Introducing Remake: A New Type of Web App Framework (Blog Post Series in Need of Early Readers)

[panphora]

Project URL

https://remaketheweb.com/

Hi Webwide! It's been a while since I've posted! I've been busy working on my side project, Remake. It somehow manages to takes up 110% of my time every week.

I'm planning to launch some new tutorials for it soon, so developers have a better idea of what they can build with it (and why it's awesome!). In preparation, I'm releasing a 3-part blog post series explaining the concepts behind Remake and why it's so much faster to build with than any other modern full-stack framework.

I was hoping I could find some early readers here who could give me feedback on the articles before I post them on social media and they go live.

The (tentative) titles of the articles are:

• Creating With Remake, Part 1: A New Way to Code Interactive Websites Using Only HTML
• Creating With Remake, Part 2: What You Can Make With the Remake Web App Framework
• Creating With Remake, Part 3: What Makes Remake Better Than Other Web App Frameworks

Remake's ultimate goal is to make web app development so simple that any developer can start a successful company since they'll be releasing their projects so often and getting feedback from real users — instead of constantly building and never releasing something.

 

[sfcgeorge]

Looks interesting. A bit like Angular I guess? I almost expected it to be like Coldfusion when I read it's all html :P

 

[panphora]

@sfcgeorge The syntax is similar to Angular, but Remake is server-rendered (unlike most modern frameworks) and JS is only required when you're editing the page. Remake is also full-stack, so it takes care of user accounts and syncing data to the backend for you automatically 🤘

I've never used Coldfusion, but I believe Remake requires far less actual coding and takes a more declarative approach.

 

[sfcgeorge]

@panphora sounds pretty good! I've used Hyperstack before which doesn't go as far but is kinda similar for the Ruby world. I believe the closest would be Phoenix LiveView which looks pretty neat. I think Meteor Blaze is similar but the website isn't very clear. And I saw a C# thing that's similar again and looked pretty neat.

I think it's a great paradigm shift to eliminate the API boilerplate layer and make interactions more declarative. Nice to see more projects trying this approach :)

 

[panphora]

I hadn't heard of Hyperstack before — that looks neat! Doing everything in one language is definitely more efficient. I hate how much time I spend just hooking the front-end to the back-end.

I've heard a lot about Phoenix Liveview lately, especially on HN. I'm excited to learn more about it. I just bought a book on Elixer :)

I was an early user of Meteor and Blaze before the founding team abandoned the project. The ease of use and speed of development I experienced using Meteor was a huge inspiration for creating Remake. I wanted something similar, but even faster to build with.

And yeah, I don't understand why programming web apps isn't more declarative in general. It seems like the more primitive languages were never adapted for the sphere of web apps. JS is still good at modifying the DOM, but not great at handling reactive state on its own. And HTML is still built for like 2010 when its only job was outputting static content. I'm hoping Remake can fill in a gap there.

 

[panphora]

@sfcgeorge Are you interested in reviewing a few blog posts about Remake that I'm planning to post soon?

 

[adam]

Very interesting! I have an uneasy feeling in general about platform lock-in but this looks easy enough that it would be worth at try.

The design in general is really nice and communicates the message well. If you were looking for any landing page feedback I would suggest changing the illustrations to something more relevant and perhaps bespoke staying away from the tired humaaans vibe and also the slow logo animation was distracting me as I was trying to read the large hero title which is the most important couple of seconds for any landing page to convert.

Would be more than happy to check the articles as someone interested in learning more!

 

[panphora]

Yeah, I think platform lock-in is a huge problem in the low code/no-code space right now. That's why Remake is open source! If the hosted version goes down, you have an easy way of transitioning off of it. Also, like you said, it's so basic it's not really that much of an investment to use. If you want to switch to a different platform, you'll likely only invested a few hours into the Remake platform because it's just a few data attributes you have to remove from your pages.

I like your feedback on the landing page! I'm actually working with an illustrator right now to get those current illustrations replaced! I'm sorry the logo was distracting — I just got it made last week and I love it / am attached to it, but I can see how you feel. Maybe I'll switch it out for a static logo and just use the animated version in emails or something... haha

That's so cool you're interested in checking out the posts! I'll work on those right now and post them soon.

 

[adam]

Yeah, I think platform lock-in is a huge problem in the low code/no-code space right now. That's why Remake is open source! If the hosted version goes down, you have an easy way of transitioning off of it. Also, like you said, it's so basic it's not really that much of an investment to use. If you want to switch to a different platform, you'll likely only invested a few hours into the Remake platform because it's just a few data attributes you have to remove from your pages.

I like your feedback on the landing page! I'm actually working with an illustrator right now to get those current illustrations replaced! I'm sorry the logo was distracting — I just got it made last week and I love it / am attached to it, but I can see how you feel. Maybe I'll switch it out for a static logo and just use the animated version in emails or something... haha

That's so cool you're interested in checking out the posts! I'll work on those right now and post them soon.

Really appreciate you engaging with feedback!

The animated logo is cool, but the thing you really want people to see in first couple seconds is the hero title and the moving detracts from that.

Perhaps you could animate the logo both on hover and when scroll position hits the top when people scroll back up again to the nav? Or maybe just even with a few second delay after loading to give a second for people to find their focus.

 

[panphora]

I'm ready to share my upcoming blog posts that introduce what Remake can do! If some of your want to read a couple of these early drafts, it would mean a lot to me.

Here they are:

Creating With Remake (Blog Post Series)

Creating With Remake, Part 1: A New Way to Code Interactive Websites Using Only HTML Introducing Remake If you've developed products before, you know there are two huge traps you can get stuck in because building web apps the traditional way is so damn hard: Do a ton of research, come up with i...

docs.google.com

Feel free to comment here or directly in the doc.

Here's a quick summary of each one:

• Creating With Remake, Part 1: A New Way to Code Interactive Websites Using Only HTML
  • Talks about how hard it is to build a modern web app these days and how that can push you to never actually release something. Then it finishes with quick overview of Remake and how it solves this problem by making web apps super easy to build with just regular HTML syntax (and a few special attributes).
• Creating With Remake, Part 2: What You Can Make With the Remake Web App Framework
  • This post focuses on who the audience for Remake is and what you can actually build with it: building CRUD web apps with it is perfect, but creating a social network on top of Remake would be hard.
• Creating With Remake, Part 3: What Makes Remake Better Than Other Web App Frameworks
  • This last post gives an overview of what it'd be like to create a modern web app from scratch using another framework vs. using Remake. When it comes down to it, other frameworks give you more control at the cost of an insane amount of complexity for even simple components. While Remake makes creating an app take just a few minutes.

Thank you for your help reviewing these. I think it'll make a big difference to the final readers.

@Adam Thanks for the great feedback about the logo. I changed so it starts out static and only animates the logo in when you scroll back back up to the top. I agree this way is a lot less distracting.

 

[panphora]

I updated the photo blog app so it gives a preview of what's possible in only 20 lines of Remake-enhanced HTML.

It supports

• File uploading
• User accounts
• Routing
• Instant deployment

Here it is: https://photoblog.remakeapps.com/

What do you think?