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Member Update - March 2017

 March Member Update

 

Feb / March 2017 Recap


New Products & Benefits

  • Wireframes – Pre-built responsive website layouts that can be quickly customized. Big hit with members! We will aggressively pursue this product and build up our library quickly for members.

  • Audio Essentials – 2-pack of audio widgets, including a simple slim audio player, as well as a full-featured showcase style Pro version complete with playlists and images.

  • Bells Theme – Theme designed with a wedding planning service in mind, although this classic design is a great fit for a broad range of businesses.

  • Quickstart Tutorial Series – Learn Muse on your lunch break! Designed for users who want to get started quickly (or decide if Muse is right for their project), this new 10-part video series covers only the most essential elements and tools in Adobe Muse.

  • Social Icons 2.0 – A pack of over 500 social icons to use in Muse sites, available in multiple formats.
  • 6 new and updated product tutorial videos.

 

Upcoming Projects & Priorities

(please note priorities and projects are subject to change)

 
New Projects:

  • Table Connect – Based on our "Connect" series of CSV managed widgets, Table Connect enables you to build complex data tables using online spreadsheets. This widget perfectly showcases the true power of using Connect and Google Sheets to power widgets, and I'm really excited for you to see it.

  • Social Sharing Widget – A complete rebuild and update of our existing social sharing widget, enabling users to share content via email and through popular social networks.

  • Tax / Accountant Theme – A beautiful corporate design suitable for accountants or any professional service business.

  • WireFrames / Stacks – We're working on another pack of Stacks, along with an update to our recently released wireframe pack.

  • Year Change Widget – A very small and simple widget that automatically updates the year or date of a text element on your website (great for footers!).

 

Final Thoughts

Development Update

Our development team has grown tremendously over the last year, and I'm really excited about some of the new products and technology we're leveraging to build better products. Here are a few (techy) updates that I thought our members may appreciate knowing about the MuseThemes dev group:

  • New Hire – We've hired a new full-time developer (starting late March), bringing our total devs up to 3. This gives us serious development horsepower in-house, and we can tackle more ambitious projects. Our recent hire will initially focus on improving older widgets and squashing bugs.

  • Build / Automation System - built in house, our new file (.mucow) build and automation system is magic. In a nutshell, this system allows us to develop and code our widgets in modular components, and then an automated system compiles all of the modules into a finished widget. It's complex, but I can easily sum up the advantages to our members in the following points:

    • Better Quality Widgets - the build system checks for errors, and makes sure everything is working together as intended.

    • More Powerful Features - we can use modern frameworks like VueJS and React, which are then transpiled by the build system into widget-friendly JS.

    • Smaller / Faster / More Secure Widgets - the build system has built in obfuscation and minification, which makes our widgets leaner and harder for other sites to rip off.

    • The build system is complex, but it's something very special to MuseThemes and you won't find anything like this with other Muse resources. We do a ton of behind the scenes work you'll probably never see to ensure our products are built to the highest quality standards, and light years ahead of the competition. 
  • Muse Matter - Muse Matter is our internal working name for a unified set of scripts that power widgets. These scripts can be updated in one location and automatically update all live widgets instantaneously. We're going to host the scripts for you (on our Content Delivery Network) and many of our widgets will reference them. The amazing benefit to this is that if we need to update a widget due a bug or Muse update, we'll simply update our hosted version, and any instance of that widget live on the web will instantly update as well. More to come on this...

     

    To Sum Things Up...

    It feels like we've really hit our stride this year. Our product release calendar was planned back in December – which included some ambitious product ideas – and so far it's been smooth sailing. Releases such as our Search Essentials and WireFrames have received huge positive feedback from members. New developments such as the widget build system above have dropped our widget bug rate down significantly, and the quality of our new products is at an all time high. I'm proud of the whole team, and really excited for the year ahead!

    High five, and thanks again for being members of MuseThemes.com.

    Cheers,
    Steve Harris
    Steve Harris
    Steve Harris / Calgary, Canada

    Steve Harris started MuseThemes in 2011 and steadily grew the company, going from a full-time corporate employee to being his own boss. More than just MuseThemes, Steve is a conference speaker, Lynda.com author, and holds equally large collections of both business books and fine scotch.

    Comments

    Eric Goodman
    Eric Goodman

    Hi Steve, Great widgets. For some time I have been requesting a video hero widget. Something that allows you to place a full background video but able to scroll past. Full 100% width and height. here’s an example a friend of mine did: http://lbwake.com

    Glen
    Glen

    Loving the wire frames I have been building my own site using this. Also just wanted to say that I am new to web design but my muse themes membership and all of your brilliant work has meant that I have already created 3 sites and working on my own thanks guys keep up the good work.

    Peter Salter
    Peter Salter

    Love you guys! I use your stuff in websites I’m building every week!

    Barbara Mills
    Barbara Mills

    Hooray for the Date Widget!!

    David Black
    David Black

    Thank your and all of the staff for your diligent work. When I design a website using Muse-Themes, I know they will work everytime and my customers will be happy!

    Chipp Walters
    Chipp Walters

    Great stuff. You guys are the best— look forward to your new widgets and frameworks!

    klaus moucka
    klaus moucka

    hi steve,
    nice job, thanks,
    greetings from austria!

    Anj Mariner
    Anj Mariner

    Price 10/10
    Features 10/10
    Tech Support 8/10
    Ease of use 10/10
    Satisfaction 10/10

    Joseph Bates
    Joseph Bates

    I’m lovin’ it! I’m excited to hear what’s coming. I look forward to using almost all of the products from the upcoming projects. Keep it up! You guys rock!

    Dave Hutton
    Dave Hutton

    Hi Steve,
    Really enjoying the content from Muse-themes and to be connecting with a fellow Canadian. I’m relatively new to the platform but I’m learning tons. Thanks to Dani Beaumont for listing you folks on her Muse Jam site.
    Your widgets are the Bomb. Keep up the great work.
    Dave

    Bob
    Bob

    What does your Build / Automation System do, i don’t really understand it.

    Fabrice
    Fabrice

    Muse Matter : What, I read well ? We could update our widgets easily .. It’s that, it will be again a big big advantage of your widgets, since the Adobe Muse Creation, a lot of designers wait this possibility. Indeed, it’s the total frustation that in 2017 Adobe cannot build a system to replace widget without delete/add again/reconfigure … precious time to win!

    Claude Cash
    Claude Cash

    I really, really would like to see the new audio pro widget with more than 10 songs – 16 minimum? I can’t really use it until then. You rarely see a recording artists place less than 12 songs on a CD these days! That said, thanks for the great work folks.

    Andy Allcott
    Andy Allcott

    I’m interested in the Tax / Accountant themed template – can you give any indication on when this might be released? I have a client I can target with this and they have mentioned they are keen to redesign their website. Keep up the good work.

    David Claghorn
    David Claghorn

    Hi Steve – Your entire Muse-Themes product line is 10 out of 10. Muse-Themes is my saving grace for creating web sites that my clients always love. It’s also nice to receive new material to work wth everyweek. My decision to Join Muse-Themes is the best business decision, as a designer trying to jump into web design, I have ever made! Thank you and keep up the outstanding and superior work your team has demonstrated!

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