In this weeks dev diary we have a lot to cover, so much so, I can’t put it all into one video The work we’re doing on the text editing engine, theme studio, and V2 components touches so much of how the app works, it almost feels like it’ll be a different app when we’re done — and dare I say it, twice as good!!!
We’re aiming to have a beta out in the next couple of days so you can start playing with these new features and giving us some much needed feedback
Watch the video to get a sneak peek on what we’re about to drop… and do let us know what you think in the comments below.
Thanks as always!
We’re listening to all your feedback and working super hard to make Elements the perfect website builder.
I can’t wait for the new beta…What an update Perhaps just one small suggestion. The link to the online documentation for each component will be very helpful for many new users. Maybe you could also provide such a link for each option within a component. If I understood the video correctly, you currently have to look it up manually.
Having an icon that is for draft in the sidebar is very useful. I’ll generally have about five drafts going on at the same time and it won’t been immediately clear which pages those are being they are buried under a sidebar check-mark option.
One thing I haven’t really missed from Stacks/Foundry is that I can’t navigate the site using the navigation bar. Using the Elements sidebar will mean that it makes it difficult to see how a page may look within a given screen size as the sidebar is taking up some of the space.
Another technique to navigate pages with elements is to use the command-shift-F shortcut, which does work really nice, but I just think it is a little strange I need to shift to the browser every time I want to click through the navbar. If I can like a link on a page inside of elements why wouldn’t I be able to click that same link if it is in a some kind of navigation system?
I made the decision to go with the all in one development and Hosting company called WIX. It is a phenomenal service. Everything on the site is so unbelievably easy and many of the features would take me weeks to try to develop in rapid Weaver where it takes me five minutes with these people.
That said, I would still like to get rapid Weaver up and running with the proper version of stacks so I can build some very simple websites for less cost by duplicating my older couple of dozen sites and swapping out images and Meta tags
If you are comfortable and happy with WIX that is great. Personally I’m not a fan of those types of website builders (WIX, Squarespace, Weebly, etc.). You are limited to the features they provide and you can’t migrate your website to a different hosting provider if you become dissatisfied with their service or offerings, which means you’d have to start all over again building your website.
You received a few replies to your post Cannot install stacks in RW6 but it doesn’t look like you replied there. If you are still needing help, please let us know. If we need to schedule a one-on-one Zoom session to help troubleshoot and get you up and running, we can do that (something I doubt WIX would offer for their clients).
We initially had it setup like that, but if all links works it becomes quite annoying as you can quite easily click on a design element that ha s link and boom you’re suddenly on another page.
So for now, we think this is the best way to go. if it becomes a common request we could add it as an option…
It’s funny you mention that as we spent a few hours today trying to work this out…however, we didn’t;t implement it in the end as it looked too cluttered… For example, if you add some help text or an icon to each section to either adds height and/or visual clutter to all the sections…
We came up with a lot of ideas (more than I’ve discussed above), and nothing felt right. In the end we decided the “?” at the top of the inspector was enough, and moved on
Same with me…long time paying user - would really love to get a chance to work with the beta of Elements. Dan C. can you help me out?
Just watched your Massive Update video with the Arch project - exactly the kind of project I need to make! My old Nick Cates Arch project no longer works.
Due to upheavals in my personal life, I’ve had to ‘step away’ from all the great work Dan& Co. have been doing on Elements. Stepping back in with post #43…whoa! Incredible effort and progress. This will be a killer app.
I’m not sure if this has been covered at any point since the diary’s inception by a statement or a question, but I was thinking today that since each of us is so intimately familiar with our own RW projects, how amazing it would be to learn how Elements works by being able to import and convert one of our RW projects in Elements. @dan has this ever been bandied about? Is it just not feasible, or worth the development effort?
The work we’re doing on the text editing engine, theme studio, and V2 components touches so much of how the app works, it almost feels like it’ll be a different app when we’re done — and dare I say it, twice as good!!!
Perhaps just one small suggestion. The link to the online documentation for each component will be very helpful for many new users. Maybe you could also provide such a link for each option within a component. If I understood the video correctly, you currently have to look it up manually.
