What Palm looks like when you use it
(18 February 2024)
What Palm looks like when you use it
A bit more about making websites easier. I want to point at Elliott Cost’s brilliant desktop Mac app, Palm.
Palm is, by its own admission, a 0.0.1 release. It’s not perfect and it’s not finished - but it points in a very interesting direction.
Palm creates a website in a folder. When you click to add a new page, you can change its filename, you can add text, and drag in images. Images you add are copied to a /images folder inside your website folder. That’s about it.
There’s lots that Palm doesn’t do. It doesn’t let you change the appearance of the webpages it creates, unless you want to dive into css files manually. It doesn’t let you change the order in which files are listed on its index page. It doesn’t let you change the title of that index page, unless you do it manually. It doesn’t generate an RSS feed. It doesn’t have previous/next links.
A Palm-generated website
All it does is assemble a series of .html files in chronological order, using a single pre-set responsive design template, in a folder, ready for you to upload anywhere.
The results it generates won’t be to everyone’s taste - personally, I love what it does - but the reason I’m highlighting it here is that it points in a certain direction: what if there were more apps that behaved like Palm? That generated websites with a few simple controls? That allowed for simple basics like drag-and-drop?
Elliott Cost might not want to add lots more features to Palm, and it’s fine with me if he doesn’t. He says on Palm’s web page:
Palm is constrained on purpose. For the most part, it’s meant for writing, not for building complex websites.
I’d like to think that some people might take a look at Palm, consider what it does, and make similar apps. The more the merrier; the more the webbier.
giles (at) gilest.org