Summary of some RapidWeaver Elements 0.9.8 impressions after a day of use

[refsvik (6-Bx@Vs3.rzhKWgb..ziFYRGDCXZwAouv8-!Qtkq@Bks4eiJu3D-VM!hZJivnYb)]

Features!

1. Finally! The template feature has been sorely missed and here it is!
2. I simply love that I can fill my entire widescreen monitor with all the tools. This is a vast improvement from the Wordpress platform I am coming from
3. Coming from Wordpress, I notice that things are different in Elements, but are faster to learn, especially due to all the specific YouTube videos and that so many panes can stay open all the time.

Friction (for me a non-developer, coming over from WordPress)

1. The light mode/darkmode toggle seems strange to me. Either or. I would like to switch individual sections dark or light depending on the need to create variation and contrast between sections in a page. Maybe it is here somewhere and I have not discovered it yet?
2. I found it way too har to set a section heading to uppercase only text
3. The workspace settings works differently than expected. I thought I could set up Elements differently depending on my monitor setup, but that does not work. hmmm….
4. Seems strange that an empty project would suggest Western encoding as default and not UTF-8 in 2025?
5. I would have liked to be able to disable robot indexing once on a site/project level in addition to doing it page-by-page. What if I needed to go back to a lot of individual pages and correct this?
6. The CMS feature is sorely missed. I so look forward to trying it out. Will continue in the mean time by designing the (apx) 25 different templates I need to build my 20+ pages at the top of my site. When CMS arrives, I will hook up the 250+ posts waiting in the wings as .md files
7. I struggle to create un-even column widths in grids. What am I doing wrong here?
8. I am not used to having to jump through hoops to create a basic list. Seems strange not to have it as core list component at this point. Maybe a resource issue?
9. This version also slows down, especially when typing in text-boxes and crashes when there are a lot of (thousands) resources imported in a project. I continue to worry about this
10. As a newbie Elements user, I struggle to control layout in container, grid and flex. There are just so many terms I am unfamiliar with. I probably need to watch more tutorial videos.

Future hopes (in no particular order)

1. Locating icons on the web, downloading them and fighting to get them to work as intended is too much friction to be fun. I can hardly wait for someone to create Packs with system icons (perhaps re-package the Google system icon pack on Github?) and make all the subsets of icons available to be easily installed and used
2. It would be nice to have larger visual previews of in Resources. Preview icons in Template cannot come fast enough
3. A staging function in Resources for photos/illustrations would help me to go from large original-sized images to smaller compressed ones with embedded watermarks/credits. I have Squash, and it seems so well suited to be slodded directly into Elements
4. A MacOS Media-browser, making it easier to bring in illustrations from Photos.app would be nice
5. I hope that I can access exif and iptc tags in images and display them in a future figcaption element next to an illustration. And of course have the option of a manual entry if the image does not have these data embedded.
6. I would have liked to be able to zoom into an image in the resource info pane. That would solve my 2 problems. Not seeing the entire picture and also being able to peek at details in one of the images
7. I dream of a YouTube pane with an AI helper, suggesting sections in the videos I need to study to solve problems in my struggles to build my section templates

Can hardly wait for further improvements and new features, including CMS in 0.99. Keep up the good work!

Sincerely,

Kjell Are Refsvik

Lillehammer, Norway.

[PMUK (Paul Moore)]

Great post for a day of use. I did a question to @elementsbot the other day on glossary of terms see here Bibleography for elements This helped me with all the different things I am trying to get my head around. Don’t forget to ask chatty bot anything if you are struggling or post here and you’ll get help. Good luck

[refsvik (6-Bx@Vs3.rzhKWgb..ziFYRGDCXZwAouv8-!Qtkq@Bks4eiJu3D-VM!hZJivnYb)]

Thanks for the tip. Will do.

[ben]

Hi @refsvik

Thanks for taking the time to write such detailed feedback, we really appreciate it

@refsvik

I simply love that I can fill my entire widescreen monitor with all the tools. This is a vast improvement from the Wordpress platform I am coming from

You win the award for most panels open at once! Seriously though, it’s great to see the panels feature being used like this, it’s exactly why we built it.

