Dev Diary Ep49 - Let's talk Components

Elements Dev Diary
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Hello Weavers,

We’ve seen a fair number of questions about what will or won’t make it into Elements 1.0, and the honest answer is—we don’t know yet!

We’re continuing to build the product openly and iteratively, adding the features you’ve been asking for. Staying agile is key for us, as it allows us to adapt based on your feedback.

That said, I wanted to share an idea of what we’re aiming to include. This post is in response to the great feedback from @WeaverPixel and @handshaper on the DevDiary Ep48 thread. Thank you both (and everyone else) for taking the time to share your thoughts—you guys rock! :raised_hands:

Hopefully, this list will help clarify where we’re headed with the Components in Elements. As always, keep the feedback coming. It’s invaluable as we work toward building a tool that works for everyone. :blush:

The components we’ve built into Elements are made to be very flexible (and powerful), the idea is that they can be used to build whatever you need (there are obviously limits). We plan to keep pursuing this idea while iterating on the V2 components. I’ve recorded a bonus dev diary where I go over this thinking a little more. Hope it all makes sense.

Download Space List Project featured in Video

Components in Elements 1.0

IMPORTANT: This list is not final—it’s a snapshot of what we’re envisioning right now. These are the base components we’re currently aiming for in version 1.0. That said, this list is flexible and will evolve based on your feedback!

  • Button
  • Divider
  • Gallery (Local, YouTube/Vimeo playlists supported)
  • Image
  • SVG
  • Text
  • Typography
  • Video (Local, YouTube/Vimeo supported)
  • Container
  • Grid
  • Flex
  • Standard Navigation
  • Modals (soon-ish)
  • Slider (soon-ish)
  • Accordion (soon-ish)
  • Breadcrumb (soon-ish)
  • Cookie Notice (Basic support soon-ish 3rd-parties could offer more in-depth solutions)
  • Anchor support (coming VERY Soon. All built-in components will support being linked natively via the Link panel)
  • Scroll Animation (Scroll animations: all built-in components will support scroll animations out of the box)

Yes, but not sure it’ll all make the 1.0 release…

  • Dropdown menu of links
    • We’re thinking about extending the Button component to support optional dropdown menus. The dropdown menu would be a dropzone so anything could be placed inside of it.
  • Off-Canvas
    • Yes, seems like a good idea.
  • Contact Form
    • We don’t want to go the PHP route, so this feature will require some careful planning. In the meantime there are other web services that help with this, and it seems like a perfect set of components for a 3rd-party to build.
  • Table
    • Requires more time and thinking to make this really good, third-parties might want to step in here and offer a solution.
  • Megamenu
    • We’d like to offer other menu systems, but this is a perfect place for 3rd-parties to innovate also.
  • Kinetic (Foundry 3)
    • yes, just need to get round to building this.
  • CMS/Blogging
    • Yes, we plan to offer a solution but this will also take time. Third-parties could also offer solutions here.
  • Connection or solution for integrating Icons
    • It’s been on the list for a while, but can’t say when this will happen.
  • Page transitions
    • Yes, seems like a good idea.

You can already do this with the built-in components…

  • Video Player
    • We already have this, it also support YouTube and Vimeo
  • Icon List
    • You can build this, a flex with some images and text.
  • Button Group
    • You can probably do this already with some buttons in a flex.
  • Footer Info (see Foundry 3)
    • Can already build this with text in the footer, doesn’t need to be a separate component.
  • Pin
    • You can already do this with any of the built in Components (look under layout).
  • Call to Action
    • Isn’t this a button? if so, you can already do this!
  • Badge
    • You can easily make this with a container and text component.
  • Captions
    • We have captions on Gallery images, you can also add captions beneath the images with the components we have. Maybe I’m missing something
  • Quotes
    • You can use the Typography component, or add a custom blockquote tag under the advanced section.

3rd-party Opportunities…

The following components might be best left to third-party/custom components.

  • Tabbed Content
  • Markdown
  • Audio Player
  • Progress bar
  • Dot Leaders (see Foundry 3)
  • Definition List (see Foundry 3)
  • Star rating
  • Warning/Alert
  • Instagram Feed
  • Animated counter

Feedback Please!

As I mentioned earlier… this list is not set in stone — we want your feedback!

It’s also important to remember that Elements is a brand-new, unfinished product. If you need everything listed above right away, it might be worth checking back in a year’s time :laughing:. Our goal is to deliver a solid, robust base product with an advanced API that lays the groundwork for the next 10+ years. Elements 1.0 is just the beginning of a much bigger vision.

I hope you’ll stick with us on this journey and help us create the best website builder for Mac. Your input has made all the difference so far— thanks again!

Cheers,
Dan & Team Realmac

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To me this is THE #1 MOST IMPORTANT thing! Make it happen! :slight_smile:

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This is fantastic and exactly what I was hoping to see.

I also feel that your prioritization of the components in the list is spot on.

I have to agree with your statement that there is a lot that can be built with the core components as I have experienced this flexibility. It is also 100% true that some of these components can be built yourself to meet your exact needs. I have experienced this firsthand. You just have to realize what is possible with Elements.

The only remaining question is what will it take to evangelize third-party developers to start working on the components that will not be provided by RM. They need to be starting now.

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I vote for Dropdown Menus be pushed to 1.0 release!! :wink:

Realistically, that is the only component that I am missing for my website. What I want to duplicate is on this page: US Special Forces, Special Operations Forces and Airborne Units

Anchors would be helpful, but I can wait for those.

