I’ve decided to create the same landing page for a client using both Blocs and RapidWeaver to understand the differences between the two, as I’m switching from RapidWeaver. Here’s why:
RapidWeaver has been labeled ‘Classic,’ signaling its days are numbered, with the developer shifting focus to a new app called Elements.
Stacks, a third-party addon for RapidWeaver, is becoming fragmented, requiring users to choose between different frameworks.
After investing thousands of dollars, I need a powerful and easy-to-use alternative, so I’m learning Blocs. While building in RapidWeaver is second nature to me, Blocs has some advantages. Here’s my experience with both:
I moved over to Blocs from RW years ago!!
It was simply becoming to expensive…having to buy a “stack” for almost everything.
The fragmentation was also easily apparent. Support was tough.
Great work on your first Blocs website!
When building in Blocs becomes a second nature to you, you will enjoy it even more!
Again, welcome to Blocs! You are making the right move!
Dan has completely lost his mind. His decisions are sabotaging his own product. I can’t figure out if he’s just being greedy or if he’s jealous that others are making money with stacks while he isn’t getting any. Regardless, it’s absolutely unacceptable to charge you more just because you might potentially gain clients in the future. When you buy a tool, you have the right to use it however you want. It’s like purchasing a pair of running sneakers and having a pushy salesperson at Foot Locker tell you, “If you plan on participating in a marathon professionally, you’ll have to pay extra for these sneakers.” Absolutely ludicrous!
I suspect many RapidWeaver users given their required investment in a multitude of 3rd Party Stacks will stick with RapidWeaver Classic for this reason as long as they can. When Stacks Pro launches many may then migrate to it instead of Elements. I assume due to these two factors RealMac is trying to get as much income/profit with the Elements release, while hoping to convert some users during the initial excitement. Knowing they may have a potential smaller user base they may have decided it requires a larger asking sum for Elements [?]
It’s clear that this was a bad decision, and it was obviously about money. Having worked closely with the entertainment industry for years, I’ve been involved in major projects across music, movies, and more. This situation isn’t different—whether it’s an app, a song, a book, or a movie, these are all products, and successful ones are created by teams of people. The issue here is ego.
When you come up with a lucrative business idea, like a bicycle rental service, some might call it absurd, but you believe in it and start finding ways to make it happen. Enter Mr. Ego. You don’t know how to make self-locking bikes, so you hire someone who does. Then you realize the bikes should be able to charge credit cards instead of having people wait on street corners, so you find someone to make that happen. Your dream business moves forward, but Mr. Ego makes you think you did it all by yourself. The 25 people who worked hard to turn your idea into reality become insignificant to you, and if they ask for their share, they become your enemies.
The problem is always the “me” factor. I’ve seen big artists fall because of it. I’ve witnessed authors lose all their money in legal battles over a back cover, and movies that never got released because of disputes over name order in the credits. My theory, and I could be wrong, is that Realmac is heading down this path.
I must admit, I’m trying the elements Beta. And I think it’s great. Really like it. Way better to work with design wise and for my brain it’s way easier to use than stacks ever was. While I got hooked on stacks for quite some years, I’m glad elements is taking a different approach with the UI and by using Tailwind as the underlying framework.
I personally think that many users took (and still take) whatever happened between Dan and Isiah way too personally. There’s always two sides to a story. It’s a war that got way too much public attention. And it’s one of the reasons I left the rw4all forums. Too much arrogance to endure for my little self.
I’m not taking sides here, I’ll just pick the tool that’s going to work best for me.
It recently changed names after Dan having burnt so many bridges with 3rd party developers started using it to heavily promote Elements. In regard to Dan and 3rd party developers, I saw Massimo from RW Pro Space asking basic polite inquiries on the Elements forum. It must not have been to the liking of Dans desired narrative so in old and typical fashion those posts / threads are now hidden. So the lack of goodwill between Dan and 3rd party developers continues based upon Dan’s sole actions.
Will Elements be a good app, maybe, will Dan ever change probably not. Those two things make it hard when you have to consider both in conjunction.
It was rw4all when I decided to leave. And I’m not defending Dan, nor am I defending the (now) stacks4all community. Both sides shut down the other on their own forums. There’s so much scorched earth between the two that I doubt it’ll ever heal. But that too is none of my business as long as the product I use fits my needs. So far Blocs does, and elements might do too.
So I prefer to talk about the software, not about the personal or business issues the developer has with the competition. And that’ll be all I’m going to add to this discussion
I have been keeping an eye on the Dev Dairy videos, some great features. Things like local data store, themes, a proper page layer tree, globals and the way custom components work is appealing, and I like the UI.
In saying that, I most likely wont participate in the Beta (I did sign up), but will have a play once it’s out in the wild for 6 months or so. I think some of the things I am interested in are not active yet.
