very new to the software but really didn’t see anything that compelling to justify the price, may change once I get to know it better.
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what is your alternative platform?
I originally intended to go with Blocs, but in the end chose Pinegrow. HTML5 and CSS3 where game changers in web design. They brought a lot of functionality that I relied on Stacks to achieve.
Blocs is most similar to RW, it has similar plugins (Stacks) called “Bricks” that add extra functionality (at a cost).
Pinegrow is more of a coders IDE. Why did I choose it? Four main reasons.
Firstly, The RW/Stacks debacle highlighted that all my eggs where in one basket. My websites need both RW and Stacks. That separation is going to cost me in the long term. Not to mention the pain of having to deal with the growing pains of new apps. Blocs really would be picking up such a system again, although to be fair, it’s integration of Bootstrap and Bootstrap components gives you a lot of functionality in building a website.
Secondly, there are some really great frameworks out there for free that would give me nearly everything I need to build my websites. Bootstrap, Foundation, and Tailwind are all excellent. In the end I realised that Stacks/Elements are really the same thing; frameworks; and so moving to a free framework seemed to make most sense. Pinegrow has Bootstrap, Foundation and Tailwind baked into their app. This allows me to use those component’s or even build up my own.
Thirdly, HTML5 introduced new DOM (Document Object Model) tags . These tags help define site layout such as section, nav, article, and footer. The tags helps browsers, search engines and machine learning to know exactly what is on your site. It can do some really great stuff such as add the date and time of a blog post, know what is the main content and what is the nav as well as allowing you to build in full accessiblility functionality. Drag and drop builders do not offer this at this time. If you open your exported RW site in a text editor you will see a sea of divs, none of these layout/descriptor tags. I want my sites to make use of these HTML5 tags. They bring a lot of features to the table.
Fourthly, CSS Grid and Flex allow you to almost drag and drop your site layout. CSS Grid are being supported more an more in browsers and makes creating websites so much easier.
When I came into web design I hand coded HTML and CSS when it arrived. I switched over to Dreamweaver when it was in it’s heyday, actually I used Frontpage first! I moved to Rapidweaver which has been excellent and served me well these past 10+ years. However, RW does not cover the comments made above, Pinegrow does. In the ever changing world of web technologies we must each choose what we feel are the best tools for what we need to do. For me, that is now Pinegrow.
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Personally I’m very happy to ‘protect’ the developer of software I use daily. I want them to be successful, financially stable and in a good position to improve and support the product.
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I have upgraded and absolutely no regrets. RW Classic is well priced, and I like the idea that there will be continual, rolling improvements by virtue of an annual subscription for future updates and support whilst you do NOT have to subscribe in order to use the version you have indefinitely. Personally want to see Realmac as a successful and financially stable company that is well positioned to support and develop its core product well into the future - including Elements.
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Pinegrow… appears to be an exceptional web design tool. Although the UI/UX implementation is not to my liking, I am eagerly anticipating downloading a trial version in the near future.
The post you’re replying to is over 18 months old 