Beta 1 | UI/UX General Feedback

Beta
#1

I apologize for not breaking these out as separate posts but individual posts for these ones seemed overboard. I’ll keep bugs to individual posts.

  1. Occasionally don’t know what Builder I’m in and have to look at my Chrome tab title. Could have built an entire page in Global Blocks thinking it was the homepage I had opened.

  2. The Elements Pane has got to be solved for. I think this needs to still reside within the active builder pane and not the sidebar. Also, floating is nice at times but as mentioned in the other post, it should be anchored somewhere not covering content…

  3. IMHO Theme Options should not reside in the active builder as mentioned here: Beta 1 – Theme Options as a primary tab

  4. Just a thought: Love how you never need to leave the builder now but would be great to have a header, footer, layouts, and global blocks management screens like the Template Manager. Just for viewing all at once in an isolated setting which would help with this issue here: Beta 1 - Content module

  5. I love using the header/footer builders in horizontal view and the rest in vertical: would be great if the builder remembered my preference on a per builder basis.

  6. Not sure if this is intentional but editing text opens up a pane the same size as whatever your Elements Pane is but is an additional pane. So you ned up with micro panes all over the place…

#2

Thanks for sharing all this Josh. Really appreciate you taking the time to get all your thoughts out here. Going to come back to this one and the thoughts you shared over on the Theme Options topic tomorrow with fresh eyes, but wanted to at least let you know I’ve seen them and will be thinking about it.

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#3
  1. Occasionally don’t know what Builder I’m in and have to look at my Chrome tab title. Could have built an entire page in Global Blocks thinking it was the homepage I had opened.

Fair point here. We actually ran into the same thing before we added the name of the builder in the workspace navigation like “Content Inspector”. An alternative would be going back to another title above, and placing it first when displayed horizontally, but we’d like to see if there’s more feedback first and it might just be a matter of getting used to it…

  1. The Elements Pane has got to be solved for. I think this needs to still reside within the active builder pane and not the sidebar. Also, floating is nice at times but as mentioned in the other post, it should be anchored somewhere not covering content…

So we’ve got a preference added (will be in the next patch) allowing it to be auto closed. We’re still going to explore some ideas with snapping it to the workspace, but at least for the time being you can position the library over your workspace instead of the live preview and it will close right away when you’re done.

  1. IMHO Theme Options should not reside in the active builder as mentioned here: Beta 1 – Theme Options as a primary tab

Noted! Will pickup the conversation over there.

  1. Just a thought: Love how you never need to leave the builder now but would be great to have a header, footer, layouts, and global blocks management screens like the Template Manager. Just for viewing all at once in an isolated setting which would help with this issue here: Beta 1 - Content module

Unless I’m forgetting something, the quick preview on those index screens is the only lost functionality. I think we can solve that by adding a way to preview them without committing to opening one of the items.

  1. I love using the header/footer builders in horizontal view and the rest in vertical: would be great if the builder remembered my preference on a per builder basis.

Good point here. My only concern is that the configuration includes the position of the main bar. It could feel jarring if the Bar jumped somewhere else after navigating. How would you feel about the Bar position being global, but the workspace and inspector/breadcrumb bar locations done per builder?

  1. Not sure if this is intentional but editing text opens up a pane the same size as whatever your Elements Pane is but is an additional pane. So you ned up with micro panes all over the place…

Thanks for pointing this out! They are actually supposed to individually remember their location. It looks like Elements and Text editing are somehow locked together. I’ll get that fixed and the expected behavior is that each type of floating window will appear in the last place you used it.

#4

Quick update to mention we’ve fixed the issue where the Text editor and Elements pane sync up on their location. In the next patch they will retain their individual last known coordinates.

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#5

There used to be icons representing various builders. It seems that they are gone. I was about to propose that those icons could be used as favicons for the builders. I often pin some of those tabs as separate windows, so having such favicon would help knowing which tab is pinned. It would also help when the tab is not pinned.

To me it sounds acceptable. I like the inspector/breadcrumbs bar at the bottom as well, to be able to preview the desktop navigation size. The bar could stay global.

#6

Roger that. I could see getting used to it. That said, it definitely took me awhile to realize that the “content inspector” language was changing on a per builder basis. Fair though.

Love the new preference (feels much smoother) but the functionality of the floating pane / placement of the elements button still seems a bit wonky in the workflow. I literally end up moving the pane slightly each and every time because – even if I liked where I put it last time – its in the way this time. I know I could get used to the element toggle placement (even though I don’t want to) but the popup thing is…

Awesome. Thanks for tackling. I’m still trying to get used to having micro panes all over the place. Would be nice, at a minimum to be able to anchor to a browser edge and push preview so that It isn’t being covered up. For example the right pane:

Screen Shot 2020-10-05 at 9.05.22 PM
Screen Shot 2020-10-05 at 9.05.22 PM1999×1037 179 KB

I think that would be a great solution. All for it.

#7

Reading through this I wanted to mention two things

  1. I would also like something to indicate what I am working on.
  2. The ability to have different views for different builders would be awesome. I also like to use the side bar for pages and the bottom bar for headers and footers.
#8

I would also like something to indicate what I am working on.

Oddly enough, even previous versions didn’t indicate what you were doing, but now that it’s faster to get around I have personally felt a similar disconnect of not knowing which builder I’m in. Here’s a sneak peak of what we’re pushing out in the next patch:

Screen Shot 2020-10-07 at 6.54.47 PM
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The Icon for the Outline Tab will be a different version depending on which builder you’re in. I’ve found that after a day of working on things it’s definitely helped things feel more solid. Additionally, you can see we’re using the respective theme logo as the icon for “Theme Options” to help with the icon ambiguity.

The ability to have different views for different builders would be awesome. I also like to use the side bar for pages and the bottom bar for headers and footers.

Thanks for chiming in on this! We’ll see what we can do there.