Stacks 6.0 Beta

Known Unresolved Beta Issues
  • This beta is still feature limited with some menus and tabs disabled. As more of the app becomes stable more will be opened up.
  • There is limited documentation available for building themes. If you'd like to get started building, please see built-in examples. More docs will be coming soon.
  • There is currently limited access to partials.
  • Styled Text is a work in progress -- some parts function as expected, but not all and not in all contexts.

Stacks 6.0.0b39

  • 148Fixed a crash when a new file is created that could occur when running on some older macOS versions.
  • 149Fixed a crash when copying stacks in the Stacks Plug-In that contain links.

Stacks 6.0.0b38

  • The Sample theme is again set as the default theme.
  • The Sample theme was updated to make use of the base theme's improvements in b29
  • The menu option for checking for stack updates opens the Stack Updates Window as expected
  • Fixed regression introduced in b37 that caused the manual update (of the app) to always fail (background updater should still work).

Stacks 6.0.0b37

  • 105The progress bar no longer gets stuck part of the way through an update

Stacks 6.0.0b36

  • 127changed to no-title windows for the deploy and deployment settings
  • 138the link window no longer cancels the entry when the enter key is used to dismiss a link manually typed into the quick-link
  • 137the deployment settings window has stricter validation of its two number fields
  • 128changed some wording to eliminate confusion between "FTP" and "SFTP"
  • 75hide/show "enable" in custom controls inside theme settings work as expected again
  • 143changes to a theme's custom controls plist settings trigger an update to the theme's info-sidebar settings
  • 142fixed crash when setting the deployment settings Port: field to empty
  • 139no longer crashes when dragging nested items
  • 140fixed a potential crash while rendering empty JS templates

Stacks 6.0.0b35 — removed

Stacks 6.0.0b33

  • 124ftp settings validation window can now display a log
  • you can now use a Stacks custom URL to set up your deployment settings
  • 123ftp passwords are saved to the keychain as expected
  • 125validation button is disabled while running the validation
  • 126ftp port number is no longer always reset to 22

Stacks 6.0.0b32 — removed

Stacks 6.0.0b31

  • you can now set up a deployment location0
  • some ftp functionality has been merged into the release branch

Stacks 6.0.0b30

  • 115double-click in the titlebar of a stack can now also show the settings of the stack or the library info of the stack
  • 117theme's can now use the var "page" variable to get all the page's context data
  • 112specifying jQuery 3 returns the latest version unless specific min/max values are specified
  • 97themes can now request jQuery3. the variables: stacks.jQuery3, jQuery, and $ will be defined in the global JS scope
  • 93double-click in the titlebar of a stack can lock/hide the stack -- based on the app settings
  • 2double-clicking inside a stack can hide/lock or show info -- based on the app settings
  • 17the hide and lock tools in the edit mode toolbar work and update based on the selection again
  • 50clicking on the info button in a stack changes to the stack's settings pane as expected
  • 108clicking on the close button of a stack while the library is loading deletes the stack as expected
  • 114potential fix for a crash that occurs when a developer creates many update events in a devstack (for example copying in many separate files) while that devstack is visible in edit mode

Stacks 6.0.0b29

  • 99user level per-project control over how jQuery 2->3 compatibility is handled -- either handle jQuery 2 stacks with jQuery migration script, or use jQuery 2 and jQuery 3 simultaneously in different stacks
  • 98return/enter key will open the selected item in the project-splash window
  • 46support for jQuery 3 through a new jQuery API
  • 37included versions of some libraries were updated
  • 100page scoped JS is no longer missing a closure
  • 101update marker no longer shows the number 4 after launch
  • 102empty JS templates no longer output a redundant closure in the page JS
  • 103stack updater progress now displays as expected
  • 29the second tab in the info sidebar now shows Layout Settings when a layout is selected (and other contextually appropriate titles)

Stacks 6.0.0b28

  • 89the FOUC that can cause a white flash in dark mode is gone. the edit mode content now apears after the first render pass.
  • 73the stack updater UI is back. it seems to largely function as expected and the notification bubble has been moved to the new toolbar icon -- but other bugs may remain.
  • 90stacks no longer hangs on launch when there are multiple dev stacks that log info to the dev console.

