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Thousands Of Customers Find Success With Froala Editor

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Froala is one of the smartest and most beautiful products on the inline HTML editor market. It aims to revolutionize the web domain with its next-generation WYSIWYG editing. As a company, Froala has two major products, HTML editor and Design Blocks. Both simplify work on the developer end while providing a unique and user-friendly experience to the end-users.

Where is the proof you ask? Let’s look at some of the amazing success stories and testimonials of happy customers that use the Froala rich text editor.

What is Froala WYSIWYG HTML Editor?

The Froala Editor is a next-generation WYSIWYG HTML editor. In addition to being easy for developers to integrate, it offers a highly user-centric experience. Moreover, this smart and beautiful rich text editor is very high-performant and features a simple design that everyone from your developers to visitors to your website appreciates.

What are Froala Design Blocks?

The Froala Design Blocks Builder gives you 170+ responsive design blocks. Each block is tested and proven ready to help you develop your web or mobile apps quickly and easily. The Froala Bootstrap Library is the basis of Froala Design Blocks. They give you everything you need to create beautiful websites.

How did Froala help Unbounce find a better way to edit their landing pages?

How did Froala help Unbounce in finding a better way to edit the landing pages?

Unbounce is a popular platform that helps organizations successfully promote their business online with marketing-powered AI. In 2016, Unbounce felt the need to find a new and better way to edit the landing pages created by their page builder. This was when they unleashed the great potential of Froala.

The teams at Unbounce believed that editing should be simple. They felt with a web editor what you see should be what you get. They also believed there’s no reason for having a separate text panel instead of editing their text directly on the page. Adding insult to injury, the separate text panel in their legacy solution had to be closed before they could see what the on their actually looked like.

The Froala Inline WYSIWYG Text Editor was the perfect choice for Unbounce to take its editing to the next level. They also loved its built-in features and easy customization. Froala let Unbounce users create content faster and more easily. Most importantly, now they could instantly see how their text fits into their design without having to switch contexts.

How did Froala save Close.io from reinventing the wheel?

Close.io is an inside sales CRM for startups and SMBs. It increases your productivity by putting all your sales communication in one place. It all started as ElasticSales, a team of salespeople doing sales on demand around Silicon Valley.

The Close.io engineering team used Python, Javascript (Backbone.js and React), and Froala WYSIWYG Editor to develop the Inbox feature that let their users write rich emails within the Close.io app. In addition to phone and voicemails, email is one of the main tools that salespeople use on daily basis, and they designed their inbox to manage everything in one place.

The email user interface was a key aspect of the Close.io inbox. Close.io’s never intended to fully replace Google Mail, they just wanted to offer a seamless sales email experience for their users. To achieve this, they needed a ready-made WYSIWYG HTML so they could spend their time adding unique value-creating and sales-focused tools without having to reinvent the wheel. Froala was their answer.

How did ArtStation integrate Froala WYSIWYG editor with their existing web environment?

ArtStation is the leading platform showcasing artists working in the games, film, media & entertainment industries. Major studios like Riot Games (League of Legends), Blizzard Entertainment (World of Warcraft), Industrial Light & Magic (Star Wars) turn to ArtStation to source their talent.

Until they found Froala, they needed a WYSIWYG editor that let their users write formatted content share rich media. ArtStation wanted to use images, include Youtube and Vimeo as well as Sketchfab 3D embeds and support Marmoset Viewer 3D uploads. In the future, they are looking to support 360 panos and other media types. They are using Froala to make it happen.

Which other popular companies are successfully using Froala?

Froala offers a rich and powerful developer experience. Because of this, many companies have started using Froala to simplify their work and efforts and, most importantly, save time. Industry leaders like Samsung, Apple, IBM, Amazon, eBay, and Intel all actively use Froala. Moreover, because of its out-of-the-box integration with other popular technologies, Froala is the ideal tool to adopt.

