Recently on a UI day at work, my fellow UI/UX developers and I took a look at two layout tools. Macaw and Adobe Edge Reflow.
Both tools seemed fairly simplistic, with Adobe Edge Reflow coming out on top in terms of fit and finish.
We tried to create some simple responsive layouts, and both tools seemed okay for that task. Anything beyond creating some container DIVs that stack well proved to be a difficult task.
Today I found myself wanting to make a simple tabbed layout for a project I’m working on. When I accidentally clicked within about 50 pixels of the top left border of a container and dragged it there was no response to the usual “oops! I’ll press Ctrl+Z”.
Normally undo seems to work, but in certain contexts it fails to work.
My co-worker installed Macaw on his personal system and tried to make a reasonable layout at home. After only about a dozen containers were drawn, the interface became sluggish and not very usable.
Macaw looks pretty, and the idea is solid, but I think they have a long way to go before a competent web developer’s life will truly be made easier by using it.