From Isaiah’s Slack Channel…
Have people gathered what is happening and what RW are planning?
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It’s simple for me. No Stacks no upgrade for me. I will not move to RW 9, ever. Hopefully RW will change their minds and make it work with Stacks. There is no point to RW without stacks as far as I’m concerned.
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There was a tweet earlier by RW about a huge news/announcement for devs, without knowing the full details it sounds like some major changes coming that may not be well received for existing users with loads of stacks.
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Oh no… Since my whole web-design work is 100% Stacks-based (as it is for sure for thousands of other web-devs), that would mean that I couldn’t use RW9 for any serious client work for a long time… :-/ @dancounsell Any comment on this?
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I’m 100% behind Isaiah! All of my sites are written with Stacks and I’m not about to change any of them now. I look forward to seeing what Isaiah comes up with. Count me in!
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As Chriss says: No Stacks No upgrade to RW9- Simple
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Ive been in the RW community since the first version of RW and the first version of Stacks. As many of you who were there with me know, Stacks transformed RW from a very limited web programme to a fully fledged tool for web design. Over the years I have bought most of the stacks that have come out and prior to Foundation and Foundry most of the themes.
I have heard both on the grape vine and in Isaiahs Slack channel that RW 9 will major on one plugin - Elements. Elements is a replacement Stacks. Dan - the owner of RW says it is a competitor to Stacks. But it will be the major part of RW9 and not a plug in.
Isaiah is saying that RW has been making it harder and harder for a while for him to integrate Stacks into RW and now it will almost take a rewrite. I dont understand some of the coding comments I have seen but what I do understand is that RW and majority changing the programme we use and rely on and that Isaiah, in effect is being pushed out.
If I have read this right, I believe that Dan is trying to make RW only use Elements and for him to therefore keep all of the revenue from both RW and Elements - effectively dismissing Stacks and making Isaac’s work and income redundant.
I assume that developers will need to rewrite their stacks to work with Elements and that there will be compatibility issues for people who use RW to make their living in web design. Will we need to remake all our sites for instance if we upgrade to RW9.
For me, if I have understood this correctly is that Dan is just ditching the man that has made his product the success it is.
I will not support RW 9 if what I have written is correct. Frankly I think it is despicable of RW/Dan to do this. And I hope you all agree with me and join me in boycotting this upgrade.
I have been in touch with Isaiah and because of this unethical moves from RW he is now focusing on and is well underway with his own stacks app that will run stacks natively and replace RW.
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I’ve not seen an announcement but I can’t believe that anything in a new version of RW would break the chain to Stacks. Bringing out a competitor might make a sort of commercial sense - though it feels a bit ungracious - but if the implication is that existing stacks and Stacks won’t work in 9.0 then I don’t see the point.
Can you share a link to the announcement Isaiah refers to?
Rob: I assume Isaiah refers to discussions between himself and RW/Dan
If anyone wants to chat about this, I will gladly talk about it in my Hangout tomorrow. Join at 1:30pm PST and I will gladly answer any questions and give you my thoughts and feedback.
This has taken up almost all of my time over the past week or so. I have spent hours talking to both Isaiah and Dan.
For now, let me say that it’s an exciting time. Things are going to be getting better for us all, not worse.
I will type up something and post it to Weaver’s Space.
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Thank you @joeworkman Joe for the reply. But please if you have spoken to both Isaiah and Dan can you explain. Because as far as I can see it is as I have posted. Im happy to be wrong. In fact I would love to be wrong, but I dont think I am.
Please explain. Your hangout is late in our UK evening and I feel it would be good to have an answer/explanation here on this Forum. And I feel that everyone needs to know what is happening.
Yes. I will write a post to my community. It will be long and I will have to be thoughtful in what I say. The reason is that nothing at this time is set in stone. I may be a little more frank and to the point if you join the hangout.
@wolf Do not worry buddy. Everything will work out well. 😃
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Glad to hear that from your mouth, Joe! :-)
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Initially thought “Eh?, What?” but this is sounding like it could be a good thing…overall.
RW has been bit lacking in innovation, especially compared to other programs out there, for a while. It is sad in its way but you can also see why. Standalone RW, without a stacks like builder, would have been gone a long time ago. So RW does need to innovate in some way to keep up with the competition.
In turn Stacks will hopefully get to spread it’s wings and open things up to be able to do more with stacks without being held back by RW.
Interesting times ahead…
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My response, there is no me in RW9. Its about time to leave RW behind. Super excited for the future!
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@wolf You ask a very valid question and express a genuine concern for every Stacks user.
I have no confirmred factual knowledge of the RW9 roadmap, but my answer would be that you already have a solution in RW7 or RW8 with Stacks today, that will continue to work whether a new version of RW9 is released and ready to start using or not. I still use RW7 because RW functions just as a page builder for Stacks. For users of RW+Stacks, the real power of that solution is the wealth of knowledge and experience of Isaiah and the other creative developers that have made this solution, what it is today. I also think that if you choose the right famework, stacks, etc., that for Stacks users, there is no better web building solution available.
I have said it many times that RW8 did not add any real value to RW7, and the only certain fact we have about RW9, is that there is a new RW9 icon. Anyone expressing “excitement” at what will happen with RW9 at this stage, is just deluded and/or trying to gloss over perceived fear and uncertainty.
Judging by what isn’t being said here, by Isaiah’s frankness and that there is no open discussion on the other 2 forums, you can be certain that a great deal is still to be decided before anything about RW9 is confirmed in public.
I see an oppoutunity for RW9 to become a more flexible and feature loaded front end to the existing Stacks, that IMHO would need to have 100% compatability with the existing Stacks 4 stacks, and importantly have no degrade in performance. If that happens, when it gets to a well tested version, I will look at it.
What is genuinely very exciting, is that Isaiah stated that he “wants there to be a place for Stacks to thrive …”.
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I’ve recently started using and liking very much Blocs app along side RW. It is so fast to use and preview compared to RW and its Stacks equivalent Blocs/Brics continues to expand at a steady rate. If RW 9 no longer supports Stacks I will not be upgrading.
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Completely agree. Whatever happens we can keep using RW7 or 8 until Apple do something operating system wise. This actually gives both Isaiah and Dan time to sort out their solutions - whenever and whatever they turn out to be.
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