I AM experimenting with AI and custom components for the dropdown, but I haven’t been successful yet…Still plugging away at it though.

Anyone have a suggestion as to which AI might give me best results??

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Developers are still waiting for the developer support to be made available e.g. see this post: Custom Component Bundle Structure?

I have code to handle 1) Vibralogix Sitelok and 2) I am currently working on being be able to convert existing Elixir Graphics Alloy blog pages to enable creating, reading, editing and deleting blog pages and hopefully be able to display them in a similar form to what Alloy does.

I have both the above working in a basic form but am holding off creating the Elements components until the developer support is there.

I suspect this will need to be in place before we will see any extensive 3rd party support?

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Hi Dan,

I am not a Beta tester, so what I am about to suggest may already be included.

As a member of a model gliding club, we have the usual contact pages, but events change each year and photos of previous events would be good to include.

The current website is very basic and compiled by somebody else.

Please advise if there is anything there that could be usefully included in Elements.

Many thanks.

Michael Kitchen

[

NYMRSC
nymrsc.org.uk

favicon.ico
](https://www.nymrsc.org.uk/)
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That is a bummer as it seems like developers will need some lead time to get up to speed and get components made. But without the support there is nothing to do.

Hope it happens so we can get some awesome addons.

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The dropdown menu support myself and Dan discussed was aimed at adding a simple popout box to the existing Button component.

The example on the site you’ve linked to would be quite a bit more complex to build.

How would you envision yourself managing the items in that dropdown menu? Could all the items be pages in the project, or would you be ok with manually managing the items.

Interested in how you thought it would/could work in Elements :slight_smile:

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I really don’t like to sound critical of something which works but I found that website very difficult to navigate and pretty ugly to look at. Without wanting to cause offense, I think moving to Elements would be a great opportunity to rethink the design to something more modern.

Just imho.

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I have good news — We’ll hopefully have something to share with you all next week!

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@bon

Currently, they are all pages in the website (and in the project)

What I envision in my head on the controls side would be a list of pages in the project with checkboxes to include in the dropdown or not include in the dropdown, with the the ability (somewhere) to edit the text of the link that shows in the website. I could live with managing the pages manually. If the controls utilized the organization of the page manager (I have the pages organized and in folders) that would help I think…

Alternatively, a control where you could drop in a folder of project pages from the page manager and it builds the dropdown from that and changes in the page manager would change the dropdown (ordering, removing a page from the folder that was placed in the control, adding a page to the folder in page manager would also update the dropdown, etc.)

Something along those lines.

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No offense taken. The site was originally built in 1998-99 in GoLive 6 and essentially hasn’t been touched since. It was built using tables to keep everything in a grid. After GoLive was dropped by Adobe the site hasn’t been touched other than to migrate from / to a few different hosts over the years.

I experimented with several different web software packages, but didn’t like any of them until Elements came along.

My initial goal is to re-create the existing site (more or less exactly) in Elements to move the codebase to something more modern, using the time that I am doing that to learn Elements, learn Tailwind and re-learn HTML & CSS. After doing that, my next goal would be the prettification of the site and make it easier to use. I freely admit I am not a designer nor coder. My day job consists of driving up and down the street and picking up the sick and injured and taking them to the Emergency Room (A&E for my UK friends).

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Just watched the most recent video attached to this topic. Point proven very well!

Is there room for more automation? Perhaps. But once a webmaster builds it the first time they have it forever.

Also, @dan what if the forum had a place to share free components with each other? This would be a great tool to build loyalty to Elements but also the community.

Someday maybe there will be a navigation tool like the one used in your documentation website. But until then I can manually build it, all the tools are there for sure just not automated.

I understand not wanting to wade into the contact form and required support issues that come with it. However missing this component is risky in my opinion. Maybe a compromise would be to build custom components that ultimate third party solutions? Then RM is only supporting the component not the functionality. Just a thought. :slight_smile:

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+1 : I suggested this in an earlier post.

I believe it is not inconceivable that certain components someone needs have already been created by someone else for their own project and that they are willing to share them with the community. For example, I have attempted to create an accordion component. I can imagine that someone else might want to use something similar. I would gladly share it without expecting anything in return. After all, I have already received a return by building it without any prior coding knowledge, and I learned a lot in the process. So, I’ve already gained my reward.

Moreover, others could add useful features and share those in turn, which benefits everyone. There will still be plenty of room for third-party designers to develop more sophisticated components, which would certainly have a paying market.

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This is one of the many reasons we built Elements Cloud. We knew we’d need a way for users to share Components in-app with other users. Imagine being able to live-search all published components directly from the components tab in Elements… We’ll be implementing and expanding more on this idea once we have the core app a little more buttoned-up — Exciting times ahead!

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I look forward to seeing what you have to share. I think it is going to be critical to get devs onboard and up and running as fast as possible.

There are some issues I have noticed with some of the early components created by third-parties, which I will raise in a separate post, soon.

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For myself I would be more than happy to manage them manually. Although if there was an option to opt between a list of pages and manual management, that would be even better.

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What about SEO component or something built in? Would be nice to see something other then the basic functionality from RW Classic.

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Can you be a bit more specific, what SEO features would you like to see?
The more details you can give, the more likely/sooner it is to happen :smiling_face:

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Interested in seeing how you envision Contact Forms, and how soon might that land for us to try!