Perhaps what you say is true. Probably is. That said it is still dirty pool.
Heck I was the one who suggested way back, at least 5 years ago, probably more, that RM should adopt its own CSS library. They needed to modernize. But I expected the worst case scenario was RM and Stacks would compete.
Actually the make up of Blocsās Bric is more sophisticated (uses JS) and Blocs has its own Bric creation tools with UI designer, and āBric compileā all done from inside Blocs. We are digressing a bit here, but Blocs being a one stop shop, never had the lack of co-operation, lack of crash report sharing, lack of development, blame shifting of RW issues onto Stacks and secret changing of the RW UI that Stacks was faced with.
One of the best things about StacksPro is that Stacks will be free of all this nonsense and in total control so that going forward Stacks potential can be unleashed. Ironically, the small proportion of the 5000+ stacks that may be converted to Elements, will all be held back by these historical issues. I predict that StacksPro new stack development and existing stack upgrades will explode once all the RW shackles are released.
Iām looking forward to RM announcing the list of what Stacks features and what Addons will be abandoned.
For example, will Partials, Externals and Templates be fully supported? How will the stacks update sytsem work and will stacks updates need further conversion to Elements? Will the other addons that many RW Project files depend on even work, remebering that the RW UI has changed, apparently? The story from RM has been that existing RW Stacks Projects will work, but that will depend on a great many things.
The elephant in the Elements room will be who is going to debug Elements that donāt work. Isaiah is an absolute bloodhound of a debugging ninja who really knows his craft and only he has years of Stacks knowledge. Do RM have the skills to debug existing RW stacks projects? That remains to be seen.
Sure, but there are lots of questions about Stacks Pro that remain to be answered. How will it support existing RW documents? How reliable will its FTP client be? Will it require stacks to be recompiled to work with it? Will it actually make it to the line? And thatās just to get back to where we are now. Looking ahead, can we really depend on YourHead to maintain the platform we use for developing sites? And what new features will Stacks Pro offer? Will there be WYSIWYG preview editing, as there is in Blocs and Elements? (Bearing in mind that Stacks 5 took away the ability to tab from stack to stack in Preview).
Isaiah may be an absolute bloodhound of a debugging ninja, but he still hasnāt addressed the bloat issue that fills RW files with tens of megabytes of other peopleās junk images. And when it comes to these kinds of support issues, he seems to be very stubborn and opinionated. (There has also been a fair amount of blameshifting going on ā for instance, he had a go at me for deleting this crud, yet he doesnāt seem to want to own the fact that it is his product that is generating it. Itās easy to turn it back on users, but turning a 3mb document into a 45mb document is not commercially acceptable).
So Iām not as confident and enthusiastic as you about Stacks Pro. At best, I sense it will do what we can do already, but without RW, and weāll then have to see whether it offers significant improvements in the future. I am more confident in Elements actually happening. And whilst weāve all been dumping on Dan this last year and a bit, itās still his product that weāre using. Over the years, itās been a good product, too. As Iāve said before, if one has invested in a big stacks library, and in mastering the (sometimes quite steep) RW/Stacks learning curve to get things to actually work, what we have now is powerful and effective. I suspect Iāll be using it for a few years to come, especially since ā like most people today ā Iām trying hard to avoid spending more money on computer related stuff. Because itās just not there any more.
It can only be better that the RW one.
Sure not.
You, or we, will see when itās available.
Which is a RW resources bug.
You see, everything will be better when Stacks is a standalone product.
Iād like to offer my two cents as well. Firstly, I want to highlight that without Stacks, RapidWeaver (RW) would have merely been another template-based web design platform, with little ability to design beyond what the templates could be modified to allow. Weāve seen such platforms come and go. I purchased RW because I needed a simple solution for creating websites, and it offered some attractive templates. However, I soon began to feel limited by these templates. A few attempts at free-form layouts arose, which were appealing. Then Stacks made its debut, bringing with it the ability to create free-form layouts. This was a game-changer; it was inspiring and incredibly useful. Suddenly, we could start fulfilling client requests as they envisioned.
I am confident that RW would not exist today if it werenāt for Stacks.
I find it disappointing that Realmac Software (RM) didnāt duly acknowledge Isaiah and the transformative effect that Stacks had on their platform. The proper course of action would have been for them to negotiate with Isaiah about integrating Stacks into RW, in the same manner that theyāre now developing Elements.
