In today’s video we talk about the naming of Elements and give you a sneak peek at Globals (previously known as Layouts).
Globals is another huge new feature that will set Elements apart from anything that has come before it. With Globals you can easily share a group of Elements between pages. You can also override images, text and even design settings allowing you to customise Global Elements on different pages. It’s more powerful and flexible than anything else out there
We only scraped the surface of the Globals feature today, we’ll do a deep dive in the coming weeks to show off all the benefits of this new feature!
As always your feedback is invaluable to us, so let us know what you think of today’s announcement in the comments below.
This was a good video. Yes you can see the insecurities you are feeling. That’s okay. This is a feature that is huge when it’s comes to speed and automation, and that takes time to develop. Good stuff!
Hi Dan,
Globals is good - I think everyone will take to it fairly easily.
Note on Overrides - adding another icon for global is probably going to be confusing. Could you stick w/ one override icon & if needed, track internally whether a change is applied to a standard element or a global element?
I concur with Bill. Instead an individual override icon for each thing you want to change, can you make one override option that allows the user to make multiple changes?
While I don’t have a better idea. I do feel that two differentiating indicators are needed. If a person is visually impaired, a separate color as well as shape would be nice.
Globals look great, no issues with 2 overrides, for those that are new as long as when you hover over it pops up what it is for (option to disable pop up once used to it) did notice this, override under L
I’ll be honest, at this point I don’t really get the point of globals - other than that they themselves are elements—which can already be shared and reused across a site—with the added ability to change the content and/or styling on an individual basis.
Dreamweaver (yeah, I know…) had a concept of templates and libraries with variable/conditionals regions, which enabled users to change content in these templates on individual pages, but still benefit from the underlying template/styles/etc being able to update across as the site without destroying your specific changes. While the changes you could make were limited, they did ensure that your site templates could still be updated without worry of either removing content/styles, or requiring the user to go through and check/update each of their modifications individually.
To me Globals currently seem like they could be a nightmare in the making if someone using globals liberally throughout their site, then decided to edit each global instance individually making the point of being able to automatically update all of these global elements a much more complicated task as they all now have different values, styles, etc? Which ones get automatically updated, and which ones need to be painstakingly updated by hand?
I’m also a little weary of the circle + square UI/UX as it effectively doubles the cognitive load when scanning the left side of properties panel for changes. I don’t have a better solution, but I think the current implementation could prove confusing for some users.
I’m hoping next week’s video will alleviate my concerns.
I suppose with every tool, its use could be abused or overly complicated. As with anything, practice makes a person good at what they do. This includes web designers.
Well I for one find Globals awesome. And I’m sure we are going to see more cool stuff next update. If a web designer thinks it’s going to be a problem for them I guess like all things, eat the watermelon and spit out the seeds. But always enjoy the treat. They don’t have to use it if it gets them in trouble but don’t let it stop you from designing an awesome website!
