Since updating to the latest version of Stacks (v4.2.2 (5479)) in RW8 (v8.7 (20860)), the drag and drop image feature in Foundry 2 does not seem to be working for me any more. All images that were previously dropped in to a web page have disappeared from that web page, including those in the Resources folder. If I drag an image to the drag and drop section of Foundry, it does not appear. Alternatively, the remote image selection approach is working ok. I just created a new project to test this out and the same behaviour takes place. Anyone else having this issue?
You’ll want to contact @isaiah regarding this one. This sounds like something directly related to Stacks. Foundry doesn’t manage the images itself, that is handled by Stacks and RapidWeaver.
Thanks Adam. Have just sent him a message.
If images are disappearing from both the page and the resources window in RapidWeaver than it’s likely a larger issue than Foundry or even Stacks – the Resources window – and project integrity overall, is the domain of the app itself.
Let me talk about the 3 big issues I see that cause problems like this:
Issue 1 – Disconnected/Stale Resources
The first, and by far the most common, is resources becoming unlinked from their original files, losing privilages to the originals, or otherwise becoming “stale”.
macOS no longer allows apps like RW to store simple file-locations (paths) on your hard drive. A “sandoboxed” app isn’t allowed to. It must instead store something called a “bookmark” (which is not at all the same thing as a browser/website bookmark). Unfortunately bookmarks become unhooked from their original file or can simply go “stale” and the OS doesn’t provide a lot of guidance into how to prevent that from happening or how to repair it once it has happened.
When you install a new OS version, bookmarks can become disconnected – which is why you see a lot of RW forum posts about “resource not found” errors when launch RW.
These can usually be repaired by the user just re-finding each one. If you see resource error messages when you start up RW, then reconnecting each one is essential.
My recommendation to most people who have similar issues is to change the “Site Resources…” setting in the Advanced settings – if not done already.
This will not move existing resources into the project file – but all future resources will be put there.
I don’t know that this is a 100% solution to every problem of resources becoming disconnected – but since resources that are inside the project have special privileges it can prevent a lot of the common problems I’ve seen.
Issue 2 – Data Corruption
If your project file was already set this way when you imported the missing data – then this is probably more of a file corruption issue. Actual occurrences of file corruption are rare, but they do happen. In those rare cases I recommend trying to recover from a backup if at all possible. If there is no backup available then the best advice is to recover what data you can from the existing file and drag that data (either whole pages, partials, or just stack by stack) to a new project.
Issue 3 – Cleaner Utilities
Some “Cleaning” utilities that optimize your mac by removing cache data can get over-eager and remove too much. In particular CleanMyMac X should never be run while you are simultaneously editing a RapidWeaver document. It likes to clear cache files – even ones that are in use by running applications. 
We have contacted the CleanMyMac people regarding this a number of times, but the problem still existed when I tested about six months ago.
Stacks (and RapidWeaver in general) stores some temporary cache files necessary to save the open document in the /Library/Caches directory. This is normal and best-practice behavior recommended by Apple. If these vanish in the middle of editing it can be catastrophic for the open file. Stacks will usually just crash when this happens, but it’s rather unpredictable what will happen.
But the few cases of real corrupted files I’ve seen have almost always been traced back to a utility like this.
If you must use one of these utilities, use it only when RapidWeaver is NOT running.
I hope this info helps you find a solution. And please let me know what you do find. I might be able to help a bit more if there is more specific info available.
Whatever the case, I can use any info you find to help with any other similar cases I run into.
Isaiah
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Thanks Isaiah for the information. I have all the settings you have mentioned in place already and will not use CleanMyMac while RW is running. I have also moved onto using the remote images approach which is probably better practice anyway but does add some extra steps. Will keep you posted, if things change. Thanks again.
Regards, Frank
I’d be curious about any more details you have about the situation. I hear about situations like this occasionally and I always try to follow up with users to see if I can understand the root cause of the problem and place it into one of the known categories or perhaps learn about a new bug.
But I would probably need a bit more info from you. If you don’t feel like answering questions, feel free to give it a pass. But if you have time, it might be helpful to you, and definitely would be helpful to the wider RW community. The more info you can provide the better. Thx.
Versions and such
What versions of RapidWeaver, Stacks, and macOS are you using? Have you changed any of these recently? If it’s an old file – have you changed anything since opening the file previously (e.g. perhaps a site you only edit once a year – and in that time you’ve updated macOS and Stacks)
Please be as specific as possible (saying “latest version” has a too many meanings to be of any use at all)
Errors?
Any error messages? Crashes? Any other data/info you can share? The more the better, of course.
Anything new?
Have you moved to a new computer? New OS? New Hard Drive? Or any other big changes to your setup since the file was working?