Stacks 6.0.0b27

  • 86changing theme properties now always refreshes edit-mode

Stacks 6.0.0b26

  • 80units no longer overlap with stepper when the sidebar is narrow
  • 68clicking the close box no longer just clears the content of the text stack
  • 84the update now relaunches after installing and the user clicks ok
  • 83the projects window no longer competes with the sparkle update windows
  • 77fixed inconsistent homepage spelling
  • 78changing the homepage is now undoable and correctly dirties the project
  • 72changing the homepage when the site settings tab is open now correctly updates the settings in the sidebar
  • 67esc key now always works to dismiss the Quick Open window
  • strikethrough now styles correctly in edit mode

Stacks 6.0.0b25

  • Open Quickly
  • link box is functional
  • editing links in info sidebar works as expected
  • editing links in Styled Text as expected
  • exporting local links works as expected
  • fixed site assets exporting
  • fixed scroll offset in Edit Mode after editing text
  • fixed insertion point after adding a markdown stack link
  • to avoid the overly tight margins around headers, groups are no longer shown in the themes library
  • theme templates that result in a completely empty file no longer throw an exception
  • fix for exception thrown only when creating a new document that could cause no site theme to be selected in the theme view
  • fix for potential exception on startup when document changes are marked as cleared on a background thread
  • double clicking an image no longer causes Stacks to hang and ignore clicks

Stacks 6.0.0b24

  • empty templates no longer cause excess logging
  • fixed a leak that could occur when updating a theme after a developer change to to the plist.
  • markdown tables no longer have extra internal padding.
  • fixed potential crash when stacks tries to update dev console before console window appears.

Stacks 6.0.0b23

  • created a private beta release directory (https://yourhead.com/appcast/Naia/appcast.xml) -- Nai'a is Dolphin in Hawaiian
  • library group bar no longer in debug mode
  • theme api: color values support equality comparison

Stacks 6.0.0b22

  • theme api: folders within the templates dir are traversed
  • theme api: assignment using = operator works as expected
  • export folder name works more like the plug-in
  • theme api: nav values work more like the plug-in
  • begin loading stacks on launch even if there are no open projects

Stacks 6.0.0b21

  • page/site scoped stack templates resolving context correctly
  • file type templates being exported to the files directory
  • tables in edit mode no larger force the dark background color
  • first launch: new stack cache is created correctly
  • when adjusting layout in inheritance chain, the layout preview updates

Stacks 6.0.0b20

  • Many changes to improve layouts and themes, theme overrides, and the theme API.
  • Fixed many issues related to images, image caching, and image export.
  • Themes tab in the Library.
  • Fixed issues related to custom libraries and library exports.
  • Fixed issues related to refreshing due to changes.
  • Launch time improvements for loading of large libraries.
  • Moved the big modal library loading UI to a small progress bar that loads the library in the background.

Stacks 6.0.0b10

  • 7More menu items were enabled in the View menu. Specifically sidebar toggles and the theme tab.
  • 6You can now override the default Theme settings from within any page or any Layout.
  • 16Selecting Preview in Browser from the file menu (Cmd-P) again works as expected. (Plus a few other nearby menu items too were activated too)
  • 14Using toolbars with popups should no longer crash -- they're simply disabled for the time being.
  • 8Stacks no longer crashes when you double click a library icon.

Stacks 6.0.0b9

  • 4Selecting a Layout allows you to override/edit the theme settings of that layout's theme.
  • 1Stacks no longer shows "Quit Pag" in the File menu.
  • 2The settings for double-click-to-hide and double-click-to-lock are back -- Stacks can't pull your old prefs in.
  • 3Stacks will now ensure all mini-webservers (php) are shut down when you quit the app.
  • 5Changing to the Layuots tab now tries to select the first available layout or maintain the old selection.

Stacks 6.0.0b8

  • Moved the big modal library loading UI to a small progress bar that loads the library in the background.
  • Fixed a crash that could occur when previewing a brand new project file.

Stacks 6.0.0b7

  • Export: Export to folder should be working again.
  • UI: Library -- added a search bar.
  • UI: Left-Sidebar -- Pages and Layouts can now be deleted. Somehow this didn't make it into the last build. Oops.
  • Layouts: Layouts that have another layout as a parent now export their CSS content correctly.
  • Stacks no longer crashes when an image stack is copy/pasted.