“Froala is the best editor we have ever used. Everything works. Thanks for the excellent tool. 🙂” — Ahmed Zakaria, Technical Manager at Spark Systems

“We’ve used CKeditor and Quill.js so far, and each has had drawbacks. So far Froala looks to have everything we need, so we’re excited to roll it out!” — Michael Wagstaff, Founder of Spectora

“Froala editor is the best thing I have found on the web for my projects! Please keep up the good work!” — Christian Hurter, Founder and CEO at Inkperial

Head over to Froala and save your time and efforts just like other happy customers!

5 Tips To Becoming A Better Developer

Read these tips to help you become a better developer

Software development, if you are doing it right, is an ongoing learning experience. The only way you can really improve is through practice. For this reason, the key to becoming a successful developer is to keep coding. You should never stop learning new methods, shortcuts, and techniques to help you solve problems faster and more efficiently. To do this you need to constantly review documentation, regularly participate in team projects, and stay informed about the latest tools and frameworks.

While some developers study computer science for years at a university, many others are self-taught. They have rolled up their sleeves, taken courses online, and have put their knowledge into practice. No matter how you learn, in the end, it is all the same career.

When you are writing code, it is inevitable that you run into roadblocks or challenges. When you do, keep these tips in mind. They will help stop your progress from grinding to a halt because you are missing a simple piece of the puzzle.

Check the Reference Material

That’s right, check the documentation. Too many developers are too eager to jump straight into coding. They forget to do their basic homework. They don’t learn best practices for the platform or language they are using. This usually leads to coding delays and unnecessary detours. The official documentation may seem long-winded or obtuse, but it does offer a foundation you can build upon to implement the functionality you need.

If you read the documentation before you start working on an application, you can avoid getting stuck or delayed. You won’t choose the wrong tools because you failed to learn the fundamentals. Of course, it doesn’t just stop there — sometimes, you have to do a deeper dive into the resources and review past projects to truly understand a concept.

Write Less, Optimize More with Code

Even if you have the best intentions, your code will end up looking like a jumbled mess if you don’t refactor to clean it up. Longer code paves the way for more bugs, leads to more dependencies, and makes the overall structure of your projects harder to maintain. You should try to limit the amount of code you use or you risk accumulating technical debt from having too many moving parts.

Writing good code means it has to be brief, contain the right features, and be quick to execute. You need to be aware of the trade-off between the time spend and the degree of complexity of your code. Think about which lines are redundant. Think about what you can simplify into code other developers can make sense of.

Utilize Industry Standards

Aside from writing accessible code, there are several coding practices you should follow. It boils down to you understanding why coding standards in an agile environment matter. Remember, others have to read your code and recognize what it’s doing. That is why you need to take an approach that makes sense.

This is especially true on sizable projects. Projects where multiple developers share the same files, and all contribute to the code. Industry standards facilitate flexible, multi-purpose coding. This, in turn, improves consistency between working components. Most organizations have their own guidelines for assessing the maintainability and readability of code and it is important to incorporate them into your final product.

Find Your Community

As a developer, doing everything yourself is an uphill battle. In fact, most veteran programmers have an established support network. This network guides them in navigating all kinds of libraries and frameworks. A good community brings together devs with similar experiences in the industry, often allowing users to run code reviews or critique debugging attempts.

The best community is often GitHub, where you have access to millions of open-source projects to review. There are also sites like CodeProject if you want to look up tutorials, share a work in progress, or read articles from other developers.

Forums are another excellent source of information. Join a group of like-minded developers on StackOverflow, StackExchange, or even Reddit if you want help on specific problems. With that in mind, try to connect with experts who can steer you in the right direction on becoming a better developer.

Know When to Build vs. Buy

The build vs. buy decision isn’t always straightforward. It really depends on what you want to achieve. By weighing the benefits against the costs, you can usually figure out when to buy a third-party solution. Especially when your other option is to reinvent the wheel with a manual workaround. That said, it always pays to take into account that partner products aren’t always as simple as plug and play.

To get a better idea, you need to compare the cost of development versus the price of licensing. For basic tasks, it is usually more effective to keep things within your development team and maintain the bare minimum of infrastructure. However, bulkier software requires additional expertise from consultants who know how to implement it without any issues.

Ask yourself what kind of solution will satisfy your clients and whether the solution you are considering is relevant to your project goals. There’ is always the risk of being unable to deliver on a software release, which can be amplified by buying a tool. Also, unless you don’t mind shifting your source code to another server, you could impact the stability of your software.

One great option for cutting overhead and simplifying your code is the Froala Editor. It is a perfect example of when it is convenient to buy a solution versus trying to build a browser-based HTML editor for Javascript on your own. When it comes to an exchange of value over effort, the cost of building something similar to the Froala Editor would very likely not be worth it.

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How to get up to 3500+ GitHub stars in one week

A wall of coding text in multiple colors with an overlaid image of a black circle and a white cat.

I’m not going to share another new year’s resolution with you, but rather help you accomplish yours. If making your project successful is on your resolution, then you should definitely think about ways to promote it, make it popular and wanted by many people. Success doesn’t come overnight and building awesome projects doesn’t necessarily make them successful.

Developers are one of a kind; that’s why, here, at Froala, we pay so much attention to them and their needs. GitHub is THE place for many developers and home to millions of projects. In such a vast crowd you clearly need a strategy if you want your project to stand out.

This article was initially published in the FreeCodeCamp Medium publication. We also wanted the information in it to be easily available to the Froala developers, and so we thought republishing it on the Froala blog would help more people than it already has.

The Froala Javascript Editor is not our first product. We’ve been using Github for years. But I’ve only recently realized why Github stars matter and what you should and shouldn’t do to keep them coming. We recently released a new product called Froala Design Blocks. We were listed on GitHub as trending repositories a few days later. After one week, we had over 3500 stars, and two weeks later, we were still getting 500 stars daily.

Unlike Twitter or Facebook — where you can get new followers or likes through advertising — on GitHub, you get stars only if your project impresses someone. GitHub stars are more than just numbers. They’re reliable insights that engender trust and influence people when they decide to use your product or not.

Whether you’re a newbie or an oldie to GitHub, I believe this article will shed some light on the full potential of GitHub stars and how they can be used to showcase and improve your project.

Write a beautiful README

On GitHub, the README file is like the landing page of your website. It is the first thing visitors see, and you want to make a good impression. It is possible that some visitors will hit the Star button only because they liked the images you used and because the project sounds interesting.

A good README needs to contain all the essential information so that developers understand what the project is about, why they should use it, and how to use it. There are lots of templates to pick from, but I would recommend this one created by Billie Thompson.

Despite the fact that the README is usually written in Markup, it has to be beautiful. Good is not enough. Besides useful information, this means it needs a design. The human brain is very good at visual processing, but reading text requires more cognitive effort. I would say that the look of the README is even more important than the text itself.

How can you make a beautiful README? We researched several awesome READMEs from a great list created by Matias Singers. But if you’re short on time, here’s a shortlist to help you:

Use badges — they inspire trust and summarize the most significant information a developer is looking for.
Use images or gifs — either a product logo or banner, preferably something that showcases the product. Don’t abuse images. Otherwise, you won’t have a point of focus.

Don’t be lazy just because this is for developers. Developers are human too, even though some might argue with me on this 😄.

Be clear about what you need

Let people know you want them to get involved, contribute, or make suggestions. As GitHub says, you should actively seek contributors.

We created some issues with ideas we had on our TODO list. The issues on GitHub are not limited to the meaning of the word issue. They can be bugs (indeed issues), but also new features. Besides these, we have code that we know it can be improved and topics we’d like to discuss with our users. These are good starting points for any conversation.

Finally, we labeled them help wanted, good first issue, enhancement, and discuss. Some labels are more than just guidelines for visitors. GitHub encourages users looking to contribute to find issues and pull requests labeled help wanted and good first issue. They indicate projects that are actively seeking contributors.

Get people to the GitHub page

After your GitHub repository page is all set up and looking good, bring people there through any and all methods. Creativity is the only limit.

