When Apple decided not to include the usual floppy disk drive on their new iMac. 1
Steve Jobs quoted hockey star Wayne Gretzky's maxim: “Skate where the puck is going not where it's been.” 2
If you're learning new tools, bet on the technology that is going forward, because by the time you're done 3
learning current industry standard, it might be already dead. 4
In this course we're not going to learn industry standards like Photoshop and WordPress. 5
Instead we're going to learn tools of the future Figma and Webflow. 6
It takes a little time for the world to catch up because most people, they are reluctant to change but 7
they will catch up. 8
No doubt about it. 9
Just like there are no floppy disks on your computers anymore. 10
In this video I want to answer several questions you might have about Webflow. 11
So, what is Webflow? 12
Webflow is a no-code website builder that is unlike anything else out there. 13
It helps you design and build responsive websites from scratch like any pro web designer would. 14
But without writing any code. Well, actually, Webflow writes it for you. 15
You design everything visually while Webflow writes clean semantic code for you. 16
You can then either export this code or keep it and host the website in Webflow. 17
In addition to the web designer it's a CMS platform sort of like WordPress which means you can build 18
full-blown dynamic sites like blogs and e-commerce websites. 19
And here is a really big one with Webflow. 20
You can build rich animations and interactions something that no other platform has. 21
And if coding, it's something that requires advanced knowledge of JavaScript. But in Webflow you do it 22
visually without even thinking about the code. 23
Learning Webflow feels like learning a new superpower. 24
It's really a groundbreaking tool that is changing the industry, a Tesla of web design. And Twitter 25
is filled with love from Webflow users anyone from longtime developers to design director of Dropbox. 26
You want site examples built in Webflow? 27
You don't have to go too far. Webflow's own website is fully built in Webflow. 28
It's far from an average web site with nontraditional layouts complex interactions and animations. 29
It's a great example of the power of Webflow. 30
There's also a showcase page on their site where you can find projects posted by other Webflow designers. 31
Just a couple of examples are enough to show how endless are the possibilities of what you can achieve 32
with Webflow. 33
But it's not without limitations. 34
We cannot build web applications on Webflow, at least not yet. 35
Web applications are sites like Airbnb, Facebook, Dropbox, YouTube basically anything that has user 36
generated content where user logs in and creates and add some content on it. 37
These are 100 times more complex than regular company websites and they are more part of software and 38
web development rather than web design field. 39
We could definitely design the front-end of all those websites in Webflow. 40
For example, we could design it and develop it inside Webflow. 41
Then export the code which is HTML, CSS and JavaScript and give that code, that front-end code to the 42
developers, who then are going to connect it to the Web application. 43
But we're not going to touch on that in this course. 44
Here we're going to learn how to design and build regular websites that make the majority of the web. 45
There is another type of sites you can build on Webflow: e-commerce sites. 46
It's a newer edition to their platform but we're not going to cover those in this course. 47
The demand for e-commerce sites are much smaller than regular websites. 48
So, my recommendation would be to go and move to e-commerce site web design and web development, 49
once you gain a good enough real work experience with regular and general web design. It doesn't make 50
a lot of sense to jump right into a complex, a bit more complex, web development which is e-commerce rather 51
than regular web sites, which is much simpler and much more straightforward. 52
One thing you might wonder, if there is a demand for Webflow. 53
And that's a valid question. Because sometimes clients ask for web designers who are specializing in 54
specific platforms like WordPress, Drupal and many more. 55
The answer is yes. 56
Just like other platforms there is also a demand specifically for Webflow designers. 57
Although this demand isn't as big as WordPress, but that's not much of an issue. Because majority and 58
most demand for websites and web designers isn't platform-specific. Because clients don't usually 59
care where you're going to build their website. 60
And if they trust you as a web designer, they will trust your preference and your judgment in it. 61
There are times when you might need to explain why they should go with Webflow. 62
However, it's very easy to do because just one single Webflow feature is enough to convince them to 63
go for it. 64
You see clients need to keep their website updated. 65
They need to create content. 66
They need to update the text on their pages. 67
They need to create new blog posts and so on. In WordPress they have to update that content in a very 68
complicated clunky not very user-friendly admin panel. Which looks something like this. For clients 69
this is not an exciting thing to use. 70
It's scary and they fear they will break something. 71
Now in Webflow clients edit content directly on the live site. 72
No admin panels and weird text editors. 73
They edit exactly what they see, they can change photos, update text and no way for them to break the 74
site. 75
There are more benefits for clients and other ways you can make the case for Webflow. 76
I will teach you all about it in freelancing part of this course. 77
Webflow isn't something that you just jump in and start using and start building websites. 78
It's not as intuitive as something like maybe Squarespace. 79
It has a learning curve. And mainly it's because it is based on the regular code structure that regular 80
web designer and developer would use. 81
For example you add HTML elements in Webflow and style them using CSS classes. Just like what one would 82
do when actually coding the website. 83
If you have some experience with HTML and CSS definitely it will come in handy, but if you don't have 84
any, don't worry about it, you don't need to have any prior experience. 85
I will teach you everything as we go. During this course you're gonna become a pro user of Webflow 86
ready to take on real paid website projects right after you're finished with the course. Webflow is 87
free until you need to publish the website and then you pay for the hosting which is about $15 88
per month. But hosting is something that every website owner has to pay even if they're using a free 89
platform like WordPress. 90
But you don't have to worry too much about this. 91
It's not your expense. 92
Clients pay for the hosting. 93
In conclusion, Webflow has changed mine and so many other people's careers. 94
And it can do the same for you.