Muse (codename) enables designers to create websites as easily as creating a layout for print. Design and publish original HTML pages using the latest web standards, and without writing code.
You can find Muse at muse.adobe.com, just click the ‘Get Muse’ button on the right column. Muse is an Adobe Air app and requires Adobe Air in order to run. It is free until early 2012 when Muse 1.0 becomes available. To use Muse after that, you’ll have to subscribe.
Some of the features of Muse include:
- Plan your project — Easy-to-use sitemaps, master pages, and a host of flexible, site-wide tools make it fast and intuitive to get your site planned out and ready for design.
- Design your pages — Combine imagery, graphics and text with complete control, flexibility and power (almost as if you were using Adobe InDesign).
- Add interactivity — Drag and drop fully customizable widgets like navigation menus and slide shows, embed HTML code snippets to include things like Google Maps, enable tool tips, rollovers and much more.
- Publish your site — Preview your site with Muse to see how it looks and test how it works. Then convert to a live website using Adobe for hosting, or export the HTML for hosting with a provider of your choice.
To better understand the feature set, you can see a showcase of websites developed with Adobe Muse.
The Muse name, currently a codename, is likely to change before it hits the final product. I wonder if its launch will be partnered with Adobe Edge which launched its Preview earlier this month.