We added several buttons on our website to redirect people to GitHub. We either asked for feedback, asked for a star, or just used the GitHub star button. For example, our website is still the top referring site, although we had lots of other referrals for our GitHub repository.

Be where developers are

First of all, developers are on GitHub, so add topics to your repository. They will make your project easier to discover, and will help developers find projects in their subject area or find a solution to a specific problem.

Secondly, listing your project on popular package managers is an excellent way to get in front of your audience. If your project is for front-end developers, then checkout NPM and CDNJS. Choose the package manager based on what programming language you’re using. For example, Ruby developers are using RubyGems, for PHP we have Composer, Python comes with PyPi and .NET libraries are posted on NuGet.

Ask communities for feedback

Don’t be ashamed to join new communities on Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn and ask for help or feedback. But this might quickly turn into spam and drag you down if you’re not doing it correctly.

So don’t be spammy. I would recommend doing this only in communities where the guidelines allow you to do so. We were already active members of most communities that are specific to our products. We also posted custom messages and photos in every community according to their particularities.

Email campaign

If you have a landing page and people subscribe for your product, then now is the perfect time to get in touch with them.

We had a subscribers list of over 2000 people that we contacted, letting them know about the new product launch. I would recommend that you use an automation tool for email marketing to avoid any unpleasant surprises.

Add a tweet button

Twitter is one of the best channels to spread the word among developers. That being said, having them write something on their own adds an extra step to the tweeting process.

Help them easily share a tweet about your project by adding a tweet button, with a predefined text, next to the title of the README.

Below is the code we used for our tweet button, and you can customize it by changing the text, url, via, and hashtags parameters.

[![Tweet](https://img.shields.io/twitter/url/http/shields.io.svg?style=social)](https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=Get%20over%20170%20free%20design%20blocks%20based%20on%20Bootstrap%204&url=https://awsstage.froala.com/design-blocks&via=froala&hashtags=bootstrap,design,templates,blocks,developers)

Little to no advertising

Advertising is another channel to bring people to your GitHub repository if you have the money for it. Keep in mind that you can’t buy stars. Traffic coming from advertising will only star your project if they like it. If the other channels I told you above work well, there is no reason to do advertising.

The only money we spent was $3/day on a Facebook ad. We kept it active for five days, so that would be a total of $15. It was only meant to kick-start the project and get the first hundred stars. While it might have worked in the first two days, the other three were a waste because our product already gained enough traction.

For my next GitHub project, I would invest a little more, but only in the first couple of days to get it spinning faster.

Free and open-source

This is a highly influential factor. While most of the people just star free projects out of respect or appreciation, others will strongly argue about starring a paid project.

Froala Design Blocks is free and open-source, and this helped us a lot. By comparison, our other product, which is paid, but used and appreciated by top tech companies, doesn’t have the same GitHub popularity.

GitHub trending repositories

Getting in the list of trending repositories is the hardest thing to do. You are competing with developers all around the world. It might be easy to get to the top of one language, but being the very first one is not for everyone. The steps above should help you achieve this. Once you’re there, you’ll have better visibility and you will grow organically.

Firstly, early adopters are keeping an eye on the list. Secondly, GitHub Trending will post on Twitter about you, and others will pick up the news.

Accept negative feedback

People are different. Every one of us has different needs and tastes. If you have a popular project, be prepared for negative feedback. It can either help you make some enhancements, or you can accept that some people have different preferences and others are haters.

Embrace negative feedback and try to understand why you got it in the first place. There will always be people who would never use your type of product. If you can use the feedback to improve your product, then do it. Otherwise, never argue with other people.

Be cautious with weekends

During weekends GitHub traffic is lower. Depending on whom you are targeting with your project, it can be a good or a bad thing to make your project public at the end of the week.

The traffic is low for all projects, not just for yours. Weekends will not have a negative impact on your project, but it might postpone its growth.

Freelancers and early adopters are more active during weekends. If you’re targeting them and you are sure they will respond, then you might have a chance to get in the GitHub trending list faster.

Why?

