V2 | 1.2.3 | Customizer Layout Curiosity Questions

Support
#1

  1. Out of curiosity, will you ever go back to the element grid layout vs list? Or at least give an option? Was so much easier to see two elements at a time vs scrolling through a list.

  2. Out of curiosity, can the background image settings for sections be available by default? Seems counterintuitive to add a section, then have to click on the bg, then have to tick the “advanced” button, then have to click on the image button, then have to click on the plus sign to add an image – all to do something that took 2 clicks in the old setup.

  3. Out of curiosity, do we have to have visual sliders for all of the margins / padding? It’s cool and all but 4 boxes with left, right, top, bottom worked well and took up far less space.

  4. Out of curiosity, will we ever have the option to adjust the width of the customizer pane? Right now things are feeling very crammed and I am aware that you have explored other options for making it flow better but for me, on a 27" monitor, I can afford a little more customizer real estate and would love that option.

  5. Out of curiosity, is the customizer slower than 1.1.1? I’m using the same hosting as all of my other sites with far less plugins (read 1) and nearly no media (read 1 picture while playing around) and I have to wait between actions. Example, add a section, wait while the margin loads itself top first, then bottom. Another example. Add an image, click image, wait about 1 second while customizer loads up options. Tested against a fully built client site in 1.1.1 and 1.1.1 was nearly instantaneous.

  6. Out of curiosity, is there a reason the “customize” pane is so difficult to access? You need to scroll just right. Can’t those options (display options, id, class, style) just be at the bottom of the element settings?

Again, seriously just curious about these and the future of v2. Great work on all counts. I know we (read you) are still in launch mode so props for all the great work.

#2
  1. This will likely stay the new element format moving forward. With the previous version you actually had less elements visible at once. This format allows us to have more elements on the screen at a time which we feel is preferable.
  2. Good observation here. Sorry it’s more clicks. The base section element is unlikely to change. However, we will be added more preset options including the ability to save your own presets. This is coming in the next major release. Another idea we’ve discussed but haven’t committed to yet is having a way to assign a preset as the “default”. So you could make one base section with your sites ideal spacing and the advanced BG pre-enabled. All new elements would then take on that preset when added instead of using the core defaults. This is a bit down the road, but we believe moving in that direction will really help streamline things.
  3. So you’re saying you like the old format better when they were all in a row? This is an observation we’ve seen brought up more than once and is worth talking through a bit more. What are your thoughts on a “preference” that you toggle somewhere? When enabled, it could use a more compact format.
  4. Regretfully no, at least not arbitrary sizes. All the controls are designed to specifically work in that space. What you might see in the future is a way in the content builder to use the horizontal inspector mode used in the header builder. We’re not too far off from that being possible.
  5. Unfortunately it is slower than the previous version because the new inspector has for more controls and is quite a bit more complicated. Rather than just having a dozen or so fields per element, we might have 100+ fields to power all the styling options. There is room for improvement here in terms of performance and it’s something we’ll be exploring ways to speed up. For example, it would be faster if we could find a way to not wait to render ALL the controls as some are off screen.
  6. Oh boy, if you could only have been a fly on the wall for some of the internal conversations about this. It’s something we’ve tried really hard to handle properly, but we fully anticipated having feedback about. We’re trying to reuse the pattern found in the horizontal view (headers/footers) where we can take horizontal space for granted. There are trade-offs to consider. If we use the horizontal scroll (current implementation), it’s hard to reach those other groups (like Customize) but you get more space to work in. If we used a vertical list you could see them all, but on smaller screens it drastically cuts into the working area. We expect to make changes to this in an upcoming release after gathering some feedback - hopefully we’ll be able to find a better balance, or introduce preferences that can be adjusted. Because of how the data is currently structured, we can’t just include them at the end. However we might be able to “lazy load” the next group at the end when you scroll all the way there.
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#3

Alex, first of all thank you for taking the time to respond so thoroughly to my questions. Slowly but surely 1.2.x is growing on me – the work you’v done on this product is out of this world so I only point out (opinionated) shortcomings in the hopes that they are brought to your attention and/or addressed.

A few followups to your followups below:

  1. I completely get this. And the list view vs grid view does feel more professional and less “builder-esque” but really it is only showing 1-3 more elements (depending on what you consider in-view). But I can see your perspective.


2. Fair. While a bit buried, the additional clicks have just become part of the workflow... slowly but surely acclimating!
3. Correct. I rarely use the sliders (though I can see how they are useful) so having the option to expand or collapse them would be awesome. Also, on this topic, I've seen in some of your knowledge base videos that you guys just type in the % sign or other symbols like you used to be able to do on pre 1.2.x versions of pro and it automatically detects the symbol and changes to that value format. However, that is not the case in any of my production versions of 1.2.x. I am required to click the wee-little measurement value with my mouse. Which again is no big deal other than the fact that I know better exist(s)(ed) -- now it is just another click.
4. Bummer. I just wanted more whitespace. Don't need them to adapt, stretch or reformat -- just want to feel like my eyes can breathe for a second. Totally cool though.
5. I think in your response here that you are referring to the actual inspector pane (which is slower and I hope can be improved) but I was more referring to the preview. There is a clear latency when adding a section, adding an element or duplicating an element. While seemingly minor, it pales in comparison to pre 1.2.x content builder and makes what once felt smooth into a choppy experience. • A visual example here: https://youtu.be/ETrUF9BkGLA • You'll notice a section is created, then lag, then the padding is added to to the top and bottom of that section. Add an element, lag, then it visually shows up, add gap, lag, duplicate, lag, etc. Small but vastly different from pre-1.2.x.
6. Hah --- I hear you on this. I can see how this is a tough nut to crack. See below as an example of it being difficult to see/reach what is almost unseen.

6.1 Also, after spending much time acclimating to 1.2.x (which again, I’m learning to love) I find it confusing that the element breadcrumbs are above the section breadcrumbs. Wouldn’t it make sense to flip these? You start with a section > row > column > etc then below that are the micro details within an element?


Again, these are all thoughts and opinions from one teeny little user amongst many other users with their own thoughts and opinions.

Thanks for hearing me out. Hopeful for a response :slight_smile:

#4

Hey @DoncoMarketing,

Thank you for your detailed feedback. This helps in shaping the tools. I’ll forward this to Alex. :slight_smile: