A Story Teller

@thekevingeary At this point (or in a few months, max-when component API is live), Etch will be basically propping up WP all by itself on one hand, with the mad rush for AI on other. With all the hate it gets, people forget what WP brings to the table in terms of solid, dependable architecture!

Anyone in WordPress not paying attention to Etch is doing themselves a dramatic disservice at this point. There isn't a tool in WP that can match what Etch is capable of and the gap is getting wider and wider each week. And if you're using Claude or Cursor or Codex now ... nobody should be using an IDE when there's a visual development environment that gives you access to the code. You get all benefits of an IDE with all the benefits of a visual environment in one experience. It's objectively better.

@thekevingeary This looks quite promising--waiting for Gemini integration to test it out. But how fast would it be, let's say, compared to using emmett's quick actions, especially to build the scaffolding? I still don't trust AI enough for css stuff.

Update: Etch's AI is trained on semantic HTML, BEM, nesting, and locally scoped variables. It's anti-slop. And it has the capacity to build from screenshots. We're also the only relevant platform that gives code access in combo with a true visual development environment. ✌️

yo dumb idiots at @BisleriZone - Can't you make the 2/5/10 litre bottles just a bit bigger so that it is not filled to the brim, causing a spill, mess and water wastage every time you open one of those?

@thekevingeary I really hope EtchCMS as a layer on WP is true🤞🏽.

@1ce_upon_a_ Don't buy anything yet ... you might be interested in what we'll be announcing soon.

Quick look at Etch's new repeater functionality for the Group prop!

@thekevingeary Yup. The granularity is truly awesome. I cannot even fathom working outside Etch now, even for brochure sites. Thinking of getting SleekWP's new plugin that gets everything off WordPress and the client won't even have to login to WP, let alone look at that thing called gutenberg.

@1ce_upon_a_ Yeah I'm not sure how many other builders have a repeater in component props, but once we have prop logic it's gonna be a done deal.

@srikat I think even ACSS does this. I know that the general Bricks community seems to be averse to anything Kevin puts out at this point, but it seems counter-productive (to put in mild terms) to not use an excellent product just because.

For Bricks users, half life is spent clicking on the class in the element classes input of Bricks editor when an element is selected in the structure panel. Asked AI to build me a plugin that does this automatically. I think this is one of the features of AT. So much time saved!

@nickarceco Total!

@1ce_upon_a_ Oh holy I didn’t even see the three bubbles at the bottom

This is the future of website design that I'm scared of respira.press What am I supposed to look at? what even is this?

@srikat You're getting very close to how Etch works, with all the benefits of having a cms in the backend. Not selling it, but it does function as a highly polished, performant IDE in WP.

If I am the only person that is ever going to make changes to a page that's built with a page builder, does it even make sense to "convert" HTML, CSS and JS into page builder elements? The DOM output is going to be the same if I just dump all the source code in a Code element. Isn't it? Note: This is not for *all* sections on the page, only a couple.

@DreamEncode @srikat Exactly. I mean, we understand acquisitions. But bet on 2-3 promising horses and make them peak players in their space. Instead went on a bunch of acquisitions and all of those are now languishing in the lower-mid tier (LearnDash comes to mind). A ton spent on marketing though!

@1ce_upon_a_ @srikat Sad. LW was so nice before. Been circling the drain for a few years now. Bad acquisitions made to gain a bigger piece of the WP experience went exactly how everyone predicted

@vponamariov Ooh! I can't wait for the browser compatibility to cross 90 for this one. This would make life so much easier, especially with the display property.

