Fail fast, fail publicly is something we preach, but it has been a while since we'd put something new on the internet.
In early 2023 I heard a radio show on the complexity of food labels and how, now we're exiting the EU, the UK will be setting its own standards for food production. In addition to the EU angle, there has also been a rise in brands creating their own food labels and adding reassuring looking badges to food items without much clarity on what these labels actually stand for.
These factors inspired me to do a bit of digging into each label and take the opportunity to learn Webflow.
If you're interested to learn what UK food labels really mean, check out Label Mouse.
What's Webflow like for a non-developer?
I found Webflow pretty easy to use if you have a basic understanding of how HTML works. The app UI is excellent and the academy has fantastic (and funny) training videos. I was able to hack the site together over a few evenings and then tweak and optimise as I went.
Everything is pretty WYSIWYG so its straightforward to design across breakpoints and optimise for different browsers. The part I was really interested in was using a database and creating each label as a different entry - this was super simple for Webflow as its pretty much what it's designed for.
The only downside of Webflow is the cost. I think it was around £250 to set up the instance and there's a yearly fee. So its pretty hard to recommend it for a side project like this (also when you factor in domain registration on top). Webflow are marketing themselves towards a professional audience who are building and selling Webflow sites to their customers.
It was a fun (if costly) learning experience.
