Over the last two days I have lost hours of time due to Rapidweaver hanging twice whilst publishing.
When I force-close it and go back in I have to figure out what it has and hasn’t saved. On both occasions it has - much to my amazement - lost multiple pages that I’d created and previewed, and any amends I’ve done to other pages have been lost too.
How???
I’ve looked for the autosave setting, but must be having a blindspot or something as I just can’t find it. Can someone point me in the right direction so that I can set it to autosave every few moments and every time I preview or publish a page.
Okay, now I have to get back to redoing what I just spent the whole of the morning doing
Just done some searching and it seems there isn’t an autosave feature. My gosh. I feel like I have been transported back to Windows 95. Isn’t autosave something that EVERY app has had for years, or is it just that I’ve been lucky and using tools that save themselves on the fly?
It is bad enough there isn’t an autosave feature, but why in two days has Rapidweaver hung when publishing TWICE! Surely autosaving at least prior to publishing or previewing would be easy enough, and shouldn’t slow things down much.
I can cope with the hanging. That’s life. But then to find out you have lost HOURS AND HOURS of work is so mindblowingly depressing
I know that I will now have to remember to keep clicking save, but this is a tough habit to get back into as no other application I have used for years requires me to keep saving every few minutes. It’s just such a thing of the the dark and distant days of computing. Heck, some apps don’t even have save buttons these days as they’re autobinded to the database and so everything you type is automatically saved.
LOL, just noticed that as I’m typing this the word ‘Saved’ keeps appearing at the bottom of this text entry box. Hmm. Yeap! It has just done it again. Weird that this simple forum can manage to autosave and yet an application I pay good money for can’t manage something so basic.
Okay, rant over. I think I have got it off my chest. I’ll go and make a cup of tea and knuckle down to redoing all my work from this morning and last night.
I don’t want RW to autosave. I want to control my own life, not have an app control me. I want to try things and not have an app save until I tell it too. I may just want to delete and try something else. Saving is easy. As the shoe maker once said… just do it.
RW did once autosave, there was From memory a huge backlash from users, me included, as its really common for a user to progress an idea on the screen, change their mind and backtrack. Autosave meant the older unchanged version was getting over written.
Personally I hate auto save with a passion. Hitting command S every now and then is super simple and a good habit to get into.
I play around with a project making many changes that I don’t want to save, just to see how things look. When I’m done I just close the project without saving, or of I like what I’m seeing, I’ll save the project with a different name.
Autosave would be a disaster for me when I’m experimenting, I need to know that I can just close without saving and then load the original file and carry on from there.
Have I ever lost work I’ve done due to a RW issue, sure, but only a few minutes work as I save often. If I do loose more, then it’s my own fault for being lazy and not saving.
Autosave was removed from RapidWeaver back in 7.2 as it was causing more problems than it solved. I don’t remember all the problems but I remember removing it solved issues.
I know what you mean and on occasions might do the same myself, but 95% or more I’d just want to push ahead and get things done, and having to remember to keep pressing cmd-save is just something I’ve gotten out of the habit of doing. Yes, ten years ago it was the norm, but I think we’ve moved on.
Surely, the common sense approach would be just to do like most other apps do and just let the user choose. That way you could do it your way - which is totally understandable - and other people could have the reassurance of regular saves.
Maybe I can write a macro to do it for me every 5 minutes when I’m in the app. Then I don’t have to keep reminding myself as once I get in the zone I could forget to eat let alone press cmd-s.
I agree. That’s definitely a working style, particularly if you lean more towards the design side of things. For me, most of my efforts are on the copy, which is why it can be depressing to have spent an hour writing a brilliant (in my own eyes at least) page of copy only to then have it wiped out because of pressing cmd-p without first pressing cmd-s.
I reckon I will just do a macro to save then preview and then I should be fine, although if I’m doing that I can’t figure why Rapidweaver couldn’t just have an option that people could switch on or off that just did the same thing.
I actually don’t know of that many apps that use autosave now. I know for a while it was all the rage, but most seem to have dropped it now, as I suspect everyone hit the same user issues.
