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July 19, 2024

Making + Building | November 2023

New features from our favourite tools, plus new client launches!

Dan Foster
Technical Director & Co-Founder

Hello! Dan here 👋🏽 I've taken a couple of months away from London life to travel and meet up with some Webflow friends along the way (shout out to Igor and the Tokyo Webflow crew!)

Tim has been steering the ship back home, so I thought I'd take the reins on this month's newsletter, sharing some updates with you from MakeBuild and the world of no-code.

November saw us launch not one, but FOUR beautiful new Webflow projects with our clients, and there were a ton of exciting developments in the no-code space. Read on to find out more!

👀 From the web: drawings ➞ code with Make it Real

We've been fans of tldraw, the web-based drawing app, for a while now, but Steve Ruiz just knocked it out of the park with his awesome new feature. Making use of Open AI's GPT-4V API, Make it Real allows you to sketch out a UI and have it converted into live code (think HTML, Tailwind CSS and Javascript) in seconds. And it's not just simple layouts and form fields - users have even cloned popular games like Pong and Snake just by drawing it out. Wild!

To us, it feels like yet another step in the right direction - democratising the development process and empowering more people than ever to bring their ideas to life. Exciting stuff!

Demo video from Ars Technica

Try Make it Real yourself

🆕 New in No-Code: Webflow's custom element

After weeks of rumours and top-tier sleuthing by the Webflow community, the cat is finally out of the bag: Webflow has added a new feature allowing users to create custom elements in their projects.

Also known as the "DOM element", this new feature makes it easier than ever to create exactly what you need in Webflow, going beyond the standard range of elements like div blocks, images and text blocks.

What does this mean for users? For us, the custom element will reduce our reliance on fiddly workarounds like custom code embeds, speeding up delivery and making sites easier to edit and update by our clients.

As Webflow matures, it's great to see more advanced features make their way into production, with Webflow listening carefully to their users as they craft their roadmap. We love to see it!

🚀 Studio spotlight: Renbee

In this month's studio spotlight, we'll take a look at Renbee, a decarbonisation startup for homeowners and installers.

We partnered with Renbee to revamp their branding before moving on to a full refresh of their website in Webflow. It's not every day that you get the chance to go through the whole process of brand, design and build, so we're super thankful for the Renbee team for putting their trust in us, and we're really pleased with the result.

Thinking of upgrading your own website?

Get in touch

📩 Launching something in 2024? Let's chat.

As the year draws to an end (!) our January pipeline is filling up quickly!

Whether you're considering a full site refresh, want to explore how AI can help your marketing efforts, or just need help figuring out what's next for your brand, we can help you make the most of no-code and low-code tools to launch something FAST.

Drop us an email on hello@makebuild.studio to book in a chat.

Read previous issues of Making + Building