I have been playing with Tailwind which Elements is using, since Pinegrow added improvements with their Tailwind visual tools. Although I am probably still a Bootstrap purist
So who knows if Elements will make my toolbox. Reliability is a big factor for me.
I do like the transparency of the Dev Diary though. It probably creates some buy in.
@AlbertKinng and @pumpkin , how do you find site building in Blocs compared to RW Classic/Stacks? Easier/difficult to transition or just a different way of doing things altogether?
I prefer Blocs for one simple reason: The canvas when I work on a page. I love seeing (even if not 100% accurate) what I build while I’m building it.
Creating a 4column row and entering a heading, paragraph, button etc. is so much more comfortable in Blocs. When I used Foundry with RW and did the same, it got very quickly very confusing. It’s like building a row vertically and only see it they way it should be (horizontally) when you preview the page. Some people like it that way. I don’t.
My brain needed to work so much more to adjust to that. Not so in Blocs. And I might add, that I’m glad that elements behaves like Blocs in this regard. Fun to play with.
Plus, I find it way easier in Blocs to customise everything using classes or - if needed - custom css. I learned some HTML and CSS along the way, so that made a lot of things easier. The class manager is just great. Targeting some Bootstrap items can be tricky because you might need a few more than a single selector. That’s something I still struggle with today. But I’m not using Blocs every day.
Pinegrow’s Tailwind visual editor add-on coupled with Tailwind’s own premium component library TailwindUI, once loaded into the Pinegrow editor almost becomes kind of like a Tailwind version of Blocs + Minimalist Library. Except probably not as easy to use for most people both from a Pinegrow & Tailwind perspective. Elements on the other hand will seemingly be more inline with Blocs except for Tailwind concerning it’s ease of use.
Exactly. Maybe once Elements reaches fruition and matures it will be a viable Tailwind Builder for Mac.
Elements seems inspired by Blocs and rightly so. I agree Rapidweaver’s visual logic was quite different, not to mention the app itself was quite lacking on its own merits without Stacks.
I wouldn’t call them comparable. Even using the Bootstrap framework there is a healthy selection of prebuilt elements to drop in and it’s very easy to build your own, even just copy/pasting html from other sources and still having a full visual editor in PineGrow (a very handy feature, coded HTML shouldn’t be hidden or non interactive in a visual editor). Theme control works incredibly well. A site I’m building at present requires very little in the way of custom classes, having such excellent control over the utility classes makes a massive difference.
Of course the app is not for everyone, and moderate HTML, CSS knowledge is a massive advantage for navigating the UI. Framework knowledge is a plus also.
I had plans to build out a library a few years ago, even submitted feature requests for the bloc builder to make this more possible and updatable. It never happened so people move on to other things
In context, I was not trying to express or sway people into thinking there was direct correlation. Nor felt the need to go into a full throated diatribe on the nuances or specifics of how they differ. As it’s quickly and readily self-evident to anyone with genuine interest.
“I personally think that many users took (and still take) whatever happened between Dan and Isiah way too personally. There’s always two sides to a story. It’s a war that got way too much public attention. And it’s one of the reasons I left the rw4all forums.” - pumpkin
I guess is difficult to avoid mentioning the personal or business issues?
I believe that everything has its time, and Realmac is bringing an end to Rapidweaver to introduce Elements. It will be interesting to see how this transition unfolds. Currently, the momentum seems to be shifting towards Blocs, which is a reliable and user-friendly alternative with a smooth learning curve. I have been thoroughly satisfied with its performance over the past few months and foresee it becoming my primary application in the near future.
Hello, all! This is my first post here on the Blocs forum, as I’ve just come here out of curiosity when I saw Blocs 6 mentioned on the RW forum. Honestly, I wasn’t even aware of Blocs before today.
I’ve been following the development of RW Elements for quite a while, and have been anticipating its release. Until I saw the pricing. That gave me pause, frankly. Having long ago used RW Classic, and bought into that whole universe of third-party products, I’ve thought that Elements was an interesting new tack.
I’ve also been watching a lot of Webflow University videos, as well as some of the independent variety, and have been duly impressed. Webflow and the methodology they use to build sites are pretty much in line with the way my brain works and, so, there’s an attraction to that product, too.
Now that I’ve discovered Blocs and see that its development is much further along than Elements, I think I may hang around here to find out more about Blocs and see what its capabilities are.
Truly, seeing so many visual website builders finally coming onto the market is heartening. I’m not a coder and though I’ve learned a bit of HTML over the years, unfortunately, my brain just doesn’t work that way. I’m more of a visual artist, at heart, and all this new development warms the cockles therein.
Any comparisons between Elements and Blocs are welcome because it looks as though there’s a fork in the road not far away and I’d like to choose the right path.
This! 100%
so people move on to other things 