“Why?” is a fair question to ask since you’re going through so many hurdles for some GitHub stars. I made a short list about how this helped us, and could also help you.

Get traffic. GitHub is currently our number one referral for the Froala Design Blocks. No matter how much you invest in SEO for your domain, it’s a very long way until you can rank as well as GitHub.

Learn from GitHub fellows. GitHub is one of the most important channels when it comes to learning how to code. Despite that, it’s frequently overlooked or underestimated. As a developer and a startup founder, I believe getting your project popular among other developers provides an unlimited resource of programming knowledge.

We discovered new concepts, technologies, and ways to improve the existing code from the feedback and contributions we got.

All in all, this helped us shape a better product and, at the same time, refine our tech knowledge.

Grow a community.

Remember, we all stumble, every one of us. That’s why it’s a comfort to go hand in hand.

— Emily Kimbrough

Increase your reach. People will also start following you on social networks. This translates into a better reach next time you want to post something.

Inspire trust. Except for early adopters, developers tend to be influenced by the popularity of the project they plan to use. The number of GitHub stars is a reliable indicator, among other things such as the number of issues or active contributors.

Sense of accomplishment. Besides the practical whys, there’s also the feeling of a great accomplishment as developers when we see our projects used and starred by thousands.

Good luck with your project!

The Summer Startup Tan-Effect

A palm tree with a wooden swing and a man swimming above the ocean.

Summer is not only about the sun, cocktails and beaches. It’s also the best part of the year to make some important progress in your startup. Just don’t stress out too much and don’t forget to get some tan.

Less active users

Who would’ve thought that less active users can be a good thing? Most companies, especially startups, face this during summer. And most people accept this as a fact, but did you know we can actually use this as an advantage?

Less active users usually turn into less support tickets and more time. By using this extra time carefully we can make some great progress and perhaps outrun our competition. Not only that we have time to plan, we also have time to implement, test strategies and develop new features.

Empty space

As social beings, we enjoy having people around us, but this has ups and downs. Unfortunately, it can also affect our capability to focus on our own thoughts and develop them. It doesn’t mean we are alone during summer. People are in vacation, having fun, and we feel good about them. We’re not alone, there are just some empty desks.

And since nobody is watching, we can stare into space without feeling uncomfortable. Our brains need us to waste time in order to perform better, but we feel guilty with downtime, so we usually cancel it and get busy again. It’s like busyness is our badge of honor, when in reality is our pitfall.

Do more by doing less

Sounds idealistic, but it’s actually perfectly possible. The general feeling of vacation makes us more relaxed and thus more productive. There’s no rush, no one is expecting us to do anything spectacular, so we worry less about keeping up with time.

Our brains are not computers. We just want to appear smart in front of others and therefore we’re multitasking, but in reality we’re getting tired, less creative, less efficient and more prone to errors. Does that sound smart now?

It’s like in medicine, we have to find the MED (minimum effective dose). Anything over may be a loss, so there’s no point in doing it and anything less might not be effective. Summer is so great because it helps us find the MED without even trying to do so.

Outrun competition

With vacation in mind and less active users, most businesses slow down their activity. This is another important factor that added to the list above can be used to outrun your competition. Just be careful not to stress out too much about it, otherwise all the help summer is giving us is in vain.

What’s next?

Well obviously autumn :D. But until then make your mind: what you want to do this summer? If you’re going into a long vacation, watch out for competitors. If you’re using the summer advantage for your business, don’t forget to also take a break once a while to enjoy the sun with a cocktail next to you.

Does anyone know the perfect location for a summer vacation?

What to expect from Froala in 2017

The tip of an ignited sparkler shining brightly against a night sky.

Thank you everyone for being there with us in 2016. It was an amazing year for the Froala team and products, and I'm sure that 2017 is going to be the best year so far.

Froala Team

There are some things that we love doing and we made them more than ever back in 2016: writing code for you, having fun and drinking coffee. Here is the list of JS frameworks we're working with AngularJS, AngularJS2, ReactJS, Ember, Aurelia, Meteor, Knockout. On backend we also used the most popular languages out there and that's PHP, Node.JS, Ruby, Python, .NET, Java and last but not the least Go.

