Webflow Frameworks Are Evolving

0:00Janne Parri: Okay, Corey, so let's start with an easy one. So if you had to start a webflow project today, what webflow framework would you use? And if that's too obvious, do you have like your own starter templates? Or do you use the public cloneables like everyone else?

0:21Corey Moen: Thank yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm obviously a little biased on this one because I have my own framework that is public called Mast. But so that would be my preference, number one. It's funny. Mean, yeah, any time I would start one, I'm just duplicating the source project in my workspace that is the clonable. But honestly, removing bias, another one that I've recommended to people is Lumos, Timothy Ricks.

0:51Corey Moen: Has published and continues to update is just a lot of very, very compelling approaches there. And I think like the big difference oftentimes, at least as it comes up in conversation is weighing the pros and cons of simplicity and complexity. And then also just like, I think Lumos is a lot of really like developer centric ideas and concepts that are like help your workflow be faster and more flexible.

1:20Corey Moen: But sometimes the pros and cons outweigh on the other end of simplicity and especially other people that are maybe newer to Webflow learning it. Tends to have a little bit less of a learning curve, but yes, so straight to it, mass is my choice. A lot of that though comes from not just creating it, but even the reason or how I created it over the years has come from just, I don't know.

1:33Janne Parri: You

1:44Corey Moen: Building things on the web long before even I found Webflow as a tool and all that and used to use CSS frameworks like Bootstrap and such back in the day. And so yeah, that would be mine.

1:57Janne Parri: Yeah, I was expecting that, let's say. I have a, of course, a Client-First background. Have played with Mast and Lumos too, and I can see that they are on another level. You kind of touched about this on your answer, but what would you consider is the ideal user or the use case for Mast?

2:26Corey Moen: Yeah, think mass kind of sits in between, especially in comparing Lumos and client-First. Like you said, a lot of the ways I've always positioned it is client-First is probably your best bet for beginners, just because their docs are so thorough. And I think a lot of the ways that they suggest handling structures and layouts is a bit more consumable and less abstracted than something like Master Lumos. And then the other end of the spectrum, would say Lumos is very much like a developer centric approach, like a lot of concepts in there that are quite technical to understand. And you can get in and use it without really fully understanding it. But I think my recommendation is always if you're going to learn a tool or a framework is, you can go as far as you're willing to go deep.

3:14Corey Moen: Right? Like, so if you really want to understand those concepts that will take you so much further. So math kind of sits in between, right? Like there's definitely concepts of math that are more technical, just simple stuff like the way that classes are abstracted and utility classes and using rows and columns. Then, I mean, even in the last, what would it be? I don't know, three or four months since 2.0, where now it's heavily embracing components and slots and all that. It is a bit more technical, but at the same time, I would say it's a lot more vanilla, if you will, as an expression. It is staying very true to as much native Webflow functionality as possible without doing too many workarounds just for the sake of easier development or, in some cases, a little bit better accessibility. But I would say that, yeah, that's a deep one that is hard to just surface over.

4:11Corey Moen: So yeah, would say mass sits in between there and all that to say. Another thing I would note in the terms of like who it's best for is a lot of times even Client-First as its name is given was originally designed with this theory that, you know, clients could get in and it's easy enough to understand that they can then be successful changing classes and adjusting layouts in the Webflow designer. And I think Ironically, fast forward today when we have things like build mode and Webflow and component props and slots and variants and all the things that come with that. There's a lot of strategy that I think has changed now and in a lot of ways, my thinking at least is that no longer does your framework have to accommodate the marketer, the clients and them wanting to get in and edit because absolutely we want to support that.

5:02Corey Moen: Instead, the framework should just make it as simple as possible to build out all of the components and slots and variants and things so that you can optimize the project for build mode so that they can be the most successful there. And it intentionally abstracts away the use of classes because like, it's so funny. Sorry, this is a little bit of a tangent, but I think CSS, I'm very much, I would say a CSS purist or I've just always loved CSS. It was one of the first.

5:21Janne Parri: Yeah, bring it on.

5:29Corey Moen: Languages I learned long ago and have just always loved it in its raw form. And I would say even beyond marketers and non-technical people, just even developers and engineering, there is a huge percentage of that community that like just doesn't like CSS. There's always these memes and things and the reason outside of the Webflow space, things like Tailwind have been so successful is A, I mean, it's purpose built for modern ways of building like next.js and all that. But at the same time, it completely abstracts away all of what I would consider the benefits and the exciting parts of CSS to just raw utilities. And so all that to say, think that is what's super interesting when you look at even in the Webflow space, what is the best framework or the best way to build? I think that conversation is so different today than it was two years ago even, right? Just because of the features that exist in Webflow.

6:28Corey Moen: That make it so that a framework is not as heavy reliant of a thing. And to me, that's only going to get more so. In my opinion, we'll always want and need a framework. But the framework and the way of building should be flexible and simple enough that it can evolve with the changes of Webflow. So way long-winded on hook. who should use Mast. But hopefully that's helpful, at least in that realm between designer.

6:50Janne Parri: You

6:57Corey Moen: Developer, yeah, technical, non-technical, like it's somewhere in the middle. And definitely, of course, because of my own just preference for it, I always recommend it even for people that are getting into Webflow because although there's a learning curve, I think once you get through it, can start moving really quick. So, yeah.

7:17Janne Parri: Oh yeah. Yeah. You, touched so many subjects. I'm just gonna have to pick one or two, but yeah, I have, I totally agree about the Client-First. It's somewhat outdated. And, if I remember correctly, if in suite has teased that there will be some updates, hopefully some good ones this year. But the one thing that came to my mind is I have. I have been teaching Webflow to absolute beginners and I always struggle a bit about the framework subject when I will introduce them to frameworks and what would be the first one. Of course for Webflow there is a huge learning curve and in a way the framework will make it

8:01Corey Moen: Hmm.

8:12Janne Parri: Not necessarily easier, but it will help down the line, but it's so much more to learn again. So any thoughts on that?

8:20Corey Moen: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think it's a great one. I similarly, I do or get excited about teaching people that are just getting into Webflow. Again, even as somebody creating and maintaining a framework, I also struggle with that same question. I think the way that I try to simplify it as like stepping stones for somebody is... They should be aware of this concept of frameworks that are very helpful to move quickly and build consistently and not have to think so much about every nitty gritty little detail and such to let the framework do more work for you. Just know those exists. Don't consider getting into one until you first learn the fundamentals of what is where and what flow. Because the other end of the spectrum I've seen many times is people

9:09Corey Moen: Find Webflow and then quickly find something like Relume, which to be abundantly clear, Relume is incredible. I don't personally use it, but I recommend it all day long because you can move so fast and it is only getting more powerful. However, I think the one risk is people will sign up for Webflow, go straight to Relume, generate sites that way. So they skip. All of the fundamental concepts about like, what is a div? What is Flexbox and grid? And how do you set up the CMS? And like, just some of these basics that then once you create your site really fast with something like a template even, or Relume or whatever, now you need to modify it. There's very few times where it'd be like completely perfect out of the box, right? And so anytime you get into adjusting those things or adding things,

10:03Corey Moen: You can quickly get stuck and then end up maybe doing more harm than good because you're trying to fix this one thing while you break something else over here and all that. So all this to say, think frameworks are so valuable for people getting into it, but they shouldn't skip over those basics of what is where and the general concepts of how things work and the terminology because once you at least have those and then revisit frameworks, I think that's where you can then move really quick and just more importantly, feel confident that whatever you are building, you know at least the 80 % of what you're doing and aren't too much in the dark because I think the other side of that coin is the reality is like if you'll never be 1000 % confident on every move you're making in building a website, especially in Webflow or especially in, you know, traditional code.