What sort of Images
It sounds like there is a problem – but it’s unclear (just because I don’t know the details) which sorts of files the problem is happening with – or if it’s happening with all of them – or just some of them.
Built-in image stacks either say Image or Site Image above them. If the stack was one of those, which sort was it? Or if there were definitely both. If it’s neither of these, what sort of stack is having the issue – can you show me a screenshot of the stack settings with the image?
About site images
If these were Site Images (the default in Stacks 4 / RapidWeaver 8) then all images in your document should also appear in the RapidWeaver Resources window (viewable with a button in the toolbar). Do they appear in that window even after they’ve stopped working in Stacks? Have you moved/changed/renamed or otherwise touched them in any way within the RapidWeaver Resources?
None of this sounds familiar ?
If these are recent files, nothing has changed, same hardware, etc… then that’s probably the biggest danger zone. If random data is regularly going missing from your file then I’d be most concerned about something that we haven’t touched on here (some other utility, or other software, or other hardware) is either failing or conflicting in a bad way.
the one thing i find most disturbing is:
If I drag an image to the drag and drop section of Foundry, it does not appear.
This does not really line up with any of the other things. All of the other things you mentioned – and all of the solutions I recommended – were for things that happen to a project file.
But these don’t affect the behavior of Stacks – or change how Foundry works.
To change the behavior of Stacks or Foundry something else is going on – perhaps related, but quite possibly a secondary thing.
Is this specifically with Foundry image stacks? Or other image stacks too? Is it possible to explain what happens when you attempt to do this? Does it fail to drop into the right place? Can you not select an image by browsing? Does the image show up in Edit Mode but not Preview? Or vice versa? Or maybe it just doesn’t publish?
@elixirgraphics - do you see this sort of behavior (“drag and drop – does not appear”) in Foundry yourself?
I don’t and have not seen anything like this myself. I’m currently building out a LOT of pages each day for an upcoming project and have not had this happen once.
Hi Isaiah, firstly version numbers:
Stacks v4.2.2 (5470), RW8 V8.7 (20860), Mac OS Big Sur v11.2.3 on a iMac Intel version. The behaviour that if I drag an image file to the say a Foundry 2 Image Stack, the image does not appear in the small box but the Stacks it is there as the ‘Browse’ button changes to ‘Clear’. On the web page, in the place where the image is supposed to appear I see a small ‘?’. If I upload all the files via FTP to my web server the image does not appear notwithstanding I have uploaded web pages and image files. Same thing happens in preview mode. Recently when I made changes to web pages with images that were working ok, all the images disappeared . Now that you mention it, it could have something to do with Big Sur, as that has been very buggy since implementation. I have rebooted my system, and it might work for a few days and then goes back to the strange behaviour. As you mentioned it may have something to do with system cache. It was just strange that when I uploaded updated files the images would disappear from web pages on the web server too.
I can’t think of any reason why that drag and drop would not make the image show up in the dropzone. That’s a pretty basic facility. If that doesn’t work then it really seems like something is very wrong with something in your Big Sur installation.
Putting a call out to @elixirgraphics and any other users…
Is anyone else experiencing this? Where they drag into the sidebar but the image doesn’t appear at all?
As I mentioned:
I have not had this experience.
Hey all,
I have experienced this. Only in the last week or so though.
Upon opening an existing project I noticed that the Drag and Drop area for the foundry Image stack had disappeared.
As shown in the attached.
Once you change it to another type (Remote etc) then back to Drag and Drop, the image comes back. (once the project is saved again it remains that way with no issues)
Im running OS 11.2.1 with Rapidweaver 8.7 and Stacks 4.2.2
Here is the project file if you would like to test. (Home Copy page is the unsaved version).
Cheers.
Chris.
The disappearing drag and drop well has happened to me several times. I just have to select another option, e.g. remote in the Dropdown menu and select it back to drag and drop to make it visible again.
Can confirm the missing image well as described above. Only noticed it for the first time yesterday.
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Thanks for the details. This is really good info. However, I think this might be different than the original post. Though seemingly related, I suspect this has more to do with the behavior of the variable attached tot he pop-up where you select which image type you’re going to use.
The original poster mentions:
I drag an image file to the say a Foundry 2 Image Stack, the image does not appear in the small box but the Stacks it is there as the ‘Browse’ button changes to ‘Clear’.
This implies that the control itself is still visible, but the image never really dropped into it.
This differs from your post where the image is dropped in just fine, but the pop-up that selects the image type seems to forget itself and select a different type temporarily.
While I think @bitbumpy’s sounds like a Stacks bug, @fg8’s seems like a more fundamental problem with the OS, or perhaps permissions on his image files.
@Fuellemann and @fuzzy – can you describe exactly what you saw? saying “me too” when there are clearly multiple things going on is too ambiguous to be useful.