Furthermore, the introduction of Elements was handled peculiarly. It appears they announced Elements when it was merely an idea, perhaps a scheme to increase their platformās profitability. This created a stir among users and developers, many of whom depend on Stacks for some income. I have only one website that uses a template; all the others were created using Stacks.
Like others, I fully support Isaiah, and I believe we should remain patient and wait to see what he comes up with next. When a significant developer like Joe Workman has expressed his perspective on this matter, and has on several occasions mentioned that he is privy to what Isaiah is working on, it seems fair to assume that everything is under control. We can look forward to seeing StacksApp when itās ready for deployment.
@isaiah is holding a Stacks Pro AMA (ask me anything) over on the YourHead Discord. You should head over and ask any questions that you may have about Stacks Pro.
Here is a link to the thread but it may be easier to just open the app and head into #chat.
I was able to get the app to open with this link to the Discord https://yourhead.com/discord
Any release date news from the AMA?
Heās working full steam on it. Itās ready when itās ready. No more details available currently.
From Discord:
A rough timeline
My previous reply to a similar question above may have been cute and funny, but I wasnāt joking when I wrote above that I was hoping to be done by the end of 2022. I honestly mapped out what I hoped to get done and when ā thatās really what I came up with. Since then I havenāt really bothered trying to estimate much.
I am, however, in good company. Software timeframe estimation is notoriously fraught.
Why is it so hard? There are a lot of reasons, but primarily because itās a creative process with lots of interdependencies ā this makes it a chaotic tangle where small changes in to unknowns often have larger impacts on schedules than the stuff you know about.āThe Mythical Man-Monthā is a good book on the subject. A bit dated now perhaps, especially now that so many software companies work on āagileā development schedules ā but the main points are still accurate.
My favorite bit is that it says if you add more engineers to a behind schedule project, youāll likely just make it more behind schedule. š
Anyone have any more info on this?
Maybe the 2nd paragraph here contains a hintā¦ ;-)
Yes, itās a hint but of what ??? Do I realistically think a beta of Stacks Pro will be done by April 2024? No. Iād be glad to be wrong though.
ā¦ Iām realistically expecting something closer to what Dan has done at RM: showing us the progress heās made so far which may be decent progress or could be meagre progress. But at least weāll have something to look at. Iām setting my expectations for January 2025. (Remember Isaiahās estimate was Jan 2023).
@mitchellm remember Isaiah had a very bad accidentā¦
Of course ā¦ but the skateboard accident happened after his prediction of Jan 2023. And, of course, other unseen things can happen. This is always the heightened ambiguity when thereās only 1 developer. Stuff happens.
ā¦ Iād be very happy if Stacks Pro (non-beta) was ready to go in April 2024. Iām just saying itās pretty unrealistic to āexpectā that. Once the beta is out Iām also expecting there to be several bugs/crashes that need to be fixed. This is the natural order of things.
ā¦ and remember Joe is selling tickets to an event. He wants to hype it up. Thatās understandable. But it doesnāt mean his ambiguous hype means exactly what you think it might mean.
Anyway, hype or not, Joe said Isiah will be there to āshowcasing something special, which I know youāve been eagerly awaiting.ā That would indicate that at least it is at the point of development where it can be āshowcasedā, whatever that āsomethingā might be :-)
You would hope and expect that this announcement is also made here and on the various other channels.
It would be rather poor if the Stacks Pro developer only made it to those willing to pay a third party for the privilege.
Iām sure that any announcement during the Weavers Space Summit will be repeated here seconds later š„³
@Ruyton Of course. The issue in this case is whether Isaiah himself will visit and announce. (BTW, I think he will. But ā¦ heās not been great on communication at times.)
Perhaps. But out of respect we should get the info from the horses mouth.
Stacks Pro is, as of the last I heard, from an independent developer without any affiliation or preference to any single third-party stacks developer. if that is changing we should be told. Because if the Stacks Pro dev is getting into bed with a stacks dev, it may have implications for other stacks devs.
There is so muchā¦ frankly, bullshit, in the recent history of Rapidweaver and Stacks, with zero openness as to what is really going on, what we the user needs is complete transparancy at this point. Not second hand info passed on from a priviledged few, who themselves had to pay to get access to the information.