It seems our writing on Headers and Paragraphs etc won’t actually spawn the asterisk (*) mark unless we click outside the Stage preview. Today I lost some of my progress despite having pressed Ctrl+S regularly.
I’m pretty sure that writing a web novel straight on BSS is not the most common thing to do, but since we managed to get dark mode working I kind of prefer writing on it than other programs right now. That has resulted in this probably uncommon problem that I had due to my own mistake i.e. ‘losing my saved progress’ because of my unconventional way of navigating through the app.
Back to the post topic, if there is an option to make BSS know I’ve made changes to the body of the page on every keystroke or something similar, it would be very nice. If big changes are more difficult, how about implement it on Text components only?
There is another post about an Autosave feature back in 2017 so if it’s more feasible that would be great as well.
BSS already has a backup feature that you can set to auto-save every 5 mins. I mean, losing 5 mins of work sucks, but pretty much any text editing program is going to have the same problem. I recently posted a request to be able to save a backup “on demand”, which Martin saw and agreed with. This would probably solve your problem.
But just saving your website frequently would accomplish the same thing. Having worked with many buggy versions of Adobe products over the years, I got into the habit of unconsciously saving my work frequently, and especially after doing anything particularly complex or labor-intensive.
And yeah, writing a web novel from within BSS is absolutely absurd. You should be doing that kind of work in a word processing program like Word or InDesign, or the completely free Google Docs (which I’m pretty sure saves on a continuous basis as you type.)
Thanks for pointing out the autosave-ish (backup) feature but just to bring back my main issue to light, if you don’t click out of the paragraph component or likely any other Text components as well, your work won’t save. Not backup feature, not the asterisk that will prompt you to save before exiting BSS, not even Ctrl+S will save your work. You’d still have to click out of the Stage preview first.
Like I said, I used BSS to write my stuff because I have dark mode now and I’ll add that I like the colour of it more than what Google Docs’ unofficial extension would give me. If I write it on LibreOffice in dark background the paper would turn up black as well so might as well just write straight in BSS and publish my draft in a temp bss.design website without paper for review. To say it completely absurd is just based on your own limitation but I can use BSS however I like.
I’m just trying to be helpful. I’ve owned a graphic design company since 1993. I started out doing typesetting and artwork for printers back when we shot camera ready art with actual film, and used ruby-lith to block out text. I’ve have owned and used dozens of computers and dozens of programs, from Final Writer and Pagestream on the Amiga, to Quark Xpress and Pagemaker on the Mac, to MS Word, Corel and InDesign on the PC. I’ve done everything from typesetting a single word, to writing, illustrating and editing full-blown novels. Most of the time, I had no choice in the colors of the software (i.e. "dark-mode, light mode) This is a relatively recent development (although the Amiga did allow you to do virtually anything in terms of workspace customization, but that computer was 10 years ahead of its time.)
Point being, this was my vocation for 25 years. I didn’t mean to sound insulting with the “absurd” comment, but as someone who’s done this for a living for most of my life, I can tell you that unless you’re specifically going to publish this novel on the web, and ONLY the web, then writing a novel in a website builder is like trying to build a house using the heel of your boot as a hammer. If you have absolutely no other option, I suppose you’ll eventually get it done, but wouldn’t it be a lot easier to just get the right tool for the job?
I don’t know what computer or O.S. you’re on (this makes a big difference), but the problem is that modern word processing software that gives you the freedom to alter the UI is not inexpensive, and getting older programs to run reliably on Window 10 is always a crap shoot. That’s one reason why I continue to use Window 7, Adobe Creative Suite, and have refused to upgrade to Windows 10. Eventually, those of us on Windows machines will have no choice but to upgrade to 10, and then be forced to upgrade to cloud-based/subscription-based software, since that’s where he entire computing world is moving towards and all the big companies are in cahoots in this regard. You cannot use the latest Adobe Creative Cloud software on Window 7, and you can’t run the older Adobe Create Suite software on Windows 10 (at least not easily.)
These software leviathans want the entire world to be on monthly payment plans for everything. It’s nauseating.
Appreciate your kind advice. I’ll follow this up with a separate post without the suggestion bits. I still hope they’ll implement something on that though. Meanwhile I’ll work on my stuff with a program that has the lower chance of capitalizing on my mistake. lol. Thanks again @printninja