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Show HN: StackHive – Live Web Coding and Visual Styling from the Browser

10 points by kshitizshankar ↗ HN
StackHive is a browser based website development tool that helps developers and designers in saving a majority of their development time.

Packed with a live code editor, importing existing websites and a visual editor; StackHive brings the best of both worlds (Visual Editing and Full Code Control) to responsive website development and converts the browser into a fully functional and extremely capable IDE for static web development.

We just released it a few days back and would love to get some feedback from the developers out there who struggle with front-end development!

You can check it out http://stackhive.com

7 comments

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hxseven
Interesting project, the user interface looks very nice and polished. But the access from Germany (Europe) is very slow which makes the IDE very unresponsive and tedious to work with.
kshitizshankar
Ah ok, Thanks for letting me know... I am in middle of pumping up the server, so should get better performance in some time... :) Will let you know as soon as I am done with it!
kshitizshankar
Can you try now? Should be working fine!
hxseven
Thanks for the feedback, now the load time feels a bit faster. But in my opinion the overall experience could be a bit snappier. If I notice anything else I will let you know.
dkyc
Really well done and feature-rich. Every web developer has thought about a product like this at some point. However, I don't understand who you're targeting: It's an incredibly feature-rich product, but no clear value proposition. Are you targeting backend developers that can't write HTML/CSS? Are you targeting HTML/CSS-devs that need a better IDE? Are you targeting website optimizers?

Your product seems like a combination of IDE, web-based WYSIYWIG (à la Weebly or Unbounce), SEO/Optimization (Optimizely or VWO), and Chrome Developer Tools. The integration is great from a technical perspective, but I don't see why I as a Web Dev should switch my entire tool chain to your service. The USP is kind of missing.

(I'm also from Germany, and the rendering is kind of slow, as hxseven has mentioned. Not sure if due to connection or client-side JS.)

kshitizshankar
Thanks a lot! The basic idea was to help developers like myself who are not very great with front-end development but have a good back-end knowledge. Once I started developing it (and picked up front-end development along the way), I realised that the even developers who have fair knowledge of the front-end part can really utilise a browser based tool for visual CSS development since a lot of us use browser tools like Firebug and Chrome developer tools which tend to get quite limited.

So yeah, that's how the idea evolved and I started creating a visual editing tool that not only helps developers with visual development but also provides a more extensive browser based coding IDE.

Browser plays an integral role in most of the web development cycle and so if we can combine the development and testing process and create a more streamlined Test Driven Development flow, it save a huge amount of time.. especially when it comes to responsive web development..

The way I envision it is to create a full stack development IDE inside the browser itself; so the only developer tool anyone would need is just a browser.. HTML/CSS/Javascript/Database+Server-Side Programming.

So yeah, to come back to the question...I am targeting mostly developers (majorly freelancers) right now.. who have a lot of work load and can actually benefit by saving a lot of time by using StackHive.. After that I think there is a great opportunity to bring on Designers onboard as well and create the full web development ecosystem inside the browser :)

(For the slow rendering, I made a temporary fix for now.. sorry about that.. should be able to get it in the groove in a few hours!)