Now let's talk about fun. We broke more ping-pong balls than ever, we learned all Mortal Kombat fatalities, got together on weekends and played Catan and escaped from all the Escape Rooms we went to. And talking about coffee and eclairs: we love the pistachio, mango and kalamansi ones.

We started 2017 by going to snowboard and ski and we're looking for new people to join us. If you believe that this is what you would love doing, take a look over our Careers page.

WYSIWYG HTML Editor

At the end of 2015, we released the version 2 of the Froala WYSIWYG HTML editor. It was designed to be version 1 on steroids, taking all the good things we learned from the first version and open new possibilities for extending it. In 2016 we learned that the next thing we should do is to get rid of the jQuery dependency, so make sure you watch for that during this year. We're also proud to see that Top 100 Fortune companies appreciate it and use Froala WYSIWYG Editor within their applications.

A major addition in 2016 was the server SDKs that ease the editor integration in the backend. PHP, Node.JS and .NET SDKs were already released and the Ruby, Python and Java ones are waiting for the final touches on the documentation. We're also prepping some high end features including enhanced Word pasting, advanced image editing and a file manager.

Design Framework

Although there wasn't any big update in 2016 for the Design Framework product, we made improvements to it constantly based on your feedback and we're wrapping together the second version. As with the editor, we've written it all from scratch, this time in SASS instead of LESS and with Material Design touches. Also, together with the HTML and CSS files, now you'll get vector graphics. Yes, I said vector graphics, not PSDs because that's how you can get the best out of a design.

Together with the editor this is very important for the 3rd product: Froala Websites.

Website Builder

In development for the last 2 years, Froala Websites got through 3 iterations so far and it's for sure going to give you the best editing experience you ever had with a website builder. It will be released as public beta at the same time with the V2 for the Design Framework. There's going to be a limited number of spots for the beginning, so make sure you reserve yours by signing up in advance.

It's a great excitement for everyone in the team around this product and we're giving all the best to get it to you as soon as possible.

This year you'll hear from us more than ever here as well as on our social network accounts: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Google Plus. Therefore, follow us on your favorite network to be up to date with our latest news.

New logo. Fresh design.

A collection of black buckets with a variety of water color paints and used paint brushes.

We have a lot of changes and updates to talk about, and you probably noticed some of them already. If not, it means you haven't visited our website recently (shame on you 🙂 ), but look no further, just raise your eyes in the upper left corner and you'll notice our new logo.

Logo Change

That's right, Froala has a brand new logo. "Why?" you may be asking, because we realized the KISS principle applies to logos too. If you haven't heard about the KISS principle, it stands for "Keep It Simple, Stupid", and this probably doesn't need any more explanations.

Our old logo was so complicated and complex, that created a lot of confusion among our users. The "F" was pretty hard to spot, and some weren't seeing an "F" at all, until they were told to look for it. The old logo "F" was also wrapped in a square which created a bit of discontinuity in the whole Froala word.

So we ended up to be frequently called "Roala" instead of "Froala". Not a big difference, but a different name.

If you're a startup in the process of creating your own logo, or maybe you're planning to redesign your current logo, just keep in mind this simple rule called KISS. It will not just save you money, but it may also help you create a stronger image for your company and leave no room for confusion.

New Website Design

With user experience in mind we redesigned the entire website. We care about how you interact with our website and we want to offer you the best experience possible. We strive to make what's important to you to be just one click away, and have all the information you need in the right place.

A big change in this direction is the documentation for the Froala WYSIWYG HTML Editor, aka Froala Rich Text Editor. We already received great feedback for the previous design, and we believe, in fact I'm sure, we made it even better.

You should expect more improvements in the following months, since we're still working on a better way for you to browse and see all the WYSIWYG Editor's features and capabilities.

In Conclusion…

… rest assured, the Froala logo redesign doesn't reflect any kind of changes in the company's vision, goals, politics or leadership. We haven't been acquired, we're exactly the same company, just wanting the best for our customers.