10:59Corey Moen: So it's okay to have that feeling of uncertainty, but the point is that you should have a decent amount of confidence so that you can move quick and best leverage something like a framework. Because I think that would be my last point is the other flip side of a framework and not fully knowing it is, I would say almost every framework. The point is that you have a bunch of pre-built classes and things that you can reuse and move really quick. But I've seen this time and time again where when you don't even take the time to also learn the framework or at least like high level understand the documentation and how it's used, you can in the same way start implementing it and using it. And then, know, next thing you know, you change this utility class and it changes that styling everywhere without really thinking about the purpose of those things and when and where and why you use them. Or similarly,

11:51Corey Moen: Not taking the time to understand what utilities exist, and then you go and create other classes and things that don't properly use those. And so then in some ways it's like, why are you using a framework at all? You might as just do everything from scratch because you're not following those rules and guides that are in there for your own benefit. So yeah, it's a tricky thing, especially I would say even more in this day and age and our industry just being flipped. In so many different ways from AI and all that, there's just now has never been a faster time or a better time to build websites in a faster way. But I would say, you know, just because you can build them faster doesn't necessarily mean they're always better or higher quality. And especially where Webflow sits more in this like business marketing site, pro site, scaled site use case.

12:45Corey Moen: Building it in a way that's sustainable and maintainable and something that you can truly scale and grow over time is really important to get it right at the beginning. So much so that like this is maybe later in the conversation, but even my own role on the team at Webflow, we're actually undergoing a project this year to kind of overhaul our whole marketing of our site, which is built of course in our own product. But...

13:00Janne Parri: You

13:11Corey Moen: Some of that, there's a lot of reasons why, but some of it is also just because we've never done this. Since 2013, the site's just naturally evolved and evolved and evolved, and there's literally 14 plus different projects and all this. The main point being, it is, a scaled thing, but we aren't as optimized as we would even like to be with it because we haven't had that chance to really start fresh. Starting fresh and then starting right is just so impactful for how fast you can move later on. So anyways, I digress.

13:45Janne Parri: That's beautiful and it's comfortable and comforting to hear that you guys struggle with the same things that than us but okay, we're getting way deep here. So before we go any further, I believe introductions are in order. So my name is Janne Parri. I'm a web designer from Finland and I will be your host today. You guys are probably more familiar with our guest today. He is of course, Corey Moan. He's a Webflow community all-star, the father of MUST framework and no code supplied directory. He has a day job at Webflow as he mentioned as a brand web lead. And of course, if he will board, he tops everything off with some freelance work. So...

14:41Janne Parri: Corey, please tell us how do you manage all this and what are you currently working on?

14:48Corey Moen: Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, stoked to be here. Thank you so much again for having me. Yeah, I would say routine is the simplest way to put managing a lot of different paths in my life because I also am a father, have two little kids that are six and two. And so life is busy for sure. But routine in the way of just, you know, hours and managing my time very strictly is the simplest way to put. Doing it, I would say a lot of the other side of it more less specific is it's just I just love what I do. I'm so grateful to be very passionate about this space and even just in doing freelance in the evenings. It's the way I put it is it's like my video game when I was in school and younger as a kid. I love video games like I played probably way too much. But you know, it was one of those things that

15:48Corey Moen: I just would get lost in, right? You know, hours blip by. And although the older I get, the longer I'm in this space, it's harder to get back to those moments of flow, if you will. But like, I still get those feelings building in Webflow or making sites or now, you know, messing with AI tools and all that. Like those moments of flow and just creation are so addicting. And if I'm really honest, that I think that's where it takes me. Also definitely what motivates me to do a few different things. At the moment in time, yeah, all that's pretty much accurate. Ironically though, freelance, I've been trying to get more strict and balanced with it as, in this next year or two, I really just want to be more conscious that I'm not doing it just for the sake of doing it, or the money or whatever that like...

16:40Corey Moen: If I'm gonna spend that time, that extra time in the evenings and weekends is becoming more valuable for me as my kids get older, as life just gets busier, as I also just get older and I can't stay up late consecutive nights anymore. So I'm actually pausing freelance for June and July right now. Yeah, the clients that I was working with, they were all so gracious. And it's only a few of them. Try to be very intentional that I only really work with one to two at a time, maybe three if it works as far as like what the projects are. And so yeah, taking a pause and using this as these like stepping stones to maybe not freelance at all a few years down the road. And in the meantime, just like really trying to feel out who I work with and make sure that what I am charging is what feels fair for again that.

17:35Corey Moen: Highly valuable time that I have outside of my day gig. Otherwise, yeah, I'm still on the team at Webflow. So our brand team is split up between web, creative, and then video. I started at Webflow in 2020. So I've been there ever since. Started as just entry level brand designer, and then now I manage the brand web team. And so, so stoked and grateful to do that by day. And then yeah, no code supply co and mast is kind of a product of that. That's really a passion thing on the side. I have curated sites made in Webflow and code snippets and resources and tools for years. Like I would say since all of that content really started way back in like 2018, 19, you know, a little after finding Webflow and getting into that space. And then I don't, I'm trying to think when I think two years ago, a little over

18:33Corey Moen: Is when was like, maybe all this should just be public, because I was just collecting it all in Notion databases that I started randomly sharing. And so then, yeah, now it's just a directory site, kind of an amalgam of all those different things that I just mentioned, inspiration, resources, et cetera. There's getting to be more AI-centric things in there, too, just because of the times that we're living in right now. So I'm still trying to figure out what that means and how all that overlaps. And whatnot. Then I would say the biggest thing to it's running no code supply co is like, ever since I built it and originally started with a friend, Max Lin that used to be on the team at Webflow as well. We kinda, he also has two young kids and we joke that like, if we're not going to run this unless we can really do it in the simplest way, like basically from our phones or something, right. And so that's really maintained true. Like I would say, you know, it's such a casual thing that I'll randomly see sites and tools and whatever I save them.

19:19Janne Parri: You

19:32Corey Moen: They get added whenever I have an extra 30 seconds or something. It's a very easy workflow to add them. And then from there, like I'm still trying to figure out maybe even in these next couple of months of pausing freelance, I'm trying to figure out, you know, what else maybe I want to do with no Code supply Code. Like do I add some light content gating or start like creating some content engine in there, whether it's blog posts or whatever, I'm not sure. Yeah, so I don't know. We'll see. Just, think more than anything, like I said, anymore, just trying to run and follow what I'm genuinely excited about, even if that's freelance or side projects or whatever, or if it is just a time of rest and pause. So yeah, that's me. Yeah.

20:19Janne Parri: Yeah, that is beautiful. Well, yeah, of course we all struggle with time management, especially if you have like exciting opportunities. How to say no, the age old question. But yeah, yeah, totally. But how about we jump back to the framework talk? I believe we...

20:47Janne Parri: Kind of almost touched the components based building of course, there's a kind of like this mindset shift going on. Back in the day, we had quite simple components and now they are being pushed quite heavily. I think that is definitely a good thing. But of course, it needs a bit more work from the builder, the developer of the site. We do not have the old editor or it's being discontinued. And I know that you came across this when you were updating MAST. So could you explain the approach, like the MAST approach to components and maybe the decisions you had to make coming up with that?

21:42Corey Moen: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Such a good question. I think context even there, would say up until maybe six months ago, I was still, you know, at that point, components were kind of like they are today. Maybe not. I don't think we had component variants just yet, but there were slots, props, all this. And up to that point, I was actually still very much in the camp mentally. The only way I used components in Webflow was the common things, nav.