One CSS property just killed the need for JavaScript in every FAQ accordion you've ever built. Seriously. The property is interpolate-size: allow-keywords

@thekevingeary For me conclusion 1 is enough to not turn over everything to AI. And that has been substantially and conclusively proven too. Hybrid, definitely--one would be dumb not to use the full spectrum of the tools available out there, including AI. But definitely no wholesale replacement

Turning your full work output over to AI is a massive gamble, for multiple reasons. One, there's no guarantee that it can do everything you need it to be able to do, especially in its current state. Two, there's no guarantee that you won't get stuck in a situation that it can't fulfill, leaving you powerless to step in because it's done too much of the project already and you have no idea how things work under the hood. For skilled devs, the ONLY guaranteed outcome right now is that you'll get far dumber, and you'll lose all the dev skills, abilities, and experience you've worked so hard to acquire up to this point. That is a 100% guaranteed fact. Removing yourself from the practice of dev makes you progressively more irrelevant each day that goes by. In fact, this actually might be the first time in human history where an entire industry of highly technical people willingly raced from the top of the skill ladder to the bottom of the skill ladder. They seem to be doing this because they believe in a world where AI progresses to the point of being autonomous and nearly flawless. But in that world, they're no longer really needed anyway, so what's the point? They also seem to believe that the costs won't skyrocket, which is a third gamble. What happens if costs do increase frantically, though (knowing that all the AI companies are currently taking massive losses)? If AI doesn't pan out exactly the way people hope and we find ourselves in a world where the best (and most affordable) approach is actually a hybrid, AI-assist approach to development, what will all the people who turned their entire workload over to AI do at that point? And how will all the products built by cheap AI get maintained in a world where AI is now far more expensive? Conclusion 1: Going full-AI undoubtedly retards your actual skills. That's a huge PERSONAL risk that relies on some big gambles. Conclusion 2: Building and selling products where iteration and maintenance require agents at the currently untenable cost structures is a huge risk to you and everyone you sell to. Conclusion 3: The most responsible thing is to remain in command of the code. Take a hybrid approach. Stay engaged with the practice of development. Maintain your skills. Engineer your products properly. For the people who didn't have many skills to begin with, we see why you're so hyped. You couldn't do something before, but you can seemingly do it now. You feel a newfound sense of empowerment and like you cheated the process of having to learn. That's great. Have fun. But stop trying to convince people who have acquired tremendous skill to abandon those skills when the actual consequences and outcomes of that decision are completely unknown and terribly risky. And remember, a lack of skill in the thing AI is doing means the person also lacks the skills to assess whether the AI is truly capable of it. Right now we have a lot of people who aren't very skilled trying to assess the skills and abilities of AI. Dunning-Kruger is still a very real thing. Be careful out there.

@augustl @vponamariov Padding top actually affects the layout. Scroll margin doesn't.

@vponamariov what is the benefit over just adding padding-top 80px?

Ever had such an issue when your sticky header covers anchor headings? An easy fix is: scroll-margin-top

@thekevingeary Ooh! Was waiting for this drop. Can't wait to play with the effects library.

RC1!

@pooja_bhaumik @figma @claudeai @flutterflow Can this widget tree be directly imported to FF to be connected to the database and then deployed to the app stores?

I’ve stopped using @figma for most of my product design flows. Current flow: Redesign in FF Designer → export UI DSL (JSON) → @claudeai regenerates the Flutter widget tree. More accurate than screenshot-to-code.

@srikat Windows is no different either. You should try NordPass - if you are ok with an extension-based implementation (as opposed to a central desktop app-based one). Only an annoyance if you use multiple instances of a browser. But the UX is really good.

Bitwarden's Mac app UX is so poor.

@christianmagill @srikat That's strange. I was never prompted to save the password (one of the reasons I tried Bitwarden multiple times but never switched to it). Platform differences? reddit.com/r/Bitwarden/co…

@1ce_upon_a_ @srikat Normally the flow I have is I enter a password on a site and then usually the Bitwarden extension will prompt me to save it. It's not 100% but higher than 95%.

Do I try Bitwarden for the 158th time?

@srikat While I am also hesitant to switch services for a core workflow thing like password manager, I'm going to do it this time, I think. Especially as 1P has been a bit unresponsive to some of the security issues recently.