This week, we take an early look at how we’re reworking the components to make them align more closely with how Tailwind works. By doing this, the component controls will be standardized and more powerful/flexible. We hope to ship some of the V2 components in the coming weeks so you can have a play with them and provide feedback.
Some of you have also been wondering when the updated text editor will be available… Unfortunately, it’s taking a little longer than anticipated, and we don’t have anything to show you this week. However, we’re working on it, and I hope to demo it in the next couple of weeks.
In this week’s dev diary, I also touch on not building client/personal websites just yet (this is a private beta, things will break), as well as our plans for the Public Beta. Watch the video to learn more.
This is looking great @dan. My only real concern with regard to what was presented in this video, is the ever increasing complexity of the components inspector. That’s a lot of disclosure widgets to commit to memory, and the order of them feels very arbitrary at the moment. It still feels like the common, intrinsic, and often used properties should be more visible, while the optional properties (filters, effects, etc) should be add-ons when required.
It also would never have occurred to me to look in ‘General’ for a way to toggle the grid preview visibility.
One other thing crossed my mind. Why are only ‘Containers’ given the Grid and Flex options, when in reality any immediate child element of a grid or flex container would benefit from these properties/controls.
They are mostly in the same order as Tailwind presents them in their docs, however, we are definitely open changing the order.
We could also merge certain groups with each other to reduce the list in the controls sidebar.
We’re still working on this and looking forward to your feedback once in the coming weeks, once these new components are in the betas
This is essentially the long term goal (contextually aware controls that shown when required), but that’s not going to make it for 1.0.
Perhaps that setting should go in the Columns & Rows group
Containers are not the only components with Grid and Flex Item controls. All “layout” components will have these options, which at the moment will be:
Container
Flex
Box (new component)
As above: the long term goal would be to show context appropriate controls for all components (so, for example: anything inside a Grid would get Grid Item controls automatically), but we’re not there, yet!
I’d definitely look to group them in ways that will be most relevant (and approachable/familiar) to Elements users (again, look to the inspectors in Sketch, Pages, etc for inspiration), as it’s unlikely that most Elements users will be familiar with Tailwind, at least at the start.
Can you make @Elixir come back with his excellent Foundry 3 framework? He’s about to leave because you seem to be directly competing with his framework.
My understanding is that Adam has decided to pursue other opportunities away from RapidWeaver ecosystem.
Everyone here at Realmac really appreciates everything Adam has contributed to the community over the years, and the incredible work he’s done. And while I’d love for him to continue building Foundry and even develop components for Elements, I fully respect his decision to pursue new horizons.
We have talked about this a lot internally, but as we’re leaning into Tailwind we think it’s better to follow them a little more closely. It means the Tailwind Docs (as well as our own) will also be a point of reference for users.
As you should know by now, nothing is set in stone. Let’s see how it goes, when we ship the updates in the beta!
What is going on with the quality of your videos Dan?
Here is an example of what I am getting now.
I won’t watch such stuff.
Hope you can fix it.
Cheers,
Paul Cruice
Happens to me sometimes too on other sites, YouTube will auto-select a low resolution even though I have 1 Gbps fiber. No idea why, YouTube being weird I guess. Adjusting the quality setting fixes it.
If you encounter any other video viewing issues let us know.
I’ve had a hard time trying to understand this mindset in the community that large frameworks are best done by one person instead of a full team of people within one organization. How can one person do everything that needs to be done?
I enjoyed Foundry 2 as it rejuvenated my web design career but when Foundry 3 took away most of 2’s features it would have been fine if it didn’t take so long to rebuild the full feature set in 3.
@KipV The large framework (Foundry 3) has worked great under one competent person. Out of the 100’s posts I’ve seen, you are the only one that has bad-mouthed it, which is quite surprising.
I had the same issue with video quality, but thanks to this thread I knew what to do about it. Maybe my recent update to the latest version of macOS Sequoia changed a setting somewhere (using a 24" M1 iMac).
@dan Getting back to the demo, I really like where this is going. I appreciate that we’re moving toward a “standard,” specifically Tailwind CSS.
In my opinion, the ongoing challenge will be to stay current with Tailwind without allowing it to dictate 100% of the feature set. What I mean by this is to ensure that the Realmac DNA—creativity and ease of use—remains intact. I know you’ve mentioned this, so it’s already on your mind, but I just wanted to offer an additional reminder.
I’m still very excited about where this is heading. You’re defining a great market! If Elements remains simple to use, you’ll attract newbies while still offering powerful tools that allow users to grow. Well done!
Unless my understanding is way off…it should be possible to include whatever libraries you want with your Elements project. It should not be beyond the level of person that is building beyond what Elements will have natively to make sure that whatever dependancies they require (e.g. Next.js) are in the correct place on the server or inline with the code (if smaller) to build out that custom a component.
I agree that keeping it easy to use for newbies will be important. If the foundation is strong then building out new Components (whether by Realmac, third-party, or the DIYer) can be a very powerful way to build websites.
Yes, today I can use Cursor or Bolt to build a website. However, it is still fiddly and not intuitive for newer website builders. To be honest, while I use tools like those I am a visual guy and Elements has the promise of letting me build in nice visual blocks. I like that.
Plus, there are many things that Realmac can do to make it even easier…yes…with AI…without taking on integrating it fulling inside of Elements. Heck, powering the Help function or even an Elements Help website with a trained GenAI tool can hugely help people in the usage of Elements. I still have to help people to understand the process of getting a domain and setting up a website then connecting Rapidweaver to it for publishing. A GenAI help agent could eliminate the need for me in that and many other parts of the process. And that can be done today…for Rapidweaver itself even.
As a live example, I created a custom GPT trained on a product’s documentation and gave it to the users. The forum is very quiet now. Now you only hear from people asking the developers when the next version or feature is being released or from new people that do not yet know about the GPT. It is very powerful stuff.
The v1 Components will be included in the app so your existing projects will work, however they will be hidden in the library to stop them being used for new projects.
The V2 Component settings are widely different, so unfortunately you’ll need re-build your site using them. Sorry for the inconvenience, but it’s better we make sure they are the best they can be before we ship the product in public!
