Oh, how much I miss Frontpage. </sarcasm>

But really, Muse is definitely a step forward in most aspects. Instead of abusing tools inappropriate for web design paradigms (Photoshop, Illustrator), we now have essentially the web equivalent of InDesign.

Easy grids, interactive sizing, dynamic text, proper states, drag and drop elements, and more are making me heavily consider Muse for my next project—but not for final production. The code produced by Muse is, in short, dreadfully bloated and unsemantic.

The problem is that purely visual devices like illustrations do not need to be perfectly optimized down to each line of Postscript because there is no interaction. In a dynamic medium like the web where dynamic content and data (HTML) is separate from visual style (CSS), an automated black box like Muse doesn’t nearly provide a maintainable output.

That said, Muse has its merits and will surely be adopted widely to easily design and publish new websites.

Muse is free to download and use while in beta.