@refsvik

The light mode/darkmode toggle seems strange to me. Either or. I would like to switch individual sections dark or light depending on the need to create variation and contrast between sections in a page.

You can absolutely do that. The best approach is to start with your page in light mode as any styling changes made here apply to light mode.

Then, toggle to dark mode and apply any overrides you want. That way, each section can have tailored styling for each mode. This gives you complete flexibility and contrast control.

@refsvik

I found it way too har to set a section heading to uppercase only text

You can control text casing in the Typography section of the Text controls. Look for the setting labeled “Transform” — that’s where you can switch to uppercase.

We use Tailwind terminology to keep things consistent with the underlying design system, which can take a bit of getting used to, but it’s very powerful once you’re familiar with it.

We have chosen to keep the component control naming closely linked to the underlying Tailwind name as this keeps things consistent when referring to the underlying CSS.

@refsvik

The workspace settings works differently than expected. I thought I could set up Elements differently depending on my monitor setup, but that does not work.

The workspaces don’t automatically change when switching monitors, but you can save different configurations and manually switch between them as needed. Dan walks through this in Dev Diary #56.

@refsvik

I would have liked to be able to disable robot indexing once on a site/project level

You can do this by adding a custom robots.txt file to the root of your project. That gives you full control over how search engines index your site.

@refsvik

The CMS feature is sorely missed. I so look forward to trying it out. Will continue in the mean time by designing the (apx) 25 different templates I need to build my 20+ pages at the top of my site. When CMS arrives, I will hook up the 250+ posts waiting in the wings as .md files

That’s exciting to hear! It’s a great approach to begin with the design and structure first. That said, I do want to set expectations: the first version of the CMS will focus on core features and editing within Elements itself. We’ll expand on it over time with features like online editing and more advanced data handling.

@refsvik

I struggle to create un-even column widths in grids. What am I doing wrong here?

Dan covers this exact setup in this video, where he walks through how to create grids with uneven columns using Tailwind utilities. Definitely worth a watch!

@refsvik

I am not used to having to jump through hoops to create a basic list. Seems strange not to have it as core list component at this point. Maybe a resource issue?

A List component is definitely on our roadmap, however, it just relies on a couple of other features being in place first to ensure it’s flexible and future-proof. In the meantime, I created a custom list component you can use right away. There’s also a short video included showing how it works.

@refsvik

This version also slows down, especially when typing in text-boxes and crashes when there are a lot of (thousands) resources imported in a project. I continue to worry about this

We’d love to take a closer look. Could you share your project with us via Elements Cloud, that would be a big help. Performance is very important to us, and we want to make sure things stay fast and reliable, even on large projects.

@refsvik

As a newbie Elements user, I struggle to control layout in container, grid and flex. There are just so many terms I am unfamiliar with. I probably need to watch more tutorial videos.

That’s totally fair, especially if you’re coming from a different platform like WordPress. The good news is that Elements gives you full access to modern web design tools (like Tailwind CSS) in a visual way. It’s a bit of a learning curve at first, but once things click, you’ll find yourself working much faster and with more flexibility than ever before.

We’ve got loads of videos on our YouTube channel, and we’re always happy to answer questions directly if you ever get stuck.

Thanks again for the thoughtful post, we’re really excited to have you building with Elements! Let us know if there’s anything we can help with as you continue building your site(s).

[refsvik (6-Bx@Vs3.rzhKWgb..ziFYRGDCXZwAouv8-!Qtkq@Bks4eiJu3D-VM!hZJivnYb)]

Thank you for the lengthy reply, @ben. Most of these will work itself out as I get to know Elements more. I will also study up on more of the videos on YouTube to help me in that journey. When it comes to the slowdown, I will have to trim down the size of my project to fit within the 1GB limit on the Elements Cloud.

As a supplement to my previous post, here is a list of suggested templates.

Best regards,

Kjell Are Refsvik