I have read a few posts on this subject in the RapidWeaver Elements forum. I can see why some users find auto-save aggravating in other apps because it also saves the project that you have open. That would not be the right auto-save for a program like Elements or any creative program.
I have been using Adobe products for decades, and the two products that I use most are Adobe Premiere and Adobe Photoshop.
In Adobe Premiere, auto-save does not save the open project. That is entirely up to the user. What it does is, every five minutes or whatever increment you set, it saves a copy to a folder called Premiere auto save. So if some editing experiment goes a little wacky then you can just go to that folder and open one from 10 minutes ago. That feature has saved me on many occasions.
Adobe Photoshop works a little different, but it is just as effective as the Premier version. It has a history window with all the. Performed tasks in chronological order and I can just click on the last task that I feel good about and roll back to that.
In both cases, they work seamlessly in the background and do not affect your work process at all. But can save you when things go awry. I think Elements should implement an auto-save feature like the ones found in Adobe products. I have been working on a website that has a lot of moving parts, and sometimes I get a bit weary and make mistakes or I fix one thing and it opens a can of worms on another, or I might try something that I eventually abandon. I would love to just simply go behind the scenes to the “rollback” version of my project.