Designing a user interface for a website or any software application starts with Wireframing – a blueprint of sorts. Then a clickable prototype is created that fleshes out the details of the components (buttons, colours etc.) but without the behavioural logic and finally, the design is translated into code and tied-up with the logic that makes a website more than just a poster.
Now what if wireframing, prototyping & developing were all tied together in one intuitive and cohesive process where all you had to do was drag and drop and click a bunch of elements and viola, you got yourself a website? If I were you, I’d rush over to Typostrap to see if this is for real! (Spoiler Alert: It is. Keep reading!)
Meet the Ryzycki Brothers
Marcin and Samuel Ryzycki are the founders of Typostrap with Marcin powering the back-end as a certified TYPO3 integrator (Typostrap is based on TYPO3; more on it later) and Samuel doing the front-end wizardry. Both are highly experienced in the field of web development and in 2014, they set out to create an online service for building high-fidelity, interactive and importantly, feasible prototype, “We always thought that prototyping tools are a bit disconnected from the real production. You can design something which is not feasible to do in the final product”.
Their team consists of two more developers working on the cloud infrastructure side of things.
Built on TYPO3 Neos – The WordPress for Pros
Our favourite website – Startup Dope – is built with WordPress which is a popular Content Management System (CMS). But its popularity in the enterprise domain, which requires robustness and modularity, is limited. TYPO3 Neos is an enterprise grade CMS and offers powerful features like in-place editing. It is this open source engine that powers Typostrap and ensures painless scalability from prototyping to production.
The front-end side of things are no less impressive – utilizing Zurb Foundation which is an advanced CSS and Javascript framework for creating mobile-first and highly customizable web apps quickly (much like Bootstrap but more feature-rich).
What makes it special?
Popular prototyping tools like Balsamiq uses proprietary format for the generated files and as such, it is not reusable in the later stages of development. Typostrap uses web standard tools like TYPO3 and Zurb Foundation which greatly improves code re-usability in an agile development scenario. “You bash out ‘lorem ipsum’ placeholders everywhere since you can’t design with content in mind”, says Samuel, explaining how Typostrap managed to achieve a balance between unhindered designing and feasible coding, “When we saw TYPO3 Neos, the newest publishing platform from TYPO3 family, we instantly thought: this is it! With such a great UX we could build a user-friendly prototyping platform, which would feel more real, more attached to real world, with clickable interfaces and real content.”
But finding a balance between development and business activities proved to be harder for the Ryzycki Brothers since none of them had any experience in marketing, “We are aware that we could have great product, but if no one knows about it, it’s useless”, says Marcin adding that their beta program is ready and early adopters have helped spread the word about Typostrap.
Prototyping the Future
Typostrap has bold plans for the future. Since it is built upon such a robust framework, they want to cater to larger and more technical projects and not just to freelancers and small teams. “In the future we would like to offer access to back-end boxes, where the team could have full control over server environment and install any software there, i.e. database”, explains Marcin. With such plans, they are planning to comprehensively outgun their competition like Axure and InvisionApp.
The service is offered on a monthly subscription basis and supports over 30 languages for places where English is not prevalent. You can apply for the beta subscription program by heading over to:
http://typostrap.io/