We're really curious what you think about our new logo and how the new design improved your browsing experience. If you have any thought to share, just leave us a comment below.

Working in a Startup or Corporation?

A modern office with many open chairs and tables with a banner across the entrance saying better is possible.

“Should I choose working in a startup over a corporation?” We all face this tough question at some point in our career. There’s no straight forward answer for it, but even if you don’t realize, your decision may change your life forever.

I have to admit, I’m a startup addict, but I am going to be impartial and highlight both pros and cons of working in a corporation or startup.

Safe Job?

For some, a corporation seems undoubtedly the best choice. Working in a big company is safer, you have a stable job and you don’t have to worry about tomorrow. That’s mainly an illusion, in fact most employees working in a corporation are substitutable.

In a startup, you’re part of a small team, and chances to have a team member with the same skillset as yours are next to zero. This makes you valuable and an essential team member for the startup.

Instructions or Initiative

If you’re the kind of person that likes following instructions rather than taking initiative, then working in a corporation is the best way to go. Work is generated reactively and your job is to solve problems that may appear.

For startups, a proactive behavior is crucial. You don’t need to be asked to take action, you just make things happen rather than wait for something to happen. Although responding to a change is less demanding, it can often prove boring in contrast with initiating a change.

Learning and Responsibility

As you’d expect, corporations will pay for training programs. You receive a certain role, your responsibilities are related to that particular role and that’s your core job. It’s a steep learning curve for an entry level employee, however in the course of few months to an year the learning curve might flatten out.

A startup is constantly evolving and changing, and so are your tasks. Your responsibilities are higher and the key to success is flexibility. The learning curve is steep and in most cases will remain steep. You’ll be taking over tasks you never done before, tasks you find challenging and that are responsible for your own growth. There is no set way of doing things, creativity is your best friend and you’ll be learning a lot in this fast-paced environment.

Recognition

If you’re trying to get recognition, then be aware that in a corporation your contributions might get lost in the crowd and sometimes people even try to take credit for other people’s work. The good thing is that working for one of the biggest companies in the world, known and used by millions, will make your CV stand out and increase your market value for future job applications.

On the other hand, you can’t imagine how imminent your impact in a startup is. If you succeed, your team will notice it and you will get instant recognition. However, fail and you can easily harm the small company. Your success means the startup’s success and vice versa. Don’t be afraid to fail, but be careful to succeed.

Career path

Some people prefer following a well defined career path in a big, stable company. The problem is that corporations have strict politics and hierarchies and there is little room for growth. It often takes years of experience to advance to the next position in your career path.

With a small team, startups don’t even have management roles defined. They are created to reward valuable employees. Your success and performances might get promoted quickly.

Entrepreneurship

You’ll never find the startup environment elsewhere. It’s an awesome atmosphere, you’re surrounded by people with innovative ideas and solutions. It’s about making things different and better, simplifying and enhancing your life.

The entrepreneurial spirit is contagious. You’ll develop a passion for building something great out of nothing and pushing the limits to achieve some big goals. The entrepreneurial spirit is something you experience every day and it changes the way you approach life and career.

Bottom line

The bottom line is that there’s actually no answer to the question: “Should I choose working in a startup over a corporation?” This is up to you and what you want to accomplish in your career. It’s up to you to choose what gets you out of bed in the morning and it is highly related to your personality and preferences.

“Why your blog hasn’t been updated this year?”

A vintage typewriter with raised buttons sitting on a wooden table with a vine growing from its side.

That's what someone asked us in an email. And it's a very good question. We used to write here more often and lots of you were eagerly waiting for updates from us. However, this year we focused most of our resources in improving the editor, the design framework and building another great product. I'll tell you a little more about it a bit later.

Editor releases

This year, we made 9 releases for the editor so far containing bug fixing, enhancements and lots of new features. That's at least one release each month. Back in May we added in a new feature which gets rid of the Javascript execCommand method which is not consistent in all browsers and produces unpredictable results. It's a big step forward we made in WYSIWYG editing.