Stacks 6.0.0b6

  • Project: Lots of under-the-hood work on theme and layout rendering and export.
  • Layouts: You can now add/remove and select layouts as expected.
  • Layouts: Choosing a layout's parent layout/theme works as expected now.
  • Updater: Background app updater no longer runs in the foreground.
  • UI: Left-Sidebar -- The pages and layouts list now have a bottom toolbar add button and filter/search bar.
  • UI: Left-Sidebar -- Pages and Layouts can now be dragged to reorder as expected.
  • UI: Left-Sidebar -- Pages and Layouts can now be deleted.
  • UI: Left-Sidebar -- Selection and filtering in Pages and Layouts is now remembered when switching tabs.
  • UI: Right-Sidebar The site-settings tab is now enabled.
  • UI: When selecting an item in the Stacks Library info about the item shows in the Info Sidebar.
  • UI: There are now Hide and Lock menu items and buttons in Edit mode.
  • Stacks Core: Multiple selections again work as expected (though several stack-editing menu items and shortcuts from Stacks 5 are still missing).
  • Stacks Core: Multiple selections again work as expected.
  • Stacks Core: No longer shows a gap between toolbar and content after making changes.

Stacks 5.2

Stacks 5.2.0

  • Move to new notorization system.

Stacks 5.1

Stacks 5.1.2

  • Images dragged from the RW Resources window and dropped on sidebar image controls maintain their file type.
  • Fixes problems when starting up with more than one project in preview mode.
  • Fixes several crash on launch bugs. All slightly different, but with the same symptom.
  • Fixes an intermittent crash when changing between some pages in a complex project reported by one user.
  • Guards against 3rd party stacks with strange IDs from causing a crash.

Stacks 5.1.1

  • A new preference has been added to disable Externals and/or Templates, for users that don't want to simplify Stacks or have had issues in dealing with Externals. Please click the link (the bug number links to the bug in the open bug reporter for Stacks) to see a very long post about the reasons for this change, the other tried/failed solutions, the discussions with other folks, etc.
  • Fixed a crash that could occur while undoing when the undo causes another object to be removed from the stack hierarchy while it was already in the process of rendering.
  • Fixed a crash that could occur during any page-load when the Preview loads before the Edit-mode UI.
  • Fixed a crash that could occur while switching pages with the Preview or simulation window active.
  • Fixed a crash that could occur while switching pages to a page with more than one stack that had the same: title, author, and number of items on the page.

Stacks 5.1.0

  • API: Added support for macOS version info.
  • API: Stacks API version is now 13
  • Improved tooltip support and accessibility additions, especially for truncated text on dozens of controls for sidebar and Stacks Library. This is not only for Stacks specific things, but all 3rd party stack settings and controls inherit the improvements too.
  • Selecting Stacks menu options after a Stacks page has become deselected no longer results in console errors.
  • More error handling around rendering threads. This is a hopeful fix for a number of related intermittent crashes when rendering Edit mode and background Preview/Publish threads at the same time.

Stacks 5.0

New Productivity Features

  • New Stacks Menu to give you easy access to many editing tasks.
  • New key-bindings for easily editing, moving, and selecting stacks.
  • Option-Arrow-Up/Down to move a stack -- or many stacks -- around on the page
  • New command-keys that for making partials that work on single stacks or multiple stacks, even when scattered around the layout.

    • New Library Features

  • Two new "compact" modes for the Stacks Library allow you to see even more stacks in the Stacks Library pane. (This also meant some serious behind the scenes performance improvements for displaying dozens or even hundreds of unique icons while still scrolling smoothly!)
  • New Smart-Groups to save a preferred group of stacks and partials.
  • Lots of smart-group features to help you narrow down your search to only types of stacks or search only specific stack properties.
  • And the much requested feature: drag and drop stack-groups to rearrange them.

    • New Page Statistics

  • A brand new way to see how many of each type of stack you're using in each layout.
  • And since it can be hard to find a deeply nested stack in a very complex layout, just click on any time in the Page Statistics window and stacks will jump to that item and select it for you.

    • New Stacks Preferences

  • Adjust Stacks Library Searches to work globally or just per group.
  • Quickly see where your Stacks Image Backup folder is located and open it in the Finder.
  • Now when you select a stack, Stacks will jump to it. New preferences let you enable, and tweak this feature to work just the way you want.
  • After years of teasing you can finally enable double-click-to-hide or double-click-to-lock.

