UPDATE:
Whats going on regarding Stagestack?
[...] Quasado is not ready to give up. They have decided to build a pure web-based (JS/HTML5) edition of the product first, which will help to better fit into present investor strategies (web and mobile apps) as well to allow it to run on mobile, web and for getting a prototype out much sooner. Furthermore, thanks to the donations received--and Quasado's own financial fund--this first prototype can be developed completely on its own. Quasado is planning on publishing a limited-function prototype for people to play around on the web by early to mid-April 2013.
[...]
We asked about details on their programming process and Quasado tells us they will be using the same web-code for building up a desktop edition by replacing performance-critical parts with native code. They believe this is quite an interesting experiment and will still allow users to work with exactly the same feature-set on the web as well as the native application. They are also building an infrastructure / SAAS Solution around the web edition that will allow designers to better manage and handle their designs as well as interact with their customers. It will support interactive components; meaning users can do UI-Drafts, for example, and other such functions. |
-tomos
They've gone ahead with those plans:
New name is Gravit... (these guys are *not* good at names imo)
Quasado's Alexander Adam:
Q: What is the reason the former Stagestack project was abandoned, or better said, changed to Gravit?
Alexander Adam:
[...]
Let me start with some numbers. Gravit’s codebase consists of about 150k lines of Javascript code while Stagestack’s codebases consisted of about 450k lines of code. However, Gravit already includes most of the UI functionality. Gravit has been rewritten from scratch in pure Javascript and HTML5. This was a tough decision for us but it worked out pretty well.
[...]
Another point of our decision was the idea to build Gravit fully web-based. While it still will also be delivered as a standalone Mac- and Windows App, we strongly believe in the future of web-based applications. Having a Javascript-Codebase opens the world of Gravit (Extensions, etc.) to millions of developers. Gravit will run on Desktop, Web and Mobile out-of-the-box, giving it a major advance over other technologies like the ones from Adobe.
Imagine designing and viewing your documents everywhere, looking exactly the same. No matter whether you keep them in your Google Drive or DropBox account, design them locally on your Computer or view them from your Mobile. Gravit is built for the future while Stagestack was build for the past like most existing design tool solutions are.
The codebase, the UI, the UX, Gravit is less strict on “cloning“ Freehand but rather works towards transporting the Spirit of Freehand in combination with up-to-date design tools.
Q: What has been reached with Gravit and what is planned for the near and far future?
Alexander Adam: Gravit is pretty close to Beta which should be due in July. All basic stuff for creating full working designs like paths, text, styles, pages etc. are implemented. The next version which should follow close enough will fulfill the missing parts which are mainly symbols and master pages. Gravit will be a free product as we want everyone to be able to use it and enjoy a better world of designing. We want to steadily improve it, making it the most versatile design tool available on the market.
After releasing Gravit version 2 this year, we’re planning on working on Gravit365, a SAAS-Solution for managing design-related Projects. This is ought to be our “cash-cow“ that will fund the development of Gravit. Our goal has always been to improve and innovate in the design-related field and that’s what we’re trying to do with Gravit as well as with Gravit365. |
~
can free and SAAS live together
maybe free for personal use...
Me, I dont care how they do it at this stage, I just want a professional alternative to Illustrator - I hope this does do well, if only to prompt illustrator to change a
little lot :p
Source:
http://www.freehandforum.org/news.html (July 2014)