Some of you asked about specific features such as multiple image upload, video upload or an enhanced media manager. Yes, we're currently working on them and they will be available this summer.

Design Framework

This is our 2nd product, launched after the editor, that many of you tried and sent feedback over to us. In late spring we redesigned its basics, added some nice touches of material design and version 2 will be released in the following months. Also, we moved it from LESS to SAAS and we'll do the same thing with the editor shortly.

Under progress

Besides these two products, we're currently developing a website building service. Like we did with the editor two years ago, we're pushing forward the website building limits and introducing new features that make it fun to create and manage a website.

The website builder is based on the other two products: WYSIWYG HTML Editor and Design Framework. It combines the super simple editing experience with the modern clean design provided by the design framework to create an outstanding website. We're working hard on this right now and we'll start taking betas soon. Therefore, make sure you subscribe for it so that you can be the first one to find about it.

Our promise

Indeed, we have ignored this blog a bit in the last months, however you'll hear from us more often from now on. We'll make sure to bring the latest news to you about WYSIWYG editing and creating websites every two weeks in short blog posts. That's a promise!

Name Your Startup

A cluster of press printing letters of various sizes and fonts.

It might seem a bit odd that we’re writing about this, but we believe that sharing some of our experience might help others. As a startup, we had to deal with lots of the common startups' problems and any help we could get was a big thing for us. Although we mainly write about web editing and web design, we decided that we should also cover some startup topics.

What to look for

After we put down our vision, we hit a wall trying to find an appropriate name for the “new thing”. Usually, entrepreneurs think that this won’t take more than one hour and the startup name will come naturally. Yeah, keep on dreaming.

I remember that settling on the “Froala” name took us a bit over 2 months. Creating the first fully working prototype took half of that. We were looking for a new name available on social networks and that is short enough. We wanted a maximum of 8 characters, to be an original name and something that no one else is using. I bet you want to be at the top of the page when someone searches your business name on Google. That's why I recommend avoiding common names.

Social networks

I have to admit that finding something that you can use for the domain name, Facebook, Twitter and every other social network is for sure a challenge. We got lucky with Froala because only the Twitter username was taken. It was an inactive user with very few tweets.

After going back and forth, we decided to go with the Froala name, purchased the domain name and created an account on the other social networks, except Twitter where we chosen froala_labs. Only 2 years later, we managed to actually get the @froala username after reaching Twitter to see if maybe they can release it. They don’t have a username policy, but if the username you’re asking for is inactive for a very long period of time then you might get lucky.

Google Translator helps

We were using all sorts of tools that generate startup names without any results. Lately, we decided to focus on a phrase and see how it sounds in other languages and maybe choose from there. We started with “For everyone” in English and tried all kind of translations and combinations until we got to “For alle” in Danish. We played a bit with it and came up with Froala. It was short enough and we were able to pronounce it easily in English.

This worked for us, I don’t know if it would work for everyone, but it took us less time and was producing better results than other tools which generate a startup name for you.

Make fun of it

People will misspell it. That’s not a problem if it doesn’t happen too often. From time to time people call us Forala, but as long as this is happening only once or twice a year, I really don’t see why we should worry about it.

A month ago, there was a tweet that made our day: “What do you get when you mix a frog and a koala?” Never thought about that until then, but indeed Froala name might make you think of a weird animal combination. Just try to imagine. You’ll definitely not forget our name again. 🙂

We’d love to hear from you what you thought of when you first heard the Froala name. If anything comes into your mind, share it in a comment below.

Less active users

Empty space

Do more by doing less

Outrun competition

What’s next?

Froala Team

WYSIWYG HTML Editor

Design Framework

Website Builder

Logo Change

New Website Design

In Conclusion…

Safe Job?

Instructions or Initiative

Learning and Responsibility

Recognition

Career path

Entrepreneurship

Bottom line

Editor releases

Design Framework

Under progress

Our promise

What to look for

Social networks

Google Translator helps

Make fun of it

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