22:10Corey Moen: A top nav, bottom footer, maybe a CTA section, like just a handful of components that are used across your site, genuinely things that you need that ability to globally update content specifically. And I used to, especially even in that realm, think of components are for global control of content. Classes are for global control of styling, right? And what I think finally pushed me over the edge is just as build mode was getting more prevalent and then mostly just getting to this point of curiosity, especially with a couple projects of like, you know what, maybe this is the way to a little bit that I noted on earlier, maybe this is the path to finally not have to find a way to train and explain the concept of classes and all that in order to set up a collaborator, marketer, client, whatever.

23:03Corey Moen: Set them up for success for managing their site more holistically than changing a few words or images or adding CMS items. But like genuinely giving them the ability to rearrange sections, all that kind of stuff in a controlled way. So yeah, I used to kind of be resistant to it, we'll say that. And then now really, I think I just started experimenting more and finally being like, I do think this is the way that things are going. And then of course I have a little bit of... Bias because of being internal at Webflow. So can see things that are coming, understand more of what that long-term vision is. And then at the same time, think about how that applies to something like a framework or a master or whatever. And then I think the other thing too is just even also learning from both freelance life where I'm using what mass to build projects and all that directly with clients.

23:56Corey Moen: Or internally on the web team at Webflow, we don't use Mast, but we have our own framework called Boilerplate that's very, very similar to Mast, has some differences that Johnny Gomez is another brand designer at Webflow. That's actually anthropic now, but I'm still so close with him, love Johnny. And him and I built Boilerplate back in like 2020, 2021. And the point is after years of using that and seeing where it's worked and hasn't, and then especially our use case, mentioned we have multiple different Webflow projects, we're constantly copying and pasting between them. You have the classic class duplication, all that. The point is there's just all these reasons that were starting to bubble up in my brain around like, okay, do think it's the time has come. May I need to fully believe in at least try embracing this idea of components and component versus development.

24:41Janne Parri: Thank

24:51Corey Moen: In Webflow. And so I started playing with that in Mast. And I would say that the one specific thing though that I was trying to accomplish, or at least see if it was viable in approach of using components heavily in Webflow was trying to keep most of the editing on the canvas and not in the props panel, which I hope genuinely more UX improvements will come to the props panel. But if you've used any prop heavy component, right? Like a component that has, I don't know, more than 10 props applied. It is quite cumbersome and in my opinion, confusing, like especially trying to put my marketer client hat on, unlike them seeing this for the first time and understanding how to edit things. Or even as a designer developer building more structures and things with components, it's very cumbersome to like constantly have to go to the props panel and figure out what to hide and show and all that kind of stuff versus just like...

25:47Corey Moen: Having that experience of visual editing in the canvas and having it be much quicker and exactly to what you're expecting, at least for the, I don't know, 80%. I always use that, like, you the classic 80-20 rule of editing. And so the way I ended up going with that was, you know, one of the core fundamentals of MAST is the row and column system that is not original to MAST. It's pretty much replicated from Bootstrap CSS that's existed for a very long time. But something that I personally find fascinating is that Bootstrap has been around for so long and yet still embraces that same concept, even though we have more modern ways to build layouts with rows and columns like Grid. And Grid is great. There is absolutely a time and place for it. But it's so funny because as web designer developers, we have so much rinse and repeat. And even the most innovative websites today still have text on the left and an image on the right.

26:45Corey Moen: At some place here and other in their site. And so I think we're kidding ourselves if we think that's still not a practical thing to solve for in common layouts, just because of the surface we're working in our browser. And so all this to say, the way that goes about, I would say, somewhat uniquely in the Webflow space using components is the same exact row and column system you build with statically with divs and adding classes is replicated with components in MAST. The benefits are in some ways twofold. For developers, they, especially once you're already used to Mast or you are learning Mast, you don't have to learn one concept over here and how to build custom static sections and then a whole separate concept on how to like bind up props and build set up components and all that. Like instead, it's trying to reuse those ideas as much as possible for the benefit of your just mental load, but also just a more performant project, less duplicated classes, all that kind of stuff.

27:42Corey Moen: As well as being able to mix concepts between them. And then also I'd say for the marketer, although in some ways you could argue it's a little bit more technical for them to see a section and not just have like five props on the side that they can pick from. And that's the only way they can modify it. There's a little bit more for them to understand in the canvas when it is structured with rows and columns. But in my opinion, that is like a still fairly low barrier to entry for them to understand that basic concept of a row and a column and that you can multiply for the much greater upside of being able to have a lot more flexibility and layout. Like they come to some section that's already been built, right? Like I would say that's the other example here is components in Webflow are not, although you can use them this way, clients can set up new pages with them, you know, through a couple different paths.

28:37Corey Moen: It's they're not really intended to, know, the developer just sets up a style guide and then the marketer goes and builds the entire site. Like that's, there's still so much that goes into that thinking of content strategy and, information architecture and CMS, strategy and all that like, that's not the point. Instead, the point is just to make it so that they can easily edit and again, rearrange and add a new landing page if they need to, right? And so the point is, the example I was gonna give is they scroll into some section and there's maybe three columns for call-outs of features, but they just launched a big new one and they wanna add a fourth column, right? Like, can they do that or can they add six columns if they needed to or two rows of three? Can it be as, in other words, as extensible as they need it without you having to go in and now rebuild the whole?

29:29Corey Moen: Component to make sure that they can add up to six columns or whatever, which is sometimes the way people go. And so, yeah, I'm really, really excited about that approach. I've been trying to put it more to the test, especially in the last few months on real projects. And then honestly, even just in rebuilding Webflow.com that's coming, we'll be using a lot of these concepts. And so I'm really excited to see how this goes. And really again, the benefit being not to overstate that, the benefit being not just that means less technical marketers and whatever can get in and manage the site. I would say, although you actually made this point, it is a bit more work as the developer, like you and me to set up the project. Once things are set up, I would argue you can actually move even faster building out common pages and layouts. When you have these structures in place without all the extra work of like

30:25Corey Moen: Manually binding every piece of text and every image and all that kind of stuff. Only in custom sections and cases will you still need to do that. But like, I really think there's so much depth and things to consider in that whole spectrum of workflow between you and the marketer that I don't think a lot of the other frameworks and even just like, it's new enough in the community that not a lot of people are talking about this actively, which like, honestly, that's where I'm stoked about. Things like this, podcasts and more people publishing thinking on this because I do think it makes a big difference. And then lastly in this, would say too is like, there's already things like design assistant, AI design assistant and Webflow that can use components. We'll try to use your existing ones. But again, I would say it's early. And the point being like,

30:53Janne Parri: You

31:18Corey Moen: I, this is also not alluding to features coming. It's just like, would say the general industry is going this way. The more things you can have in place, pre-built concepts that then hopefully AI will be able to understand later, the faster you'll be able to build and hopefully have the outcome not be AI generated as we know it today, where it's like arbitrary or made up or based on somebody else's idea of what it should be, not your own. Ideally, it will be able to leverage whatever you prefer in building, right? Like whether that is Mast or Lumos or whatever, you'll be able to give it that clear instruction and it'll have a better understanding because it is a really strategic and well thought through framework that it can then help you build even faster. Anyways, yeah.

32:04Janne Parri: Beautiful again yeah, the Cognitive load it was the like keyword for me because I was going through like the Lumos documentation and I was getting excited because it's a beautiful great framework and I saw the utilization of all the all the components, but then I saw all the

32:23Corey Moen: Powerful.

32:29Janne Parri: Component properties and I realized that this is a lot of work to set this up and then I went to mast and saw your clever system the one thing one thing that I was almost like envious. Why didn't I think of this was that? There was the rich text component like using the component content components and putting just the rich text in it. Small things, but one thing I have to ask you about, how about those like variable modes? Do they like work with this component structure or the section structure built from the components?

