Announcing that product’s release is not an invitation to insult an existing product that is also very good.

A reader’s statement that one product blows the other away is not a review, not helpful consumer information, and not an open invitation for everyone and her uncle to sling mud.

Name calling is not discussion. I’m going to close comments now.

P.S. It’s Eric Meyer. Not Meyers. Have a nice day.

“I’ve just been put off by my name and product getting drawn into a comparison. There is nothing really to compare.”

Eric Meyers wrote:

“What mystified me was the turn the comments took: suddenly they went from giggling over the splashimation and exhortations to port Sculptor to other environments (Coda got several mentions) to an multi-party argument over which was better, Sculptor or Project VII’s CSS Layout Magic. ”

Well guys, I have news for you: it is completely normal for people to compare similar products and offer their opinins on which is better, given the features, price, ease of use, etc.

YOU, and not the groupies (how you choose to call your customers!), are the ones creating the conflict by trying to prevent posters from expressing their opinion.

I have not seen people unfairly bashing either product. So, what’s the big deal?

Both of you guys are coming across as really desperate to keep your “groupies” uninformed.

Where is the “Open Source” mentality, Mr. Meyers, when you stand to make a buck?

I agree “To put a spread sheet to the cost per layout is absolutely ludicrous”. CSS Sculptor does not define its value from the number of layouts or color schemes it ships with. It would be a valuable tool without any at all

Hey Ray,

Forget it. I still maintain that both are good tools with different means to similar ends. I’ve just been put off by my name and product getting drawn into a comparison. There is nothing really to compare. Hopefully the comments for this topic will be turned off soon.

I think WebAssist should provide real demos of their pages. The way I see it, nobody (or at least this groupiton!) will steal the code. There are plenty of free options out there, including the wonderful DynamicDrive CSS Library:

http://www.dynamicdrive.com/style/

and Stu Nicholls’s project:

http://www.cssplay.co.uk/index

I think the “open source” projects deserve our support. Why pay $149 when we can get the same thing for free? When did Eric go Microsoft on us? $149 for a bunch of layouts that we come free with a copy of Dreamweaver?

Not a chance!

I say: groupies of this world, unite and defeat the oppresive powers that shackle us to our Credit Card Issuers!

Say no to yes.

Say yes to no.

Say I told you saw.

Say what i say and say no mo…

The partnership with Eric Meyer was simply to provide a better tool. WebAssist wanted to create a Dreamweaver extension to help people create their own CSS Layouts with all of the variety and options that are available, while still following good standards practices. We approached Eric Meyer to help advise us on the CSS syntax and help us with the comments and structure. He reviewed the css we created and provided feedback that we followed. The partnership was made to create a better tool by combining our two expertise and it succeeded at that. The only reason I can see to degrade that relationship or its reason for being is both political and self-serving.

This extension is not meant to intrude on anyone’s territory. CSS Sculptor was not created to directly compete with any existing extension or existing set of CSS layouts with finished color choices. We did not have a goal to have the new layout open in Dreamweaver in the smallest time with as few options as possible. It is not designed to blow anything out of the water other than the Dreamweaver user who will be empowered by the new power and options the tool provides, and the variety of unique CSS layouts and color schemes they can now produce.

Just watch the videos linked from the webassist site and anyone can see just how different Eric Meyer’s CSS Sculptor is in its approach, execution, and result than anything else out there. CSS Sculptor is unique and can’t be properly compared to other dissimilar tools even if they both do ultimately produce well formatted and standard CSS.

When a personal stake is involved within a viable product that has targeted a specific market, defense is often left to its performance and how the value of that product is viewed by its customers. When presented with a “blow out of the water” editorial, a simple quiet statement of fact suffices.

References to childish marketing, NBA endorsements, analogies to baseball team names .. well, those defensive things create the appearance that the product being defended is not worth defense.

That is my take, like it or not.

The right quantity with quality is possibly what the Meyer/WebAssist product starts to bring to the table.

So stretching a 2-column fixed layout into 5 permutations, by adding or removing headers, footers, or any combination thereof, and then multiplying that times 12 or so flat color combinations is providing quantity. We can agree on that. And we can also agree that if a novice does not break the layout before it’s created by making bad entries in the UI, then the code is structurally sound – and there you have the quality component. So I agree with you that quantity and quality are not strange bedfellows. However, and it’s a big “however”…

Using that, as some key folks in this discussion have, to indicate one is getting more is absolute rubbish. While Jakob Neilsen can get away with a flat color web site, most web designers who work for paying clients must create something engaging. So all the shades of the rainbow offered by the Sculptor are irrelevant as any designer worth his salt will be introducing background textures and/or hues that go way beyond the offering. A good designer will also likely want equal height columns. These are the reasons why we included automatic faux images and instructions for editing them into virtually any look. We decided that if someone really doesn’t want a header or a footer and doesn’t know how to delete a DIV, we’ll be happy to provide detailed instructions.

In the final analysis, one would really need to try both (although the code base for ours is available for anyone to see unimpeded online) and we have tried both. We purchased 2 copies of the Sculptor so that we could speak intelligently about it and, most importantly, so that we could counter any negative compative comments vis a vis our product. In essence, their CSS is no better than ours, and ours no better than theirs. The approaches are simply different.

Understand that Zeldman and Meyer are friends so naturally his namesake product was introduced here. I’ve no problem with that. But when my name or my product is touted as being blown out of the water by this thing, I’m going to set things straight to the best of my ability.

We did not feel it was appropriate or necessary to spread each layout to include a header, a footer, or a header and a footer. That’s childish marketing. Quantity over quality always is.

The right quantity with quality is possibly what the Meyer/WebAssist product starts to bring to the table.

In terms of cachet, “Eric Meyer’s CSS Sculptor” might sound good and I’m sure some baseball fans think “The LosAngeles Angels of Aneheim” is catchy, too. Eric is a talented guy. But I gotta tell you, the last thing we would ever do as a company is to use someone else’s name or reputation to sell something. We know we’re good enough in our own right and our brand is sacred.

I don’t know Meyer and I don’t know you. But, I sort of reckon that Meyer has his personal reputation invested within such an endorsement and it includes a proactive involvement in the product’s development. This is hardly an infomercial or a Mickey Rooney “has been” life insurance endorsement.