Anyone checked it out?
Thoughts?
It costs $120! Yikes. Blocs5 costs less, has twice as many inbuilt templates, doesnāt require an annual RW subscription or Stacks and the Blocs Training Accademy videos are free.
No free version to try out.
Foundry V3 is based on an alpha version of Bootstrap (again) - 5.3 alpha. Why not use the stable 5.22?
No CSS Grid!
V3 is not compatible with V2 or the V2 Addon packs which seems to be a massive oversight.
Many stacks in V2 donāt exist in V3 such as a Gallery stack. Yes no Gallery in V3.
Apparently Adam removed jQuery, but actually jQuery was removed from Bootstrap5. Other leading frameworks provide a stack to add a jQuery stack for those old stacks that require it.
The Blacksmith way of creating custom CSS Code is very strange indeed and the opposite of what the other leading framework has been doing for years.
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I think it is fantastic. I wanted Alloy for a project Iām working on, the customer wanted an easy to use web interface blog with pretty URLs. I tried a demo of TCMS, which is unarguably fantastic also, but the price point that I come in at at offering my services means that I canāt take the Ā£100 hit on each website I make, I have to be competitive with pricing as I sit somewhere between the Wix customers and the team of staff/small agency developers that offer the Wordpress web interface blogs, but they are charging the higher prices and Iām not, so Alloy checked all the boxes. Of course that meanāt I had to use Foundry, so I bought Foundry 2, Potion Pack and Thunder Pack. Spent two weeks getting to grips with it, and then thought wowsers! This Foundry is amazing, it is really quick and easy to make styling options and has a huge range of features/tools. I then found that on a few occasions I felt that I wish I could just tweak this and that a bit more, however I found the speed Iām working at and the inherent styling options there anyway I can live without the āgoing a touch furtherā elements I desired. So I got to that point, learnt all the features, about to build the site and then Foundry 3 was annouced and released. Low and behold all the little bits I wanted to go further with are now doable and ways of working are still a speedy workflow. The new approach to loads of the elements Iām working through is excellent. The columns/grid for six diferent breakpoints is fantastic xs/s/m/l/xl/xxl. A lot of things have been simplified, so making a gallery doesnāt have a gallery function anymore it has Zoom, where you drop an image in and it becomes a lightbox image, so is versatile for individual one offs or large galleries you can design yourself with grids. I needed Aria tags for screen readers and accessability, that is now there with Foundry 3. The Blacksmith tool is a killer feature in Foundry 3, you can create quite complex CCS stylesheets in one css class. So you can apply that one classname to a tool/stack for styling, but you often find you donāt really need to because the preset styles are easy to deploy anyway, but the extra complexity is there if you want it. There are loads more features, the Modal fearture is incredibly easy and quick to create, style and deploy.
So all in all I am really enjoying using it and am finding it very fun to use as well as easy and quick. This is all because of Alloy that I ādiscoveredā it.
But it is like anything, these things are subjective, what somebody wants from something is very different to another person, so I wouldnāt ever be inclined to say one framework is better or worse than another having used different systems I can see the strengths in all of them. But it certainly is an excellent piece of kit Foundry 3, Iām finding now Foundry 3 with Alloy gives me exactly want I want for my customers, or at least what they ask for.
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And how about EasyCMS or is the subset of TCMS too limited? I think it offers everything most websites would need.
Itās the blog facility I needed with pretty URLs. The customer needs to be able to create their own posts and be able to define the urls without post ID as a prefix. The customer currently has a Wordpress site and wanted me to create a new site for them, but because the urls for the existing blog posts are out in the wild and linked to from other sites/social media/places the urls had to match the existing ones as well as providing the ability to for the customer to contine creating new posts for their blog.
The topic is about Foundry 3.
Thatās why I discussed my reflective evaluation and experience of Foundry 3 in depth two posts up. Should I have ignored Konfuzziousā question? I would have thought that would have been quite rude not to have answered.
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True, I sidetracked the topic.
It does seem to have CSS grid ā at least as an option for containers (āDISPLAY AS CSS GRID
This setting allows you to quickly set the display style for the Container to āgridāā¦ā) Itās also using CSS custom properties (variables) for colors, like Source and F6, which is a step forward (and even seems to be able to do something similar to Stuartās āPaletteā stack). Itās a pretty full-featured update, but doesnāt strike me as groundbreaking.
Canāt remember where I saw it but someone referred to Foundry 3 as F3,
I hope itās not an abbreviation that takes off with Foundation versions already being shortened to F1 and F6 lol.