33:21Corey Moen: Mmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. They do. And out of the box Mast, you can manipulate from the variable modes at the section level. So there's already a variance set up on the section component that will let you toggle between the different modes or themes. So funny, I never know. A lot of times, even in the docs, think I refer, I say mode slash theme, because I never know which way is going to be most clear to people.

33:51Corey Moen: I mean, they are technically as a feature called variable modes, but then like in the collection and Webflow and Mast at least is called theme. Yeah, and even like your browser mode is actually technically called theme at the browser level. And so I don't know, that's a side tangent, but yeah, those are available there. You could, think actually in some ways where I've had people get more confused with Mast is a lot of... And this is, I'm just saying this as the example related to themes. A lot of the strategy with MAST is it's intended to be a starting point, not a all encompassing every utility, every possibility you could ever need type of framework as you would get with something like Tailwind outside of the Webflow space. Or I'd say Lumos is more...

34:41Corey Moen: That direction leaning where it has an immense amount of utilities and things. So in theory, you could build most of what you've ever needed. You never need to create a new utility. My thinking is different simply in the way that I have always strived for something like mass to be useful genuinely and as performant as possible for a one page site or a thousand page site. It shouldn't matter. And in order to balance that, the idea is that it just has the most common utilities, the most common variables, the most common layout structures you would need. Like even in mass 2.0, there is finally a base nav element or component and base footer component accordion modal. Those didn't used to be in there because of that mindset that I was like, this is still a developer first framework. So if you need a modal, you should know how to go build a modal on your own or copy one from a cloneable or whatever.

35:39Corey Moen: But it doesn't need to be in the base mass clonable project from the start because what if you have a project that doesn't need that? There's no sense in having the code in there for it if you'll never use it because you're just slowing your site down a lot of ways. Sorry, not however, I guess. And so the point is that even things like utilities or modes, they're just there as a starting point. If you need more or less, then you just simply add more. And follow the same strategy. So from one MAST project to the next, the style, guide, and component library could be a lot different just because you should be evolving it for your specific use case of a project and not necessarily thinking of MAST as this out of the box, every tool you ever need, you never need to extend it. And I think the last thing I'd say in that general topic is it goes back to what I said at the beginning, learning the fundamentals.

36:32Corey Moen: The other way I think about this is for the beginners out there that like, this is actually another excuse for them to learn how and why this framework is created the way it is. Like we're actually gonna put some intentional friction in there so that if you need another utility class to do whatever, maybe like a couple different box shadows or something like that you're gonna use commonly, maybe think that like I could do you box shadow one, you box shadow two. Right? Like which would follow the same like naming and strategy as the rest of the framework, but you need to think through it to do that. And then therefore you're going to be even more knowledgeable and fast with the framework later on versus just trying to skip ahead and jump to do something else or be so abundantly reliant on the framework, having everything prebuilt for you that you never take the time to.

37:27Corey Moen: Extend it yourself and learn it yourself, right? Like hopefully that makes sense I just really deeply believe in that value that like you're only as good as the tools you have and how much you can extend them so if you're too reliant on a single tool, you are inherently limiting yourself is another way to think about it so yeah I feel like there was something else I was gonna note in there in terms of I guess I it's kind of in the weeds, but on modes in Mast as well, there is default and then invert intentionally. It's named that way because I don't know if your default is going to be a light version or a dark version. And then there is like an accent one and accent two. The other thinking was trying to, again, just instruct that you could go beyond two modes. And this is example how. But another concept in mass that is used all over the place is it is a

38:22Corey Moen: I never know how to say this that would really make sense. The general point is that, like I said, there's two ways to look at this. It's not everything you need, but it has a lot of examples of how you could extend it. And in the other direction, there are a lot of concepts that are intentionally there to make it faster for you to work out of the box, but you can remove things easily whenever you don't need that. On the class end, an example on a common contentious point, in frameworks is should headings have default bottom margin? I always advocate yes, because again, I want to add a heading and then a paragraph and not have to think twice about how much spacing is between those because it's there by default. And if I don't need it, I will add MV0 to remove it from the heading. That's the workflow I prefer. I totally see the other side of it though when people don't prefer that. Similarly with modes.

39:15Corey Moen: The accent one and two, you might have lot of projects that don't need those. Cool, just delete them when you clone the project. And that again should just be one of those mental things you go through to understand all that encompasses the project you're setting up because there's certain things you're going to add or trim when you're getting things rolling. So anyways, that's kind of the thinking there. I would say the other thing I'm excited for is just like that modes introduce also the ability toggle those things on the front end. Obviously that doesn't exist natively in Webflow today to have like a checkbox that's automatically bound to that. But you can do it fairly easily with JavaScript. There's some people that have like launched clonables out there in the community to do this. Otherwise, like honestly, the most recent project I did this on built on mass, I just use ChatGPT or it was probably Claude actually to write a little bit of JavaScript, explain what I wanted to do.

40:14Corey Moen: I want toggle a class on the body that changes the whole page to a lighter dark theme. And then that class is bound to my modes natively in Webflow. And my gosh, it's incredible the world we live in, especially if you have a basic understanding of JavaScript. You can move so abundantly quickly with AI now for things like that. So anyways, yeah.

40:37Janne Parri: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I totally use some AI and.

40:44Corey Moen: That's a game changer.

40:44Janne Parri: Yeah, yeah, we'll get to that but I to comment on well, yeah the thing you mentioned about understanding how the framework works? Even I have used webflow over five years now and I recently went through like the Lumos documentation and must documentation I and I learned a bunch of new stuff, so that is very valuable. And at the same time, of course, Webflow gets more features. CSS gets more features. I'm glad that I learned Webflow when it was a bit simpler, if you may. And now we're getting deeper and deeper. And yeah. But it's great. It gets me excited when I, of course, learn new stuff and...

41:27Corey Moen: Yeah. Same. Yeah.

41:40Janne Parri: Figure out a new technical way to do things better and so on and so forth.

41:44Corey Moen: Totally. And I think your point too is huge on even if you're not using these frameworks, just observing how they're created and all that, there's so much to be learned that is just broad strategy on using CSS efficiently and all that kind of stuff, right? Such a good point, yeah.

42:02Janne Parri: Yeah, for example, the bottom margins on headings, I thought that the only way was without those. So that was one thing that I realized that, yeah, it might go in a different way.

42:20Corey Moen: Totally. I think even one quick point on that too that I love, especially something I regret or something I'm trying to change is more video content related to how to use masks. Just because I think that people more often than not today learn better through that. But something I have adored is Timothy Ricks's, if you go back and watch, I think he still has some of the older Lumos videos and just watch. And those, you know, over time, like the progression of thinking and seeing how it evolves in itself has so much learning there because Timothy has, you can just see how his way of approaching that has changed over time. Even with something like spacing, right? Like, do we use an empty div, you know, and have the different spacing blocks? Do we have it predefined on there? Do we not? More recently, like the

43:18Corey Moen: Bounding box. Can't, I'm drawing a blank on the term, but you know that he has like a workaround for a CSS feature that's coming to perfect the bounding box around text so it's always consistent and bound to the characters and not, you know, to the line, the default like line height setting on the font file. So anyways, the point is, yeah, I just love this topic because there's just so much to be learned there even if you aren't. Necessarily taking whatever you're learning and directly applying it to some project that moment. I really think the more you can get that going in your brain over time, it's going to pay dividends later. Just because like when you get a situation that you need to build something custom, you have all the more context on like how to think about it, right? So yeah.

44:02Janne Parri: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he's a great guy, great part of the community. And he also has a long ass video about Lumos, like the documentation video, which is quite handy. Of course it's over an hour, but if you want to like get everything.

44:24Corey Moen: Yeah, like end build. Yes, totally. I want to do something similar for sure, where it's just like fresh start, how do you build and set up all that? Yeah, I just need to carve the time to do it.

44:38Janne Parri: Yeah. Time back to the time management, but yeah. How about we jump from frameworks to platforms? We have mentioned AI in this discussion already. There's a lot happening with vibe coding and easier to use web, website platforms. I feel that Webflow has a quite stable standing.

44:43Corey Moen: This.

45:08Janne Parri: At least compared to other platforms that kind of like build upon AI features. How do you see this whole situation and what your crystal ball tells us about the future?

45:21Corey Moen: Hmm. Such a good one. Yeah, it's not boring. We'll start there. Like it's just I'm still every week trying to get my head around this and really more than anything I think get on get comfortable with the uncertainty of where things are going but there's definitely some observations that I think become more and more clear in my opinion, in how AI is impacting this industry, how AI affects even our own workflows as people that use develop or Webflow. And what does that mean just for our skill set? And so I'd say at the highest level of thinking here, I mentioned a little bit of on like, the reality is, you know, every single project ever built in Webflow has custom code in it in some way, shape or form, simple, complex, it depends.

46:13Corey Moen: And there's never been an easier time to create and manage that custom code. Thanks to AI. I remember, earlier in my time of like, before I found Webflow, I tried WordPress and a couple of other platforms and then ended up just like doing scratch HTML, CSS and JavaScript in like theme forest templates. And I remember always, you know, getting and feeling pretty comfortable with HTML and CSS with JavaScript was always this scary thing.

46:41Corey Moen: I did, I read a couple of books, did some like tried some courses. I never do well with that, honestly. And then just out of just the use case of projects slowly learned a bit more about JavaScript. And I would still say I could never just sit down and scratch, right. A whole lengthy complex script, but I have definitely gotten much more comfortable reading JavaScript. You know, and then when AI got better and better at it in the last couple of years, now it's like, I just feel so empowered that I can. Not only generate something, then know enough of those basics of what it's targeting and how it's manipulating things and processing things that I've never felt more enabled to really take on more complex requirements or projects in Webflow because of that. And I think that's a point I would just make is that the Webflow community at large, the more you're willing to commit to learning Webflow, you noted this earlier on, that Webflow has a...

47:37Corey Moen: Pretty steep learning curve, especially compared to some other tools in the same space, Framer, Wix, Squarespace, whatever. But I have never felt more confident that if you are really down and committed to learning it, you will be so much better set up to work effectively with AI, especially when it comes to extending it with code. Because yes, yeah, I can write code really fast, but I've seen it more times than I can count even in the last year of people that do it kind of blindly without maybe taking the time to learn what it's writing or just like, they just dump it in and when it breaks, they don't really know why. And then they just end up down this really deep hole of trying to fix it and it gets worse and all that kind of stuff that it's ironically goes back to the fundamentals point earlier. If you don't take the time to learn it,

48:32Corey Moen: Then at least at the high level, learn what it's doing or take the opportunity to not just have it do the code for you but learn along the way, you're just selling yourself short in the long run. And I would say this applies as well to other tools that have come out like Lovable, Bolt, all that kind of stuff that you can spin up just pure prompting based websites. It's great. And we've seen some of the videos out there of there was the Lovable verse Webflow thing that went. You know, kind of big on Twitter and all that, or Flux Academy is, you know, long time Webflow-origin community account that's now, I mean, they're over a million subscribers on YouTube. It's crazy. And they also have content on Framer and other tools. I love that. And they have a video from maybe a month ago or more of like, you know, the whole like, all right, here's my design for my website. I'm going to build it in love with one, I'm going to build a Webflow. And they get that first pass done with AI. But then when it comes to refining,

49:29Corey Moen: Details and all that. It's just so clunky and gets stuck quickly. So it gets back to that point of like scalability and maintainability of a marketing site is very important when you're actually trying to use it as a growth engine for your business. And all the more reason that I think Webflow is set up and positioned very well because all of the visual editing details to refine those, you know, change a word, refine a button style, whatever it is that Webflow has been doing that for years, have arguably other tools, Framer, whatever. Whereas, Lovable and some of these AI tools, they're trying to catch up in regards to visual editing, acknowledging the fact that doing all of that through prompting is just not practical or efficient. There's too many risks at this moment in time. And so I'm very positive and eager to keep seeing Webflow and tools alike grow and embrace AI.

50:24Corey Moen: As a assistant, a thing that helps you, helps take care of the mundane, boring, tedious tasks, bulk editing and stuff, or just helps you move quicker. But ideally where I do get very excited or passionate about it, hopefully being a certain way, is helping you move quickly with confidence and consistency. Right? Like I don't just want to ask it to build a component or a section and have it do it however the heck it wants. Like I get excited about things like in cursor, you can add custom rules, right? And so you can help guide it on whenever it's doing something, do it in the way that I understand and I prefer. That could be as basic as like, hey, cursor, when I ask you to write some JavaScript, make sure you do it in vanilla JavaScript, not jQuery or whatever, all the way up to, again, framework preferences or whatever. So all this is to say,

51:16Corey Moen: I think Webflow and AI specifically, as you said, like it's kind of going already that way. We have things like design assistant that exists, or you can generate AI copy natively. There's also like, you know, generating placeholder CMS items. All that's fine and well. There's the AI site builder. If you've seen that, I would say that one is a bit more targeted at non-technical, non-community members even. Like I would say it's great for somebody to just kind of like spin up a basic page. I'm still waiting to see what the evolution of that is though, if that eventually will get to a point that is genuinely useful for you and me, like the developer in the community that's building custom sites that are built for somebody that already has a design or at the very least already has an established brand, right? We're not just coming in to spin up a mom and pop coffee shop.

52:11Corey Moen: Kind of thing, like we are building business sites, marketing sites, right? And so I would say more recently, the thing I'm most excited about in AI and Webflow is MCPs. You've probably seen some of the stuff out there on the CMS API having an MCP, right? And for those listening, it's like, know, MCP and its basic form is just at least as far as I understand it, please somebody correct me if this is inaccurate, but it's a, I don't know, the way I think of it is like all the documentation for some things, especially API, is prepackaged that you can just install it with any code, not any, but several different LLMs, whether it's directly in Claude, ChatGPT, cursor, that kind of thing, which even cursor is really just still using those large language models under the hood, right, but just giving you a better experience to do it.

53:03Corey Moen: And then it will know all it needs to know, not just about the APIs and how things can be altered, but also you can then give it context on your specific Webflow project. And so people are using this to migrate content in the Webflow CMS or entirely create collections in corresponding fields, generate items, all that kind of stuff. And then there's been some tease out there on Twitter and all that around, like there is also designer APIs in Webflow. That's what a lot of people that build Webflow apps use to be able to let a Webflow app manipulate things in the canvas and custom code and styles, all that kind of stuff. And so as there is eventually an MCP for that, y'all, we're now in the territory of we don't necessarily need to wait on all these native.

53:50Corey Moen: AI integrations and features and apps instead, like there's maybe a world where you can do so much to manipulate, create and edit things in webflow just from the comfort of your AI chat, right? Directly in Claude, again, right? Or cursor or something like that. And then even more powerful in my opinion is the point on custom code. Now, if not only I'm able to write JavaScript and, you know, do custom stuff like that in cursor, for example,

54:21Corey Moen: If it also is doing that while having the context of what's on my canvas in Webflow on a page or what's in my CMS, like, my gosh, this is a whole other level of power. And what's so funny is all these things, in my opinion, I think a big thing that I try to simplify and understand how this all relates in my mind is that word of context, right? AI is only good as good as the data it's given. It's only as good as the context it has.

