Speed, meet beauty.

Building a web page with drag and drop is much faster than fighting with HTML, CSS and Javascript. When we set out to build Anvil, we wanted to make it as easy to design a web app as it is to lay out a Powerpoint slide. We’ve combined drag-and-drop design with a library of prebuilt components, a built-in database and a simple Python programming environment. So far, we’re making web app development quicker and easier for people all over the world, from entrepreneurs to doctors. (Want to know more about Anvil?

But sometimes, you need to put your best foot forward. You want to re-use your existing page design and brand assets. Or if you’re building those assets from scratch, you want pixel-perfect control over your page header. In short, you want the flexibility of traditional web design.

So, we asked: What if you could have both?

Introducing HTML templates

We’re excited to announce support for HTML templates in Anvil. You can choose from our menu of ready-to-go templates, or use your existing web design assets. Once you’ve loaded your template, development is as easy as ever: just drag and drop Anvil components into the page, and arrange them how you like. And you can drive all these components with Anvil’s straightforward Python APIs. (No Javascript-framework-of-the-week necessary.)

Custom HTML

Anvil’s built-in templates make it easier than ever to produce a beautiful web app in record time. But if you know HTML, or have existing web assets, you can go beyond our built-in templates.

If you’re an Anvil Pro user, you can control your page down to the pixel, with any HTML or CSS you like. All you need is a couple of special attributes to tell Anvil where you can drag and drop components.

Here’s all you need to build a drag-and-drop layout. You just need to specify where each group of components goes, and where to drag-and-drop them:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://anvil.works/template-assets/flower-card.css">

<div class="header" anvil-drop-slot="title">
    <div anvil-slot-repeat="title"></div>
</div>

<div class="card" anvil-slot-repeat="default" anvil-drop-here>
</div>

(Want to know how that works? Check out our documentation.)

And here’s how it looks in action:

Available now

To build an app with Anvil templates, sign up and try some of our examples, or start from scratch. We’ve got lots of video tutorials to help you out. If you’re into DIY, our reference documentation describes how to use your own HTML and CSS with Anvil.

We’d love to hear what you think. Drop us a line at [email protected], or you can use my personal address: [email protected].

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