Things I use daily that don’t autosave…
All Office products.
Afinity Designer & Photo
Photoshop
In fact, anything I use that is about “creation” doesn’t seem to use autosave now. Suspect some Apple products use autosave, but I don’t use anything Apple unless I really have to, not a fan of their software.
@TemplateRepo Maybe you are right, although my experience it is totally the other way. Most of the stuff I use these days doesn’t even have save buttons any more (Evernote, Gmail, Google Docs, Visme, etc). Unlike you I’m struggling to think of anything I use that doesn’t either autobind or have autosave.
Oh, and this forum has autosave on by default
I must confess I don’t use any Office Products (moved on from those years ago) and not a fan of Photoshop (overpriced and too complicated for me and my needs), but I can understand why a design tool like that might not have autosave. Although probably the most popular design tool in the world at the moment, Canva, has autosave on by default - and pretty much 100% of web apps have autosave on by default.
But everyone is different and that’s why I think it is good to just have a simple option to have autosave on or not. Then everyone is happy and everyone’s individual needs are met, which is a good thing as we are all different, which is a great thing
I think the issue with autosave in RapidWeaver wasn’t a “creative” or workflow one. It was as much a technical problem.
The autosave most Apple apps use is a canned procedure. If I remember it just caused problems with RapidWeaver. Probably has something to do with the complexity of the project file.
If I remember we used to always see the issue of not being able to save a project (got some error) and the “work around” was to do a save as. That usually worked. Again that was years back but that seemed to clear up when the autosave went away.
I don’t think it was an easy fix that RM could just make it an option to turn on or off. It was broken if I remember.
Really, I must be getting really old because I’ve hardly heard of it. But I’m not a drawer more of a coder.
More than 20 million users sign in to Canva each month across 190 countries, with 85% of Fortune 500 companies using the product
I don’t use it myself any more as I prefer Visme (which is like Canva on steroids), but for so many people Canva has absolutely revolutionized their design workflow.
I reckon you are right re the autosave. I do seem to recall something along those lines myself, but only vaguely.
I’ve put together a simple macro to save, wait 5 seconds (just in case) and then preview and it seems to be working fine, although alas, I am having intermittent problems with Rapidweaver hanging when previewing, but that seems to be a known issue that is impacting others too, so I’m sure there’ll be a proper fix for that soon.
What I’d like to see in Rapidweaver is the ability to turn autosave on/off, depending on the users needs and preferences. Problem solved.
In the mean time you could use a third party program called EverSave, which works on any Mac program. Not sure when it was last updated or if it’s Catalina compatible;
Also, on Macs, Time Machine Backup is a good recovery assistant (when it works correctly).
Programs still do incorporate the autosave feature, but they all call it something different. In Office (see picture below) they call it AutoRecover. In Affinity programs they call it “recovery files”. In Undo history allows stepping back and forward through changes, and can be saved in an .afphoto file. Some programs call it “snapshot”. There is also another 3rd party app called Save Circle. Should work with any Mac program. You can find it here;
The question is why Rapidweaver hangs during publishing. I have the problem, too, now and then. Why doesn’t Rapidweaver say why it hangs? Why does it work most of the time and not at other times?
I think I contacted support about this a while ago. I was just told that my project was corrupt and I should redo the project. That doesn’t really make sense.
I had Keyboard Maestro setup for a long time so that whenever a RW window became activated, it would auto save for me. It worked like a charm when I used it. But I decided that I didn’t need it any more.
That’s exactly what I did yesterday, with Keyboard Maestro too. Can’t believe I had the same idea as @joeworkman
It worked fine until Rapidweaver decided to hang on me again. Ended up giving up for the day as this constant hanging over the last two days hard become frustrating. If Rapidweaver, and all the amazing plugins, weren’t so awesome I think I’d be looking elsewhere by now, but I know I won’t as I love Rapidweaver too much.
as once I get in the zone I could forget to eat let alone press cmd-s.
Join the club.