54:51Corey Moen: And so the more context that it's going to be continued to open up in Webflow to any LLM, the more power we're going to have. So I think that's really exciting. Again, not to reiterate too much, but I, know, that people go off the deep end of like, you know, web designers are a thing of the past. AI will just design it for you or, know, we don't need engineers anymore and blah. I think that's just. I don't know, people engagement farming on social. Think the reality is that at least for again, businesses like genuine marketing site business use cases, we still got a long way to go before we don't have a career doing this. Or another way to think about it is these are just tools to help you work even faster. And by the time businesses that would be hiring you, startups, whatever, are using this independently,

55:46Corey Moen: I think there's going to be even bigger things that you can tackle, whether it's building web apps, whatever. But the point is that you really need to start embracing those things now and always be open and eager to them and being willing to not hold them too dearly, right? Be willing to try them. And if it doesn't seem right, then ditch it and move on to the next thing, because they're just coming and going so fast that you have to just be open to that change. I don't know. Yeah.

56:15Janne Parri: Yeah, yeah, I agree. I totally agree and the thing the new thing for me. Well, I know I have seen some videos about the MPS MCPs yeah, and I know that they are a thing but that was a new idea that maybe like apps or whatever will not have like their own AI features. They will just have this interface and you could use it through some other LLM. So that is definitely interesting because currently or until at least until this point, I was thinking that whenever a big platform, let's say Webflow comes up with some sort of actually usable

57:11Janne Parri: AI feature, it's like a game over for those new platforms who try to somehow like close the gap. So yeah, my head is just trying to wrap around this new possibility that maybe we would have more general AIs that could handle even more specific tasks.

57:36Corey Moen: Right? Yeah. It's super interesting. I think, again, I think like I always get stuck candidly on the benefits of the day-to-day stuff I'm already doing that it can have, but also just like, think what's wild that you sometimes see more, especially on social media. Is all the stuff that it enables you to do that you didn't even have a chance of doing before, like building web apps or whatever, and maybe even doing it in a way that is so much more ingrained directly in code, just with the assistance of AI, than needing even other tools like Bubble or Wized or some of these other web app type builders that you would otherwise maybe use alongside Webflow or on top of Webflow. Is that actually going to make it even easier?

58:30Corey Moen: It's super interesting. Think the other thing too is, I don't know, I probably sound like a broken instrument and keep saying it, but I still just go back to at least, don't get too deep into these things without at least giving it an opportunity to learn what it's doing for you. Cause even in the web app territory, it's like... An example that has come up numerous times and just, I don't know, conversation I've been involved in and thinking of use cases for web apps and Webflow. And sometimes people are like, yeah, like a pricing calculator. And my beef is always like, look, again, you call me old school, I don't need React or this big behemoth app framework and servers and all the stuff that comes with it just to make some, do some math on the front end, right?

59:07Janne Parri: You

59:21Corey Moen: You can do so much with vanilla JavaScript these days, especially with more browser APIs that are available to do that stuff. That's also what I love is that I can just so easily use native JavaScript or vanilla JavaScript in Webflow without any other dependencies like libraries and all that kind of stuff. I love that approach, but sometimes I think I've just seen people go straight to like, yeah, I'm just going to spin up a React app because why wouldn't I? But it always gets my brain going to the place of like,

59:50Corey Moen: You know, I've been in the industry, I don't know, 12, 13 years or something, and at least long enough that I've seen frameworks come and go. I'd mentioned jQuery earlier, right? Like jQuery is still, for better or worse, loaded in Webflow because of interactions, and yet pretty much been cast out by most of the developer community, right? Like it's not as embraced as it once was. And so it's probably not going to be anytime soon, but like for the sake of conversation, what happens?

1:00:20Corey Moen: In five years when React isn't the cool framework anymore, when something else comes out and now you've invested all this time or let AI generate all this React-based stuff for you, will you know how to migrate that? Will you know what you were getting into and investing in that versus something that, like HTML, CSS, and vanilla JavaScript that is browser native? It's really hard for me to see that changing. On a whim, right? Like, cause the web is based on that. Or at the end of the day, another way to put it is all those apps that use things like Tailwind, they still have to come to one truth. And that truth is they have to render everything as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. You know what I mean? In the browser. Like, yes, there's some other edges in there, canvas, whatever, but like that is a truth they all have to assimilate to. Like the, in my opinion, there is a safety net in the closer that you can work.

1:01:19Corey Moen: And deploy websites to those browser native languages, the naturally more evergreen that is the naturally more foolproof or dependent and reliable that code is in the long run, because it's not so heavily reliant on these frameworks that could not be here forever, right? So deep and nerdy of a conversation, but it's just like, yeah, I don't know. It's something else I think that people should at least like entertain as they're understanding the Webflow space and all that. Yeah.

1:01:52Janne Parri: Yeah, yeah, totally. And again, it's quite comfortable, comforting to know that I realized that, but I'm gonna pick on this topic because there are, well, there's DevLink and the Webflow Cloud. So for those who just use like the basic features of Webflow, what are those and where is Webflow heading with those features?

1:02:20Corey Moen: Yeah, fantastic question. Yeah, DevLink is a way that you can, when you create any component in Webflow, right? You have a group of elements, whatever it is, nav, footer, CTA, you right click on the parent and you say, create component, right? And then we've mentioned already earlier, you could say, I want this text to be editable as a prop. You select the text and then in the settings, you can bind it as a prop. Same with an image or visibility or whatever. I'm hoping we have more prop types in the future. What DevLink is you can then generate a React component of any of those components. So in other words, a good example could be you have a marketing site. You want your top nav to also be used on the web app, like even in Webflow's case, when you go into the dashboard in Webflow, your workspace dashboard.

1:03:13Corey Moen: In theory, we could have our global top nav from the marketing site also show on the next.js dashboard because we're consuming that component through DevLink. And so that's, if you think about it just at the simple way of directions, like I can create a component of Webflow, consume it in a React app externally that my team or whatever is working on. Webflow Cloud is a way that you can host a web app built However, I mean, at this moment in time, it needs to be a next.js or Astro app. You can host that through Webflow or using Webflow's infrastructure. And one of the core benefits is really domain management. So if you want Webflow or your marketing site.com slash app, then before Webflow Cloud, if you wanted to do that, you had to set up reverse proxy. So using something like Cloudflare Workers or

1:04:13Corey Moen: A couple other services, you could do this, but it's quite cumbersome to do it. And at the same time, we see this use case often. Of Webflow's biggest areas, industries using Webflow is startups, tech companies, all that kind of stuff that have an app and they have a marketing site and they want those things to sit alongside each other. So that's the biggest use case there. There's definitely more coming. That I can't share fully on that, you know, in some realms, just looking at the industry is probably obvious. There's more coming that will interplay between those things and make it even more powerful deploy apps and things on top of Webflow or alongside Webflow. And so, yeah, it's super exciting as a starting point. I think what's funny about DevLink as just a reference to is like DevLink historically came from like an internal hackathon years ago.

1:05:05Corey Moen: And then has been like brought back up and then evolved and grown a bit more. And it is pretty niche on its use case. But I'm excited for it as an example of other things to come. And then the last thing I'd say too on Webflow Cloud is if you think about things like cursor and all that, sorry, I keep mentioning cursor and I should have even given that context to you. If you aren't familiar with cursor and listening, it's just a code editor. It's literally a fork of Microsoft Visual Studio Code, is forever the most popular, probably, IDE, like code editor, if you will. The cursor has this chat feature involved where you can hook up to ChatGPT or Claude or whatever and have it generate code across one or multiple files and just the UX of it will generate changes. You can see all of them and accept them, deny them, all that. The workflow is so nice.

