As a longtime user - with an interest in simplicity, I think there are 2 different user paradigms at work in Rapidweaver - and it makes it messy
I think the old paradigm of page types is dead (certainly nobody’s added anything useful to by blog page for 5 years)
Page types should go legacy and elements should be norm - which should include stacks
The stacks UI is over complex in my humble opinion. Elements should be WYSIWYG unless you click to edit one - meaning there should perhaps be no preview mode !!
I agree that page types are there only to confuse newcomers. Their another function is to justify the price of the app.
Without Stacks, RW would not have the reason to exist.
However, I am not so sure about going totally WYSIWYG. If the WYSIWYG model would be possible to work faster than Edit/Preview model, I would agree with you.
Page types are restrictive and backward. They no longer have a reason to be. Using them and you feel like you’re using a different app
Bit surprised that either Realmac does not buy Stacks … or Stacks does not provide a standalone framework.
Either way Rapidweaver needs to get back to feeling simple to use.
(I was suggesting everything could be in preview mode, except if you click on an element to edit it. That element could then expose the necessary controls and when closed could return to preview)
When I built Foundation for RapidWeaver, I wanted to reduce the requirement to flip between preview and edit as much as possible. Head over the to the following URL and click on the link inside the “Preview While You Edit” section. You will see that Foundation leverage the Stacks view modes in order to give you a very close preview of what things will look like in preview. https://foundation.joeworkman.net/learn/site-styles/
Is it exact? No but its pretty darn close.
Do all stacks support this? Most stacks should. If you find any of mine for BWD’s stacks that don’t, please let us know and we will gladly get that fixed.
I’m not the first, but others have suggested that the future might be a Stacks App - unlikely but worth dreaming about.
As RW stands today, I would like to see a Stacks only version of RW with no page types, blog, themes or FTP Publish, and the only requirement would be to use a Framework such as Joe’s Foundation or Elixir’s Foundry or just a blank empty page. I would even pay a premium for such a version on the basis that it would gain new features & speed improvements, using the time that would otherwise be spent fighting fires & fixing plug-in related or FTP issues.