availabke to developers in their choice of framework, all directly into version controlled output.
Also, I want developers to be able to use these designs, in whatever state they are, without the need of a handover, while they work, as they normally do.
On top of that, I want developers to be able to influence the design, without learning design tooling, or various dev modes, but simply using the tooling they already use.
So this is exactly what I have started working on and I need your feedback. Have a look at the homepage of handover.zip and let me know what you think.
There is a subscription option on the page, drop your email in there and I will notify you of the progress.
If you want to test, see an early demo, reach out somewhere and we’ll get that sorted.
The name—for the moment I am using handover.zip because I find it a funny name given that the tool is all about the lack of handover. Also, back in the day I received countless files called exaclty that from former designer colleagues or agencies. So, funny again.