I experimented with Muse and liked it, mostly. But apparently looks like Adobe is dropping it. If I interpret this correctly.
“On March 26, 2018 we will release the final feature improvement release of Adobe Muse. We will continue to offer technical support to all active Creative Cloud customers until May 20, 2019.”
More from Adobe on what they’re seeing as replacements for Muse users:
Me too. I was actually rather elated by the possibilities. Made an old portfolio site prototype with it: http://www.getinfotech.net/hotbutton/index.html
But I’d say Muse was a major opportunity bungled by Adobe, because unfortunately, early iterations produced code that was essentially “laughed out of the business,” and perhaps rightly so, with CSS selectors as long as an airport runway. But provided you didn’t try to edit Muse-authored stuff outside of Muse, it wasn’t really a major issue, especially as generally available bandwidth expanded to the point that code-weight became less of a concern. More recent versions produce code that is quite tidy by comparison, but I believe it was too late to salvage the potential for wide-base adoption. Maybe it never had that potential, for all I know, in competition with the growing popularity of CMS.
I do almost no web-destined client work these days, and so never really went back to Muse as a regular tool. It might still be viable for a while, but once the announcement of impending death goes out, any forward thinker drops it in a second.
Agreed.
As a stand-alone WYSIWYG tool, Muse had actually matured to the point where it did a reasonably good job and wrote reasonably efficient code. I think it just came along too late in the game.
Most novices create their own websites today by using online website creation tools. They’re extremely easy to use, and work for small jobs. A step up from there is using WordPress and picking a theme. A step up from that is modifying a CMS template or writing one from scratch. A step up from that is some serious work.
This scenario has relegated static, one-page-at-a-time websites to the also-ran category. It’s really too bad since not every site needs to be built out of a database, but that’s the way the market has moved — leaving Muse in the dust.
I used Muse a little just to kind of see whether or not I’d have a use for it. I thought it was interesting, but not anything I’d use for the long run. UI will say that Adobe’s official list of “replacements” seems odd. I wouldn’t say any of those come close to offering what Muse did, instead they just seem like Adobe trying to push people to some of their other tools that people may not be as familiar with.
Yeah, that was partially my point. In theory, as an authoring platform, Muse could have and should have succeeded, I thought.
Seemed like a great idea at the time. [/famousLastWords]
For those of you that were at Adobe Max this past year you may have noticed that there were multiple sessions for Muse and how to build websites using Muse.
There are dozens of sessions at Max, with the most popular ones being fully booked. I remember registering late and still being able to get into the Muse session (which I ultimately dropped for a different session). I wonder if they used the lack of session registrations as part of their reasoning behind dropping it.
I used it a couple of years ago and liked the WYSIWYG part, since I was already familiar with other Adobe products.
But although not a developer, I didn’t like that the code wasn’t directly editable.
And now, of course, Wordpress… yeah. I have built several sites for small businesses with it, and it works fine for that.
Seems like Adobe is trying to create the largest possible stable of tools. 
Not being a web designer, but having experimented with Muse, I feel like it’s is a good starting point for web design, if you’re wanting to learn how to, but don’t quite know how to code yet, as coding is honestly probably what intimidates users (including myself) the most about Dreamweaver. I found it easier to use, without any proper training in it, and I’m gonna be sad to see it go.
Though I agree with Craig, does seem kinda like Adobe is being like “Heyyyyyyyyyy we know you liked that, but why not try [insert program not as many people use]”
Too bad you can’t own the software you liked anymore.
Copy that!
I just got a notice from Adobe the other day saying they’re raising the CC fees. Left unspoken in their ransom note was the fact that if I don’t agree to their price increase, they’ll hold my files hostage until I pay up.
How much are they raising them?
Here’s the text from the email:
Wow, they’re just so helpful and considerate!
Not.
They’ve decided to extend support until March 26, 2020.
Because… wait for it… “We’ve listened to your feedback.”
You can. You just have to look elsewhere.