Some suggestions for RW6

el mourabbi

Now RW5 is out for quite some time, I think it's time RW makes a real step forward. IMHO, RW5 was not a real breakthrough – the only exciting new thing it brought was CSS consolidation.

On the other hand, some features were lost and did not return until now, despite the promises made by the RMS team.

Here are a few suggestions for features I think RW really needs:

Fix output > tidied
It worked in v4, but not as long as v5 is around. A fix was promised seven months ago. Would especially be convenient for:

Better support for non-western languages like it was when output tidied still worked (in v4 that was)
In the source, Greek now looks like

Καλιμέρα

instead of Καλιμέρα – almost impossible to read, and unnecessarily bloating the code.

Support for hex colors
Despite what Nik wrote here it did work in v4, but never in v5. I think it's plain silly for a web site building application not to support hex colors.

Make the Resources area accept folders, not just files
When you want to implement a JavaScript library containing several folders, you have reconstruct the hierarchy manually: add folders, rename them, add the individual files… In the good old days of RW4 you could just add folders to the Page Assets pane.

Syntax highlighting for Header, CSS, JavaScript and Prefix panes in the Page Inspectors
It is possible in the side bar, so why does code look like crippled styled text here?

Native support for extraContent
I know it is 'not something on the horizon currently', but I really think it should be. It's 2012. The classical header - sidebar - content - footer layout is not enough for anything bigger than a personal site anymore. ExtraContent is a great concept (and if was never invented, I would have left RW long ago) but it's not ideal.

Larger text areas for the footer
I'm getting tired of editing the content of my footer in TextWrangler, copying it and pasting it into the one line footer area when I want to use more than a few words there.

Besides the Page Inspector, introduce a Site Inspector for site wide Header, CSS, JavaScript and Prefix
When I have some custom CSS which is the same on every page, I have to manually insert that on each page…

Make the find function work on more places
Why can I only search and replace in the main content area and not in the sidebar or a styled text Stack?

Document wide search and replace
I know PlusKit offers Find Plus, but I love to have the possibility to change text throughout the whole sandwich.

I know many of these issues are mentioned before, but I have included them here anyway. It's a good illustration of the fact that RW is not really making progress.

Jeroen

J$

Since I have a blog with hundreds of posts, I'd like to suggest fixing the category pages. These are not well thought out, because the page for each category just grows and grows regardless of how many posts fit the category. Each category page should have a limit, let's say 50 posts, and then a link (older/posts) to the next 50 etc. The same could be said of the tags pages; they don't grow as quickly as categories but they still grow.

Entering CSS in the provided area on a blog with hundreds of posts means another l-o-n-g publish--every time you tweak something. Why not make the CSS entries added here NOT get manually added to each page of the blog, but inserted into a css file that's referenced automatically like all the ones that come with the theme? That way none of the published pages needed to be altered at all, only the contents of a css file that was already being referenced anyhow.

I have various usage problems: frequent crashes after publishing or trying to quit, taking over the CPU every time it saves a project file, etc. But I'm hoping when I move up to Lion these won't be as bad.

Ze3b

how about native support for responsive layouts. or is that more of a theme thing?

Nik

Hi Guys

Thanks for the feedback: I've noted all of this for consideration for when we start work on RW6!

Kind Regards,

—Nik

niguli

what about a built-in (very basic) cms integration (just for editing content)

Nez

How about buying out Yourhead's Stacks and building it in? Rapidweaver is next to useless without it, in my opinion!

Well, maybe a slight exaggeration, but I'm sure you guys know how important Stacks is to Rapidweaver.

Nik

Hi Guys

Thanks for the feedback: I can't comment on individual features, but I've noted all of this for future consideration!

—N

David DelMonte

Hi Nik, I'm going to post this elsewhere too, but it would be great to be able to take the input from other apps and import their content. Apps of interest would include TextEdit, Word, Keynote, InDesign, etc.

Regards

David

Nik

Hi David

Thanks for the suggestion: some apps (Word/Keynote) store their documents in a private format so it's not something we'd be able to reliably implement. That said, I've noted it for consideration!

—N

taimurshoaib

I'd like to easily work on a RapidWeaver file set with another person - i.e. easy collaboration on websites, using two computers to change one website, using a shared set of files on a network or cloud drive, please

zeebe

Let RW sync the themes, plugins and stacks from third party devs. over a system like DropBox or iCloud so you can work on a project at work and then finish it at home.

peterdanckwerts

I think I may have said something like this before but I entirely agree with el mourabbi about non-Roman alphabets. It is absolutely crazy that RW is working hard to convert unicode into old-fashioned html entities. I can type a line of polytonic greek by simply choosing the Greek keyboard and what does RW do? It makes a complete mess of it. This is crazy!!!!

getinthespirits

@Zeebe joe workman has a solution for what you are talking about i think. try this link http://www.joeworkman.net/blog/tag-Dropbox and read through some of the pages. I use his dropbox script and it works really well.

zeebe

I use his script as well, but I think it would be much better if it was done internally by the app itself.

blue4miles

Ok what about a QuarkXpress feature!
Many years ago when I used Quark, it had the ability, when you needed to send work to a third party, to collect all fonts and artwork etc. and put them into a folder.

It would be excellent if RW could collect all pics used in a website, and also perhaps a list of stacks and themes and plugins saved as a text file.

Great way to archive. I always start out with a sensible folder, with website, images, text etc. but months later, end up with multiple folders, images I optimised but decided not to use.....

tsilva

I think it's great to devise wish lists but we should also bear in mind that the platform can quickly become a bloated behemoth very quickly if desired upgrades are not judiciously considered.

el mourabbi

Here's one more (how could I forget it?):

CSS consolidation should be an option per file/sandwich; not global. I want it on for some sites, and off for other without checking my preferences all the time.

Gille

For the hex color... just install this: http://wafflesoftware.net/hexpicker/

Then restart RW and you will be able the use hex in the color picker

el mourabbi

For the hex color... just install this: http://wafflesoftware.net/hexpicker/

Then restart RW and you will be able the use hex in the color picker

I have that color picker, but whatever I try I cannot use it to change a color in the Styles pane…

Gille

@el mourabbi

1.open the styles pane
2. choose your color with the hex in the color picker en drop the color in your swatches bellow
3. in styles pane click in the colorsquare and click on the color in your swatches

It's 3 steps I know, but it's very quick

el mourabbi

Thanks Gille. It works, but after a few projects I ended up with numerous shades of each color and I find it very hard to remember which shade was for what

Gille

Maybe you can store your colors for each project in a stack?

Defligra's has a good one: http://www.denflinkegrafiker.dk/colorstore-stack/index.html

But indeed... it's not that simple with multiple projects.

Flying Buffalo

IMHO CSS consolidation is only part way there. My RW file has very complex pages with a lot of reuse within the site, i.e., I use the PlusKit @import(()) feature extensively. The problem is when you go to publish a "mashed-up" page, RW does not merge in each of the CSS and .js page calls for each page being imported. So for every @import(()) used on the page you get a call to it's corresponding CSS and .js pages. This results in much slower page load times and sometimes hits the IE limits of 32 max CSS calls.

I would suggest that RW consolidates all CSS calls into one CSS file. I currently have to run long applescripts to do this prior to publishing.

tevpot

I would suggest a much better control for each blog post/page (including archived/category pages). In fact, an individual page inspector panel for each blog post, I think is would help solve the problem.
This would help reduce the dozens, if not hundreds in some cases, duplicated meta descriptions and duplicate title tags.