If the core technology for executing the RM big-picture vision for Elements is complete, I suggest making a final call for feature requests to include in version 1 of Elements. While I’d love to include the kitchen sink as well, it’s time to prioritize and focus on a list of features that must ship with the initial release. We’ll have plenty of time to add more features in the future.
These never ending requests provide valuable ideas and a peek into the future potential of Elements, which is fantastic—but without focus, V1 may never ship.
I am 100% confident that RM has the incentive and patience to listen to its user base. They have been unbelievably responsive through this public alpha and beta release. I see absolutely no reason why that won’t continue. We will get the features we need either from RM or from third parties all in due time.
I believe now is the time to debug and make Elements the most stable app ever to ship on the Mac. NOTE: Only after achieving absolute stability should the move to a V1 public release be made.
To start, I propose including a basic contact form and bring back the prebuilt example components to help users get started.
Lists. Typography really needs a lot of addressing, as an article on a page should be fully just one Typography block if you get it right, but a nightmare to create if every component has to be done individually, such as headings, lists, images, embedded quotes, etc.
Copy/Paste. The thing that slows me down the most is I can’t copy a container I created on one page and paste it on another. This is actually part of a bigger problem: a lot of Elements doesn’t feel very Mac-like, as others have pointed out. If RMS wants to win next year’s Apple award for best app, they’d better make it fully Mac-like. Drag/drop, cut/copy/paste, and much more.
Some pre-built components are fine, but since I’m pretty sure that RMS can simply publish them after the fact as free globals at any time, I wouldn’t slow the stabilization and publishing of Elements for things like Forms, etc.
I see v1 products as the start of the journey, and with Elements, like any v1 product, there will be loads of features users want that aren’t in there, and there will also be bugs, UX issues and some features that will ultimately need to be significantly refactored.
What I’d really like to see is a public roadmap, that not only outlines the road to v1, but also the priorities (subject to change) after the initial release.
As users of a new, yet-to-proven product, having some visibility of where Realmac sees the product going, along with their priorities for it, will make it easier for users to get behind. Without a roadmap I fear we may end up in a situation where folks soon become disillusioned because their essential feature hasn’t been implemented, or feel their concerns (bugs, features, workflows, etc) aren’t being heard or addressed.
While a public roadmap won’t solve all of these problems, it can provide users with some idea of what’s being prioritized and provide them with enough peace of mind to continue with their investment (money and time) in Elements.
I’d also love to see some way of reporting and checking in the status of issues, as the forum isn’t the best place to do this.
We’re not going to make our internal bug tracker public, there’s just too much secret and super technical information in there. And realistically we can’t run a separate public tracker, as it’ll be too much work to manage and keep in sync.
However, I’m wondering about using Nolt.io for you guys to post feature requests and bugs, you can than vote on what you want fixing next. This might also double as a bit of a general public roadmap… Maybe we could do it as a trial to see how it goes?
Just want to see RealMac guide the ship completely both now and through the future this time around, want a single vessel not the need for an entire fleet.
With RapidWeaver, Stacks and third parties basically took over.
Nothing against third party developers but don’t want to see things on RealMac’s feature list get relegated if a third party gets to market first, core integration is always better.
Want the Elements core app to be all it can be by itself, not rely on outside factors again this time around.