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Iāll chime in from my own perspective. Iāve used Foundry 2 with both expansion packs, and have been very happy with it. I do still use stacks from other devs for specific design needs, but thatās part of what makes Stacks so versatile.
Prior to releasing Foundry 3, Adam explained clearly in the Elixir forums that there would be pros and cons for existing Foundry users, that Foundry 3 would not be backwards compatible, and gave context for the development decisions. Foundry 2 sites will still work, Foundry 2 will still exist, and he was straightforward in saying that if youāre happy with your Foundry 2 sites, you donāt have to (and may not want to) upgrade to Foundry 3. I appreciated that honesty.
I do have sites built with Foundry 2, which will likely stay with v2. But I also upgraded to v3, and will be redesigning a site I was partway into building. Thatās my choice, because I want to take advantage of some of the new tools and capabilities.
Regarding the packs, Adam has incorporated most of those tools into Foundry 3, and has said that updates/expansions will be made directly to Foundry, rather than separate expansion packs, which I appreciate. I donāt know tool-for-tool numbers, but I do know that heās combined tools and streamlined others, and removed a few that werenāt utilized enough or whatever reasons.
An example Iām excited about is navigation. Foundry 2 had multiple navigation tools, 1 or 2 types of simple navbars and a separate mega menu tool. In Foundry 3, those are combined into one navigation tool, which should have more flexibility than before.
There are areas that Iām less sure about. The new edit mode for Columns, rem standard for type, and other things will take some getting used to before I know how I feel about them. Will it get confusing, using different stacks that donāt use the same units? Maybe. The new Toolbox will be useful, but I might still like 1LDās utility better. Not sure about the new Control Centerās edit stack, but there are options to tweak it. But for me, the upgrade price was worth having Foundry 3 to work in and learn, and decide how Iāll move forward with it. Obviously that wonāt be trueāor be an optionāfor everyone.
I do anticipate some confusion, in having both Foundry 2 and 3 active in RapidWeaver, and working between v2 and v3 projects and v2 and v3 tools. That said, heās tagged the Foundry 3 tools to make it easier to group them in the Library, so that should help.
Iām a designer, not a dev, so clearly I canāt speak to framework versions and deprecations and such. This had to be a huge decision for Elixir, with a lot at stake. The documentation was solid at launch, with a lot of thorough videos, so users should at least have some resources to learn and make decisions.
Iāve always appreciated Elixirās style and approach to design, so Iām happy to continue the support. Time to watch some more videosā¦ :)
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@Jannis when will you be able to revise your tutorial on utilizing Poster2 with markdown via the repository stack without having to open RapidWeaver. Come on, man. Iāve got clients lined up for this.
I agree. Adam has great design skills. Iām anticipating an update to his Alloy blogging stacks. Iām in real need of a blogging platform that clients can use on their own without having to own-then-open RapidWeaver.
One option is Total CMS, but Iād rather have a simpler method. I know the capability exists with Poster 2, but the tutorial is just impossible to follow because the audio is so poor.
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We should stick here in this thread to Foundry 3.
So come back to me in a direct message.
But just configure Repository pointing to the folder where Poster 2 reads the markdown files from. Then login to Repository online and create new text files. Thatās all man.
Hi all,
I havenāt upgraded to Foundry 3 yet but would be interested to know if anyway is seeing a speed difference in loading webpages between a site built with V2 and V3 or better PageSpeed scores?
Adam said he has removed a lot of cruft and improved code so Iād be interested to know if that has resulted in better load times.
Look forward to hearing from anyone who has some insight.
Cheers Scott
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Really impressed with the performance, just built a customerās site in Foundry 3, includes some embedded animation, itās about 85% finished, have got tweaks and changes to make yet, got the Aria screen reader/accessability info to knuckle down with and fully apply. Canāt link to it yet as not fully finished or had final approval yet. But very happy with the results so far.
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Ha ha, Iāll try, but I doubt it, I think the 4X 100 club is reserved entry for Source members only, even if I made a website that is just an unformatted header and a paragraph I think that extra 1% would be still be an elusive chase, a bit like panning for gold.
ā¦Right I have to go now, Iāve heard a rumour there are gold fragments in the stream at the bottom of my road.
Maybe. Donāt give up though and if Blocs5 (Bootstrap5} can do it, then ā¦
The 100 Accessibility is also important and I would hope 100% can be achievable though.
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just for fun I ran this site
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