Apologies for this question

Elements
1

I don’t come to the Forum much at all, so apologies for this question that must have been already answered. I had a search and look through first.
“Elements” - will that be a replacement for “Classic”? Is it intended to be better? Will there be an upgrade path? Many thanks in advance.

2

Hi @Skiddersmusic,

Elements is a new product, intended to be sold next to Classic, so RapidWeaver Classic will still be available and supported.

I suggest you watch some of the videos here on this website to see what Elements is about.

Elements is not backwards compatible with RapidWeaver Classic (you can’t open projects from one in the other). Pricing is as of yet unknown, and I have no idea if there will be a discount for existing customers.

Cheers,
Erwin

3

Classic remains a supported application. Most importantly it is the best current solution for/if you are using Stacks.

Elements will do much of what Stacks can do, though it will take quite a while for third party developers to create ALL the “unique use” plug-ins Stacks has generated over the years.

However nearly all the basic functionality of a CSS Framework is built into Elements right out of the box. Elements is far more flexible and user friendly and is a true WYSIWYG interface.

As Erwin suggested, check out the videos on Realmac’s Youtube channel here. The first beta build Elements is coming very soon, not announced exactly, but soon.

4

Thanks both :+1:t2:

5

I don’t want you (@Skiddersmusic ) to be fooled by this statement. There are many (perhaps the majority) of current Stack developers that will not be developing Element equivalents to their stacks. So it’s quite possible if you use some specialty stacks that the Elements equivalent will never come to Elements or will come to Elements in 1, 2, or more years. If you are only using default stacks or very standard stacks then you may be in great shape for Elements.

6

This is true. However there are developers all around the world. Stacks was getting to the point of being saturated with solutions, many multiples with the same basic functionality, albeit, with their own nuances.

Elements is a brand new slate. The fact the code is all modern, has allowed Realmac to open up the API (hooks for 3rd parties) to create new tools, replicate the functionality of the many stacks out there, and because of the new capabilities and interface, better than ever before! The future is bright.

@Skiddersmusic This may be more than you wanted, but Erwin is right, the players will almost certainly not be the same and it will take time.

2 Likes
7

In addition, because Elements is based on Tailwind, all the basic Tailwind based components you can find on the web (mostly free too) will work out of the box in Elements by pasting the code like @dan has shown in the vids.

This means that someone can quickly code atoms and components (the basic building blocks as defined in Elements) based on pre-existing Tailwind code, after which it really becomes drag-and-drop.

For example - don’t like the dropdown atom that comes with Elements? Here’s a free replacement.

Need a progress bar? Here’s a free one.

Missing a contact form? The Tailwind community has you covered with lots of examples, like this one.

Tailwind has been around for a while and has a big community of designers and devs building for it. And most of those components will work out of the box with Elements too, by pasting the code into your project.

The ones that don’t work like this, because they need additional API hooks, can be made compatible with a little effort.

Don’t forget that this is how Stacks started too. Oodles of “button” stacks, “columns” stacks and other basis elements (no pun intended) were the first ones to arrive. Other open source JavaScript or PHP projects were poured into Stacks form (like ratings stacks, comments functionality, contact forms and even complete PHP suites like Sitelok were Stack-ified).

TL;DR:
In the short term, with a little copy/pasting, you can add Tailwind components to Elements. It will take time for people to put this code in predefined components, so it will really be drag-and-drop.

Cheers,
Erwin

2 Likes
8

I asked ChatGPT to write some js to load a different image on every page load, I wrote some tailwind to show the image, should be easy to load into elements. It worked in vscode, was really quick and fairly simple. So options are huge.

3 Likes
9

100% this :fire: The custom components in Elements are going to be a game-changer…