  • Stacks 4

    Stacks 4.2.5

    • The Image Backup folder was moved to a more user-accessible location. You can find a link to the Image Backup folder in the Stacks Preferences.
    • Fixed a crash that could occur when first viewing a page.
    • Several crashing bugs were fixed including two involving Undo and one that could occur just before RapidWeaver quits.

    Stacks 4.2.4

    Stacks 4.2.3

    • Some menu items in the Stacks Library menu work as expected on Monterey machines.
    • Stacks will begin storing info about the stacks in each project to be displayed if stacks are uninstalled.
    • Partials nested in other partials now update more reliably at the top level.
    • Stacks update indicator should work as expected. Please note: background checks start 30 seconds after you open a stacks page. They run once per day and try hard not to slow down your foreground work, so may run slowly if your machine is busy with other tasks. The developer console shows info/warnings/errors for in-progress updates.

    Stacks 4.2.2

    • Drag and drop operations broken in v4.2.1 should work as expected.

    Stacks 4.2.1

    • Form elements with autofocus will no longer steal the insertion point while editing.
    • Drag and drop between projects works as expected again.
    • While editing a partial, changing a property when multiple items are selected will show the partial has been edited (the dot in the title) and update all partials when the partial is closed.
    • A potential fix for crash on paste of very large hierarchies of stacks.

    Stacks 4.2.0

    • Fixes a problem where labels can be missing on stacks contained inside hidden stacks when the project was opened.
    • Fixes a drawing issue with locked stacks inside of partials.
    • Stacks API: a %slice% template changed during a devstack update will be added immediately.
    • Stacks API: a %slice% template changed during a Sparkle update will be added to existing documents.
    • Fixed jumpy page and/or drag and drop issue for pages with hidden stacks.
    • Fixed crasher associated with content rendering.

    Stacks 4.1

    This new version of Stacks has a number of speed improvements extensively using a new template compiler that speeds up HTML/CSS/JS template generation by as much as 10x. These changes are underneath the covers to Stacks so you won't notice them except when things are a bit snappier.

    Stacks v4.0 introduced the new compiled template rendering engine, but it was only used in edit-mode, only for HTML templates, and in limited ways.

    Stacks v4.1 expands the use of the new rendering engine to work with all template types in all modes.

    The new rendering engine is an opt-in process for stack developers. This step-by-step approach allows stack developers the time they need to migrate to the new rendering engine while minimizing inconvenience to users. All old stacks that could not be migrated continue to work with the old rendering engine.

    Users don't have to do anything to see these improvements.

    Stacks 4.1.4

    • Stacks API: %slice% properties such as addTypes can be spread across multiple lines. see bug for more info.
    • Stacks API: %slice% properties like -addTypes were not updating after stack upgrades
    • The library groups bar renders icons in the center of the selection and the selection is centered in the bar no matter if running under Catalina or Big Sur. But must be built now with the Big Sur sdk in Xcode 12
    • Fixed a crash that could occur after editing a partial.

    Stacks 4.1.3

    • RW7 Preview-Mode rendering issues with some 3rd party stacks corrected.
    • Drag and drop when stacks are not in a vertical stack works like it did in v4.0.
    • Fixed a crash that occurred usually while previewing.
    • Fixed a crash that occurred when undoing after closing a partial.

    Stacks 4.1.2

    • Dragging near hidden stacks no longer sometimes drags their contents.
    • Fix for custom property assignment in JSON drags that v4.1 had mistakenly disallowed.
    • Fixed a crash that happened while changing pages.
    • Fix for crash on publish when SiteMap+ is present.
    • Fixed an intermittent crash on local publish.

    Stacks 4.1.1

    • Fixed jumpy page and/or drag and drop issue for pages with hidden stacks.
    • Fixed a crash that can occur sometimes after unpacking a Template within a stack.

