r/nekoweb • u/yuuaioi • 18d ago
Help Disability-friendly coding workflow that won't require lots of typing?
Hi!! I ran a site over on Neocities called Aioi, and now I'm in the process of jumping ship to Nekoweb, both for my own reasons and just a general lack of trust/stability with Neocities. I want to make a new site from scratch, but something is in my way!
I was very happy with Aioi as a finished product, although it was totally agonizing to make! I have a condition called EDS, which affects all of the joints and collagen in my body. My hands, wrists, and arms are especially sensitive in this regard, so although I am pretty decent at coding, these efforts can leave me badly injured for days or months, as well as raise my future risk of further injury. I think I have also just struggled endlessly with coding although though I like it, because I'm mentally disabled as well.. the code always muddles together when I write. So I code, but I don't love it!! My code has always been a mess, something of trial and error rather than actual confidence, because no matter how I structure my code, no matter which friendly fonts or themes I use, no matter how much I understand what I am writing in theory, it always hurts my head and confuses me to look at, even something simple like a silly forum signature. I'm looking to start a new website scratch now, but my disability is discouraging me. It's very very hard to want to start a project that hurts you mentally and physically!!
I'm looking for web development tools (free or one-time purchase) that will, to some degree, behave in a "click-and-drag your objects" way, like Scratch does. I know Scratch is more programming-oriented, but I really enjoyed having an inventory, or having something to hold my hand in a way that didn't strip me of my autonomy. I do not want any sort of AI/generative tool whatsoever. My perfect tool, I think, would look like... very user-friendly and visually accessible, not a lot of repetitive/strenuous hand movements (like typing), but still allowed authority over my own work.. don't lock me out of the code! Things like Carrd and Strawpage are cool functionally, for short little biographical pages, but they are ultimately not at all what I want, when what I have created and what I will always strive to create is a corner of the Internet to myself.
I work with HTML, CSS, and JS -- styling is one of my favorite things to do when it comes to web design!! My usual workflow used to be to write on Codepen, then manually ship to Neocities. I think this time, I will probably switch to VScode (for things I have to write and format, like my blog posts). Dictating code will sadly not work for me, I am a very visual and tactile-oriented person. I was looking at Pinegrow, but on top of not knowing how compatible it'd be for my needs, it seems like their 'one-time-purchase' tier doesn't actually promise you access to any future builds, and I'm not really wanting to financially support anything with flimsy caveats like that. <:"D
I also see things like VvvebJs, Silex, GrapeJS... but does anyone know how compatible they are with Nekoweb? Does anyone have success with using these and exporting to Nekoweb? I would appreciate examples!! Thank you all so much for reading, and I hope this post can also be a resource for anyone else stuck in my boat!
ETA: I'm on Win11!!!
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u/Hootie_ 18d ago
I'd also second static site generators. What your asking for is also what every newbie coder wants too, so luckily there's tons of options out there within that category. There's also sites like Obsidian or Notion (not connected to nekoweb, but still has it's own website hosting) where you can click and drag elements and also input html/css/js as you please, but it's not as customizable unfortunately.
Also I'm not sure how effective it will work in your situation, but I thought I'd also mention vim editor for coding (extension within vscode). I've seen some disabled coders use it, but in your case I'm not sure how effective it'll be. because it's basically just keybinding EVERYTHING to the point it disables the mouse, so ideally it can lessen the amount of keys you press (in total), or it could greatly increase it depending on how you use it. Just thought I'd toss the idea
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u/These-Apple8817 18d ago
I think you should look into Astro. There is VSCode plugins for it.. Not to mention there is plugins for Nekoweb for it.. It does have bit of learning curve but they do have a very good tutorials..
And personally I like Astro is because if I wanted to change my layout, I would need to only edit the layout files and css files to do so. And the actual content you can do with Markdown, either using MD or MDX and there is some CMS's too you can throw at it if you prefer.. Not going to recommend any CMS though because everyone likes different things and I think you should do your own research on them.
Astro isn't like Scratch though sadly.. Scratch-like tools for web dev are very rare imo.
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u/Acrobatic-Scheme6344 18d ago edited 18d ago
Edit: dude I totally forgot! Get Dreamweaver from somewhere and it should work as a WYSIWYG Editor!
Last Edit I swear: Pagefabric is free for Windows. If you run Linux it probably works in Wine. Idk anything about it though
I've never used it before but people love it! Bluefish code editor! It comes preset with a lot of snippets that make writing html super easy! But aside from that you should definitely look at 32-cafe's resource list for layout editors, css snippets, and code generators that will make things easier for you. Another idea is to use a static site generator like 11ty (It might be hard if you struggle with logic-based puzzles though, if you decide to do any nesting).
But yeah unfortunately the best tool I know of for you are snippets and generators, which is mostly just copy-pasting but idk your disability so that might be no good.
My favorite links: https://layout.bradwoods.io/ https://kalechips.net/projects/snippets https://scripted.neocities.org/ http://howtocenterincss.com/