There’s never been a better time to do web development. Whether building complex web apps or a simple website, you have more choice than ever. There’s a flurry of website builders, design tools, and repositories that make this process better and faster than ever. Some even prompt an AI and get a decent output.
Designers build in Figma, and developers push code to GitHub. In the past years, we have seen designers and developers move closer together, and features such as Zeplin and Figma’s developer handoff have emerged. These tools help designers translate their designs into a language developers understand. It’s been a stop-gap for the time wasted in handoffs.
☝️“66% of designers spend 4–8 hours per week explaining design layout, while 65% of developers spend 4–8 hours per week interpreting it.”
Handoffs are expensive, and the available tools do not eliminate the time spent on the unnecessary back and forth.
Designers speak in vector, and developers speak in code, but at the end of the day, they are trying to create the same output. This slight disconnect is an inefficiency that no longer has to exist.
We have seen the first step with Webflow. Website developers used to transform code into beautiful sites, and now they use Webflow’s buttons to create the same output. It has the added benefit that designers, marketers, and copywriters can make slight changes without knowing how to code.
☝️Webflow made HTML and CSS visual, and this transformative approach is available for JavaScript with toddle.
You now get Figma’s intuitive design interface, Git’s robust version control, GitHub’s open-source libraries, and Webflow’s advanced web-building capabilities merged into a robust developer platform.
Unified Workflow
The primary outcome of this platform is a unified workflow for web development and design. Designers and developers no longer need to toggle between different tools for various aspects of a project. You can now wireframe and deploy a fully functional website in a single integrated environment. This seamlessness significantly streamlines project timelines and enhances collaboration among team members.
Enhanced Design-to-Code Process
Developers no longer need to translate designs to code; the design is already there. Rather than tabbing between multiple environments, developers can work on the formulas and variables that make the design come to life. Every web component is reusable and stored as packages that developers and designers can use across projects.
This bridges the gap between designers and developers and makes the process more efficient and error-free.
Advanced Version Control for Design
Git’s version control now extends to every design element of a project. This enables designers to track changes, experiment with different design versions, and collaborate more effectively, all within the same environment. It also facilitates better designer-developer communication, as both can refer to the same version history for every project element. Developers and designers can work together or apart. Whether it’s adjusting minor tweaks on separate feature branches or a tight collaboration on a large new feature in the same branch, toddle is built for ultimate collaboration.
Make web development more accessible.
The ease of use from Webflow combined with the technical prowess of GitHub and the design capabilities of Figma, toddle, make web development more accessible. It empowers those with less coding expertise to build and deploy sophisticated web apps with load speeds previously limited to apps built with custom code. It will unleash a new wave of creativity on the internet.
*This is a cross-post from https://toddle.dev/blog/Figma-Github-and-Webflow-had-a-baby, a visual web development platform that rivals custom code.
