Suspected PayPal Hackers Seek Deal To Stay Out Of Prison
2 Men Arrested After Teen Was Run Over For His iPad
Instant Blueprint lets you create a website framework in seconds
Instant Blueprint is one of those over-the-top web2.0-looking websites. You know, gradients, lots of white space, funky looking "ribbons" from the top... the works. On paper, it provides an interesting service for web developers who have some experience: You specify a project name, document type, JS library and selectors for your project, and Instant Blueprint spits out a zip file containing a template for your project. The zip contains several CSS files (screen, print, etc.), the Javascript library you selected, and an index.html. Each of the files comes with some bare-bones markup to help you get started. The CSS files refer to the selectors you specified on the site; the index.html file also has them in the appropriate places.
However, the service does not appear to be fully thought-out. What irked me the most is that every folder in the zip has an "index.html" file, with a spammy message saying "This sites (sic) framework was created by: InstantBlueprint.com - Create a web project framework in seconds!" I don't get it. Am I dumb enough to leave that file within my CSS and JS folders? Would users then go to my CSS folder and try to find an index.html file there? Come on... this serves absolutely no purpose, other than irritating the developer. Another issue is that there is no way to generate a project which doesn't use any Javascript library. You have to select one of the four options.
I might actually use the service in the future, but I wish it would be a bit less spammy.
Comments
7
Subscribe to commentsHoxxyApr 6th 2010 9:37PM
Thanks for the review and I will take your urks into consideration the next time I make changes to the site.
PrestonApr 6th 2010 5:34PM
What's the point of this site? All it does is create a simple folder structure with a couple of filler files. Is it really so hard to do this on your own?
jValdronApr 6th 2010 8:29PM
That fails, if you forget some field, it just says a big Whoops! Seems there was an error. How does that describe what my error was? :)
suicycle.comApr 6th 2010 9:13PM
Looks like they heard your plea, Erez. If you click the "Latest" ribbon that hangs from the top of the page, the most recent update says the "spammy links in blank index files" have been removed.
HoxxyApr 6th 2010 9:48PM
@Preston: The point is to save abit of time ...sure you can do it all yourself but why when theres an online tool that can do it for you :)
@jValdron: You will only get the error message if you forget to fill in the id tags section so you will not lose anything because you didn't input anything in the first place but I will add to the error message stating its because you didnt input anything ;)
@suicycle.com: Of course, I listen to what users have to say and if I can I will make the changes ;)
MxxConApr 6th 2010 11:24PM
ya, a really peculiar website...i wonder if there's really an itch this website needs to scratch :/
if you are working on a few projects, what are the chances that the next time you'll remember this address to use it.
if you are working on a lot of projects, would you really need to use this kind of service? aren't you competent enough to be able to quickly build out this kind of skeleton? if you know the difference between JQuery, MooTools, Prototype and YUI, you should be competent enough not to need this kind of website...
it'll save me what, 10minutes on a multi-month project?
really strange.
LalloApr 8th 2010 3:21PM
Very cool concept! Found something similar awhile back:
http://www.ajaxload.info/
I didn't like that you had to put id's in before you could submit.