@habitualshaker very nice 👍
A complete Framework and 2 add on packages, and still Foundry doesn’t look as good and misses functionality, which is available in BWD stacks… showes again the brilliant work of @tav.
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Working within a framework is always going to be restrictive to some extent but it is way easier. The Foundry example I made here was done in less than 2 hours. Took probably 5 times as long using the blank theme and building everything from scratch using the BWD stacks. I think the BWD one does look slicker but there are definitely pros and cons to both approaches.
The great thing is that you can use @tav’s stacks within the frameworks to extend what they can offer on their own.
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Little experiment with SiteSucker on the two published versions:
23% smaller total page output.
Image size in both cases was 2.6MB which means the actual stack/theme output size reduction was 52.4%
The new versions of the BWD layout system are also over 5 times as fast in edit/preview/publish compared to either of the current frameworks available. Maybe I will release them, we will see.
Now the balancing view:
My stacks are undoubtedly more complicated to use than either Foundry or Foundation. They are certainly not for everyone and, in my defence, were never intended to be used as a standalone build system (that’s where the new version comes in).
For the majority of uses, I would recommend that they use one of the commercial products available - be that Foundation, Foundry or Blocs as personal preference dictates. Yes, they cost, and its getting more and more expensive with all the add-on packs etc but you are paying for less settings and wider accessibility. I build my stacks for people who want to push the envelope, most people do not want this and that is fine.
Now my actual view:
Don’t use any of these things to build the Apple website - after all apple didn’t. There is no substitute for a text editor, the terminal and a learning a bit of trivial scripting language. I am not really cut out for any of these apps so ignore my views - I still want to go back to assembler and programs that were <5kB ! :)
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For what’s it’s worth, this piqued my interest to see what the Blocs3 version downloaded by Sitesucker is:
Overall site is 4.8Mb but that included the same 3.2Mb of Images and 1.1Mb of FA icon fonts!
It is relevant that the Blocs image folder are not optimised and could be reduced to 2.6Mb and as the 1.1Mb FA files are not required they could be ignored in the interest of comparison. So it could reasonably be argued that the Blocs version would be 4.8 - 1.1 - 0.6 = 3.1Mb.
Invalid assumption in the context of this comparison unless there is a way for the user to not add them in the first place.
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I can’t speak for Norm, but It shouldn’t require too much effort to not publish whereas it would be a hell of a lot of effort to remove 1.1Mb of code elsewhere.
And anyway I don’t remember the luxury of having a 5k program storage as it was always 4k. That extra 1k would certainly have made life much easier. I don’t mean ponsing about with a Z80, I mean pre Sinclair when micro controllers were used for real stuff.
Edit. What am I talking about. My first job was using an 8035 and I had forgotten it only had 1Kb for program and only 64 bytes for ram. More than enough.
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All true but that was not really my point.
To be clear, my message is not that the slightly larger size is necessarily terrible, more that the improved usability and increased access for non technical people is a price well worth paying. That applies to any of the solutions above (apart from mine).
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Agreed and I don’t care much about code size (anymore) but it is interesting sometimes. Speed of edit and preview is absolutely everything and where effort needs to be directed I believe.
Hurry up with the good stuff.
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If you watch the text as it animates, it starts off at the correct weight, and then when the scroll is stopped, the text is fine for a split second, and then the heavier weight is applied. Wondering if you had some code in there to alter the text weight?
Is it the Headers? I think the BWD version might have 400 weight headers and the Foundry one 700.
Not seeing any difference / change after animation has happened.
And I still need to get the Foundry project ready to share. Will do it this evening if I get a chance, tomorrow if not.
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It is more noticeable on the headers but the paragraph weight is also increased in weight and can be seen if you scroll some text off screen and scroll it back in vie and stop the scroll so the text is visible.
I have noticed it on the headers in the Thunder Pack Reveal Pro demo page and I think it is being bolded. Both versions use 400.
Very odd. I’m not seeing that at all. What browser are you using? I’ve checked in Chrome and Safari.
And the Foundry one did have headers set at 700. I’ve just changed that to 400 now as I think it looks better.
I am using Safari but when I tried Chrome, I couldn’t see the issue and thought that the scroll was smoother too.
Here is a video using Safari and watch the text when the scroll stops - https://d.pr/v/phVUtN
The Apple, Blocs made demo and your BWD demo don’t show this behaviour on Safari.
Very weird. I don’t see that when on Safari.
Yeah FA is included for vanilla ui elements like scroll to top buttons etc. Big push on Blocs export quality coming soon, it’s good but it can always be improved 💪
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Hi All,
As promised, here is the project file for the Foundry version of this. As with the BWD one, this comes with no support beyond answering the odd question here.
In addition to core Foundry, this uses 3* stacks from Potion Pack and one from Thunder pack so you would need those to have this work fully. (* there was only one Potion Pack stack initially but I added in a Mega Menu and also a Backdrop stack - which is a bit of a hack to give a nice gradient into the fixed images section).
Enjoy!!
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Great job Stuart, thank you very much 😀
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Many thanks, Stuart!
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@habitualshaker Big thanks for proving that RW can build a demos of the demo site and full marks for creating rw7 and rw8 file versions.
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