1:06:03Corey Moen: At the moment, it is my preferred workflow. Even just the whole brand web team at Webflow, we're all kind of committed to that. Now, where anytime we're writing custom code, it's always in cursor, at least if we need the help of AI. And all this to say, you can use tools like cursor, lovable, bolt, whatever. And a lot of them are really good at building React apps, next.js apps. Even Vercel's own v0 is really good at this. And so the exciting thing is if you did have a use case with a client, with your internal team that you need to spin up some specific app to do something. It's never been easier now to use AI to create that whole thing and then deploy it on Webflow Cloud alongside your marketing site.

1:06:48Corey Moen: So that everything is a lot more cohesive and again already with dev link there's ways to consume components from your marketing site into your webflow cloud app but there's even more coming that's going to make those two things work together very closely just because again we see as Webflow we see this use case more and more and more where those things need to be at least related but not necessarily the same code base because I think ironically one of the other big reasons people start using Webflow, I've at least seen this firsthand in freelance work more times than I can count, is these startups will build the app and then, oh yeah, we need a marketing site. Let's just build it in the same code base as our app. But then after they get a few pages in and they hire somebody to do marketing, all of a sudden it's like that marketer is not at all able to even publish blog posts easily or whatever. Or if they want to consume sanity or...

1:07:47Corey Moen: Contentful or some CMS headless CMS to go on top of the code base again now I need an engineer to build all that out and like it's an Enter Webflow or framer or one of these other tools where now hey if we can just separate those two and have the marketing site entirely in a tool like Webflow the market is way more able to move quickly you know, maybe they're hiring somebody like you or I to you know build the Webflow site but also help them grow it maintain it that kind of thing and so Ironically, like Webflow is very valuable in creating that separation, but Webflow Cloud helps it not be too distant from each other, that there's still a way back, if that makes sense abstractly, to keep your marketing site and your app alongside each other. So yeah, it's very exciting times. Think the rad part too is although there's not pricing out yet, it's, know, Webflow Cloud is still in beta.

1:08:44Corey Moen: Webflow's just general host infrastructure is massive and you know, completely state of the art in terms of running on top of, you know, CloudFlare CDN and AWS and all that. That I think that's the other thing too, is you just get that peace of mind for such a robust infrastructure that is also maintained 24 seven by engineers at Webflow. Like even to the degree, an example I always give to the dedication here that we don't really market is like, it is truly 24 seven. Like we had an all team offsite, a few months back and like at one of the evening events, I remember a few of the infrastructure engineers like had their laptop with them. Something came up, some DDoS attack or something and they were thwarting it, you know, troubleshooting it right there live. And so was just like so cool to see that like, are just incredibly passionate and dedicated as a platform to not just what people see on the surface, which is this website builder, but like,

1:09:40Corey Moen: All of the amount of work that goes into maintaining and sure it's uptime is, you know, next is like top of the industry is just really robust. So yeah, that's, guess the underlying benefit of Webflow cloud that maybe we should do a better job of marketing. Don't know. Yeah. Anyways.

1:10:00Janne Parri: Well, yeah, we will be waiting for the for the new stuff and it's amazing to see it to like Webflow branching to new like roads and one can as a Webflow person or user you can like kind of like specialize within Webflow. There's the

1:10:24Corey Moen: Hmm

1:10:25Janne Parri: Cloud and dev link and all the things that a more tech savvy, more development kind of guy can use. And on the other hand, there's optimized analyze for like advertisers, marketers, optimizers. And of course, the basic features are awesome and keep on getting better.

1:10:42Corey Moen: BANG!

1:10:58Janne Parri: That's so cool to see this space like evolving. But I wanna, for the last topics, I wanna change to maybe softer topics. Well, Webflow is obviously evolving, but you have seen the community around it for a long, time. So... How have you seen the community evolve and what are the greatest things about the community?

1:11:28Corey Moen: Yeah. Yo, big topic for sure. I would say my initial reaction in general sense is the community has gotten way more technical than when I first got into it. And I think some of that is out of the both what you just mentioned. Webflow is just getting more technical, more complex. But I think that at the same time, Webflow as a tool that, you know,

1:11:59Corey Moen: In theory anybody could use, but really it's becoming more focused towards bigger sites, enterprise, all that, and a lot more just technical use cases. And so we just are not targeting or going after the designer audience nearly as much as were back when at least I found Webflow and all that. Back then it felt a lot more like, especially like the Nelson days of live streams and all that and like, it was mostly just designers figuring out how, learning more about web development and wanting to build things in Webflow, not just design stuff statically. Then fast forward today, there is more people that even, think, before we hopped on that you mentioned, there's a lot of people that like yourself even that are mostly just doing like Webflow development. Like somebody else is even maybe designing.

1:12:51Corey Moen: And they're just implementing that in Webflow. That just, don't remember that being as much of a thing in the earlier days of the Webflow community. And that's okay. I think to me, what's still very exciting, and even to give reference to why I think a lot of Webflow developers are going to be so successful in this era of AI, is that a lot of Webflow developers, even if they aren't a core designer, they usually are a lot more design, they have a lot more of a design sense than your app. Developer that's just building WordPress sites or whatever. And that sense is so valuable and not just the hard exchange of communication between a designer and then you as a developer implementing it and doing it in a way that's very precise or accurate to the design, but also just our ability to create more entirely on our own, right? Like just like...

1:13:42Corey Moen: Doing both the design and development or working from a template or something in a really, really effective way. And all this to say even guiding AI to helping it implement that, right? And so, yeah, I think it's been interesting. Think the other sides of the community that I would say aren't necessarily negative, just the community has evolved. There's other tools even now to pick from. Framer. Right, is a big one that I would say a lot of the Webflow community that's more design heavy leaning has been embracing more and like, y'all, I get it. Like, candidly, especially if I have designer friends that just want to build a portfolio site and, you know, don't necessarily want to learn Webflow or have a reason to learn it, you know, to then maybe go sell websites as a freelancer. Framer is a great option. Like, let's be honest, like they have really found a beautiful way to abstract it.

1:14:41Corey Moen: But I think at the same time, you always need to consider, or maybe I'll put it this way. Ever since I first found Webflow, when I did, it was part of a company that we did this little research project to see what tools are out there to build websites more efficiently. We just didn't know at the time. And found Webflow and something that I agreed with my manager at the time on to give us a shot using it, especially with clients, was like, let's just... Use it until we can't. Let's see how far we can push this tool until there's some requirement that comes our way that we just can't meet in Webflow. And I think what's wild is we just never hit that ceiling because you always have custom code that you can extend it or even from the data content side, the CMS APIs have been around for a long time and are often overlooked as a very critical, valuable feature to really extend your website.

1:15:37Corey Moen: That even today, Framer still doesn't have a CMS API, at least publicly, right? You can kind of use it through apps and stuff like that. And so the point is that I think the Webflow community has actually leaned more and more into that general idea that what's exciting about Webflow isn't just the surface level features, it's that the ceiling keeps getting higher and higher and higher. And so they can more and more confidently sell sites, especially the freelance side of the community or the agency side of the community, they can more confidently have clients come in that need a website, don't necessarily know that they want Webflow or some other tool, but they know that need this, and that the website needs to do this, and this, right? Like specific requirements. And the more a Webflow gets technical and capable, even through things like Webflow Cloud that you may not really have a hard understanding or use case for at the time.