    Stacks 4.1.0

      Sidebar Improvements
    • Added a subtitle to link controls.
    • Image controls have a larger image well.
      • Link Button Improvements
    • Link controls again have the ability to edit a link, not just delete it.
    • Link and Unlink button both appear enabling editing of existing links.
    • The Link button is enabled immediately after dropping an image into the layout.
      • Calm Down Warning Message, Calm Down.
    • The warning for opening files written with later versions of Stacks is less pedantic. It will only display when it's trying to read a file that is significantly newer than the Stacks version. So going forward you're unlikely to see this warning unless there is a real problem.
      • Some Specific Speed Improvements
    • Changing pages no longer forces a full page render and should be much faster.
    • Dragging items no longer freezes for a moment when entering and exiting the layout area.
    • More threading changes under the hood, these will be important for future features.
      • Big Sur Bug Fixes
    • Image controls no longer have buttons that look disabled in Big Sur.
    • Link controls no longer have buttons that look disabled in Big Sur.
    • The library groups bar no longer draws a garbage rectangle over the selected group in Big Sur.
    • The details/advanced button is no longer off center and clipped in Big Sur.
      • Stacks API Bug Fixes
    • Stack API: Enabled performance metrics for developer mode.
    • Stack API: Image controls used inside of partials correctly processed on other pages.
    • Stack API: Image stacks used inside of partials correctly processed on other pages.
    • Stack API: Image stacks used inside of partials in subdirectories now processed correctly.
    • Stack API: File templates correctly processed inside of partials.
    • Stack API: File-type templates process paths in the same way as Stacks 3.x and 4.0 (all paths are processed as CSS). This should fix problems with background images in some stacks like PageSafe. (Thanks for the bug reports Matthias.)
    • Stack API: Reduce false positive expressions removing characters from compressed javascript.
    • Stack API: Copy and paste no longer bypasses maxChildren and allowedTypes constraints.
    • Stack API: -allowedTypes more rigidly enforced now. Images and partials can no longer be dragged into containers where they are not allowed.
    • Stack API: -maxChildren works on all types of stacks. Images and partials that used to ignore the max, now work as expected.
    • Stacks API: %id% is correctly replaced in templates with type=file
    • Stacks API: %id% inside of partials in now shorter and less complex. all IDs, inside and outside partials, as well as outer-IDs and mez-IDs have dropped the _page_ID suffix as it's no longer necessary.
    • Stack API: %baseURL% API variable now works as expected in preprocessed stacks when they're inside of partials
    • Stack API: %siteAssetPath% (and many other) API variable now works as expected in preprocessed stacks when they're inside of partials
    • Stack API: Math-type pseudo-controls no longer output zero in files saved with v4.0
    • Stack API: Template values with relative paths in non-preprocessor stacks inside of partials no longer have generic incorrect paths.
    • Stack API: BaseURL template value is now updated correctly inside partials.
    • Stack API: In preprocessor rendering engine conditionals evaluating numeric values treat all non-zero values as truthy.
    • Stack API: The stack API will now update allowed-types and add-types in existing stack instances when the stack updates those features in a template file.
    • Stack API: The stack API for adding stacks with dragged JSON (from a website usually) now works as expected when the value of a link property is specified in the JSON object.
    • Stack API: Paths to the page's css file, js file, and php files are now correct in Preview/Publish modes when the stack was within a partial and the partial was used and exported on more than one page.
    • Stack API: Info-sidebar image controls export correctly when used inside a partial.
    • Stack API: Some template variables (such as %pageTitle%) no longer evaluate strangely inside of partials.
    • Stack API: Link templates are no longer missing their +class attributes.
      • Lots More Bug Fixes
    • The clearValue in custom controls should be working again.
    • Editing a text stack that is wider than the window no longer results in the edit-pane being wider than the window too.
    • Left-side toolbar buttons and right-side toolbar buttons no longer overlap when the window width is narrow.
    • Read and correct for orientation info in new iPhone images.
    • You can rename Externals, or rename their files, without the sync between the file and the projects that use it.
    • A new External created in one project shows immediately in all projects.
    • Changing text line spacing shows the custom line spacing slider.
    • Links on images and site images inside of partials no longer export incorrectly on multiple pages.
    • Background images no longer export incorrectly inside of a partials.
    • Image stacks inside of partials no longer export to only some pages.
    • Items placed inside of unpinned partial content areas no longer render preview-mode as publish-mode.
      • We Fixed So Many Crashes
    • Image-transform controls no longer crash when exporting and work inside of partials.
    • Fixed an intermittent crash when exporting pages with Image stacks inside of partials.
    • Link controls with no default link no longer crash RW when the link is edited.
    • Dragging and dropping multiple stacks no longer intermittently causes a crash.
    • Page scoped link controls with default values no longer crash RapidWeaver when the SetLink button is pushed.
    • Fixes a crash that could occur sometimes occurred while unpacking templates.