Adobe Muse: a site builder for designers
While we all agree that web development is a great skill to have or to pick up, it’s also true that not everyone has the time to learn how to code. And that’s fine. But the number of people that need a website, and/or want to create a website on their own, keeps increasing. That’s why nowadays you can find a number of different tools and services to get a new website up and running quickly... And without writing a single line of code. Adobe Muse is one of these tools. Here are a few details about it that may help you decide if that’s the right application for you.
- Created by Adobe and first released in 2012, Adobe Muse is a site builder that allows you to create a website without having to code.
- It’s part of the Adobe Creative Cloud, so you have to pay a subscription fee to use it.
- Famous for giving users the chance to create beautiful websites without being a developer, Adobe Muse mainly targets designers.
- Being aimed at designers and overall visually-oriented people, it is itself a very visually-oriented tool. It works with a “drag-and-drop” system that allows you to work on the layout of your web page instead of writing lines of code and checking out what the page looks like afterwards.
- If you are familiar with Photoshop you’ll probably get your head around its interface without any trouble. Some have gone so far as describing it as a “Photoshop for websites”, so you get the idea! At the same time, some have argued that it’s a fairly complex interface that could be simplified quite a bit.
- Some designers find Adobe Muse to be useful as a basic prototyping tool, and design web pages with it instead of using Adobe Illustrator. If they know how to code, they then move to Dreamweaver, another Adobe tool for web development, to write their code and build their website.
- Muse definitely allows you to create beautifully-designed websites while freeing you from the hassle of writing code. But it’s usually considered to be a good tool for building small-to-medium, fairly simple websites. Database-driven sites like e-commerce and other complex web projects might be more of a challenge to build only with Adobe Muse.
Overall, it’s safe to say that if you're a designer with a background in print, or if you simply don’t have time to learn to code, and need a rather simple straight-forward website, Adobe Muse is a good tool to use. And if you don’t want to start designing from scratch, you can find plenty of great Muse templates in our collection and save even more time. Once you’ve downloaded the template you like, you can just open it in Adobe Muse and start dragging and dropping elements around. Change fonts, styles and interface elements until you find the perfect look for your shiny new website.
Get started and learn how to make the most of Adobe Muse with the Tuts+ series Introduction to Adobe Muse.