1:16:30Corey Moen: It's at least a confidence builder that will know that you can keep selling and investing your business and your learning in Webflow, knowing that it's only going to be more capable of doing bigger and better sites in the future versus the risk of the other side that sometimes you invest too much in a platform. And what if all of a sudden there's a lot of projects coming your way that you can't even take because whatever platform you're invested in, just simply can't build those types of sites, right? And that, to be clear, still happens with the Webflow community, right? Like the hundreds of thousands of CMS items type sites, like you can't do that in Webflow, but things like even Webflow Cloud, now in theory, you could have an Astro app deployed through Webflow Cloud that is building server-side SEO-friendly pages for hundreds of thousands of whatever, listings or whatever. You want to build like a Zillow.

1:17:27Corey Moen: Type of site or something like that, right? So it's just more capable in that way. And I'm really hopeful and excited for the community to lean into that. And then even because of AI now blending more and more of these skills, I think the other thing that's going to be interesting is to see more of the traditional developer community start to merge into the Webflow community, or at least be open to that, right? Like there's more and more avenues, whether it's Webflow Cloud, or GSAP, think it's another big one. We've seen a ton of engagement through, especially a few weeks ago when GSAP is now free, all the different plugins and stuff because of Webflow backing it. And then we've already publicly shown how Webflow or GSAP will be at the heart of the next iteration of Webflow interactions coming this summer. So I think GSAP is just one of those examples that it's such a

1:18:28Corey Moen: Known library for animation for, I don't know, a decade or more, that I think it's one of those ways that now even traditional developers might be like, huh, maybe I'll like, at least be open to considering Webflow. If not for themselves, maybe they are an engineering lead on some team and the marketing team that they work with wants to use Webflow. Cool. Now they might be even more open to it because they know with some assumptions, Webflow is probably legit if we are you know, using a framework like or a library like GSAP under the hood, right? Or then see things like Webflow Cloud. And so they can understand ways that they can work alongside a Webflow site. So hopefully that makes sense. I don't know. Yeah. The Webflow community has always been a bright, beautiful place. And I'm just, I'm hoping deeply too that the, what has always helped me be so excited and invested in it is just this mantra of,

1:19:21Corey Moen: Openness and everybody's welcome and everybody's here to learn together. Whether it's through things like this, you know, just having conversations and making those public or sharing ideas or making videos or, you know, building your own framework and writing docs and all that. Like we talked about earlier, everything you do and contribute to the community is honestly another opportunity for somebody to learn something that they can then turn around and sell. And grow their career and all that kind of stuff. So that is just like an awesome thing that I don't think is going away anytime soon. So yeah.

1:19:56Janne Parri: Yeah, yeah. It totally makes sense. And I totally agree. I remember when I started, had to like, let's say, sell webflow way more. It was always the question, why wouldn't you use WordPress? And I basically do not get that question anymore, which is, of course, beautiful. And, but the question is,

1:20:13Corey Moen: Orderly.

1:20:22Janne Parri: Especially for the students I've mentioned that I sometimes teach Webflow. Now I of course have to like explain why we are using Webflow and not some other way easier platform. You basically used my talking points, the confidence and the ceiling that we can do everything we need to do with this app when in other apps there might be some constrictions. And yeah, and even if you end up using some easier platform, you like learn the logic of CSS, HTML and so on, and you get the confidence. That is, yeah, go on. Yeah.

1:21:15Corey Moen: Totally. That goes, yeah, it goes beyond Webflow, right? Like even I said that forever as well. We're like, even if people are like, especially people from the WordPress type community or open source community or like what happens, you know, I would never do that. I would never use Webflow because what happens if Webflow all of a sudden closes, you know, what am I going to do? And it's like exactly that, yo. Like, well, if you've learned Webflow, then you've probably learned quite a lot about HTML and CSS and even some JavaScript. That you can apply that anywhere. Cause I'm just, it's really hard for me to believe that unless browsers as we know it go away or fundamentally change because of AI, it's really hard for me to believe that HTML, CSS and JavaScript as the browser native root languages, they're going to change anytime soon. Cause there's just the amount of history there. Sometimes we, especially in tech and I think Webflow, the community is so adjacent to tech or just ingrained in tech that

1:22:09Corey Moen: We are in a little bit of a bubble or echo chamber, assuming that the whole internet is using the internet in the way we are when that is so far from the case. You know what I mean? Even when you consider massive companies that are on archaic platforms and things like that, it takes a long time for that stuff to evolve. And so the internet at large is still catching up. And I just don't see it changing as fast. As at least we think it might because of AI, although I absolutely think it's inevitable. It's going to change from AI, but anyways.

1:22:47Janne Parri: Yeah, it will change, we'll get all the sources and training data. Like that.

1:22:54Corey Moen: Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. It'll be interesting. So, yeah.

1:22:57Janne Parri: Yeah, okay. We're gonna land this plane, but there is one funny little segments or thing I wanna try out with you. Of course everybody has to have their own thing and well, the big obvious differentiator for me is of course that I'm Finnish. So the thing that I'm gonna do with you is that I'm gonna... Give you a translated Finnish saying or a metaphor and you need to guess or know what it is about. Are you ready for this?

1:23:40Corey Moen: Okay, love this. I love metaphors, so we'll see.

1:23:45Janne Parri: I have handpicked this for you. Not really, it was quite random thing. Anyway, in Finnish it says, and in literal translation it is, throw a spoon into the corner. What could it be or what could it mean yeah

1:24:09Corey Moen: What does this mean? Yeah, like what does it mean to throw a spoon into the corner? I mean, I think I'll just openly break it down, I guess, in my head. I think about spoon and the concepts in this. So spoon, utensil to eat, to consume, to thrive, to grow. You can't do those things. You can't live. You can't survive without eating. And then a corner.

1:24:25Janne Parri: You

1:24:38Corey Moen: Right, is like a place that there is no out, right? Like there is only, you only have to go back the other way. I almost, guess, again, maybe it's reflective just on the conversation, but it makes me go to the point of like, you can't truly grow if you do just place the way that you are eating, the spoon, the utensil, the means of consumption into a corner, right? Like into a place that has no other outs, right? Like you need to place or throw your way of consuming into an area that has opportunity is maybe a different way to put it. Yeah, that's how I would say it. How would I do?

1:25:25Janne Parri: Well to be honest, that great. It means to give up. I cannot explain where it comes from, but in a weird sense, it makes sense.

1:25:45Corey Moen: I think at least in how I was thinking and maybe not communicating the best in my head, that makes sense in the realm of like, if you are throwing it, then you aren't putting yourself in a position of growth. You are giving up, are just saying, I'm done, right? Like, how can you be sustained? Oh, I love this. So good.

1:26:08Janne Parri: Yeah, okay, Corey This has been amazing. If people want to hear from you some more where can they find you?

1:26:16Corey Moen: Yeah, I mean, I am on X. I'm not super active, but maybe that will change in the next few months, especially as I'm trying to open up more of my time. So I think it's at Corey G. Moen, otherwise LinkedIn, I'm on there. And then, yeah, as far as if you're ever curious about even things like this, coreymoen.com is my website that of course is portfolio, but the info page has some other places I've chatted and shared ideas, all that again. Have aspirations for sharing more content like that in form of a blog or something like that, but time is escaping, right? And so we will see, and I try to not be too hard on myself about that because at the end of the day, I want to soak up every moment of life I have at the thing of life in front of me, like my family and kids and all that and passion. So yeah, I'm always out there on the web. Please, I would say this.

1:27:12Corey Moen: If you do ever have questions, I love just talking as you can probably tell in my long-winded answers about Webflow and the community. So please shoot me a message on my website, also on nocodesupply.co, where is the directory we talked about earlier and all that. There's a feedback form on there so you can send questions on that. Please DMs on Twitter, DMs on LinkedIn, always open to those conversations. So yeah, please let me know. And again, thank you so much, Janne, for having me. It's been great.

1:27:45Janne Parri: Beautiful. Thank you, Corey. Here we go.