It’s been over three weeks since the last beta, and we’ve made a ton of exciting changes. We’ve added V2 Components, Light and Dark mode support, Text Editing, Typography, and so much more. It’s a lot, and it’s all in this new beta!
Because of the huge amount of changes, this beta should be treated as an experimental build. Proceed with caution…
There are still quite a few rough edges, especially in the Typography area, which is currently unfinished. There’s no sensible defaults right now, just know that we’re aware of this and the next few betas will solidify things greatly. A couple more things to note before you update:
The V2 components in this build are NOT final. There are many bugs, but we’d love your feedback so we can rapidly improve them for the next beta(s).
Scroll animation is temporarily missing from V2 Components but will return soon.
Some V2 components are missing, most notably the Gallery, which will also return soon!
The Typography section in Theme Studio is UNFINISHED.
TL;DR There’s a lot of moving parts going on behind the scenes, so please excuse the mess while we re-arrange the furniture. It’ll all come together in the next few betas…
What’s New Element Beta B17
Updated Tab Bar UI
Inline Text Editor (Work-in-progress)
Bold, Italic, Underline, Font Family, Size, Color, Link, Classes.
Added Typography in the Theme Studio Update
Dark/Light Mode Colour Support
Option to disable dark mode, for those that don’t like the night!
QuickLook Finder Documents
We also store Light and Dark Snapshots of the home page in the bundle now. We have future plans where this will be super useful. Stay tuned!
V2 Components Added (Work-in-progress)
Old Components are now renamed with a (V1) at the end, they will be going away in a future build. Please migrate your websites to the V2 components.
Custom Class area is now responsive on all Components!
New “Standard” Navigation menu component added
Page visibility now supported
Folders can now be shown in menu
Hide/Show Page (in menu) now works
Publish/Don’t Publish now works
Editor now updates when changing page names
Fixed various issues with the Resources Browser (Still more to do here).
Numerous fixes.
Get the Update
Elements should prompt you while it’s running to let you know there’s an update, if it doesn’t you can select the “Check for Updates…” menu option from the “Elements” app menu.
Please note: Sometimes it takes a while for the update to propagate. if you don’t see the update in-app, you can download the latest build of Elements from the confirmation email you received as that link will ALWAYS give you the latest version.
Give Feedback
If you are using the beta, please post all feedback in the Elements Beta Feedback Forum. You can use the Elements > Send Feedback… menu item to automatically pre-fill the build number into a new topic.
Can I join the Beta?
We’re not taking on any more beta testers at this time, however you should sign-up up here to be notified as more places become available.
Ah, yes, this is a bug, we’ll get this fixed asap!
For now… try adding a few Typography classes using the plus button, this should kick it into working (at least that’s what I found in my quick test to reproduce the issue).
All of the typography stuff will come with presets and default values, we just haven’t got around to doing it yet… stay tuned!
It just worked It wasn’t clear that I needed to click the plus sign in the upper right corner in the theme studio. I think it would be clearer for the user if the plus sign were placed next to the text ‘Custom Typography.’
I hadn’t used Elements for a little while as I was waiting for this beta, so I briefly forgot the process with the plus sign in the theme studio. I had used it before with the different groups. However, as mentioned, the plus sign is placed a bit awkwardly from a clear UI perspective.
Overall looking very good. Rebuilt my first page in V2. Brief notes:
1 - Saving delay fixed. Saved in 1-2 seconds. No Beachballs.
2 - Resources Issues - Appears fixed, no beachballs and no crashes when mucking around with resources. UPDATE - Unfortunately had a few hangs later in the afternoon. Thumbnails not all there when I went to add some resources to page. Got a hang on trying to save after that happened. Had to force quit unfortunately.
3 - Bug - Divider Element - Set to width of auto to go across page and it is only a small dot. UPDATE - Manually set values and fixed issue.
4 - Containers as Grid Items - - This one took a while. Eventually, while I got the hang of it, I am not a big fan. Learning curve a bit steeper than with the V1 grid. I had to constantly remember to go back and set the background color so I didn’t have a white patch on the page. Is it possible for the container, when used as a grid item, to be transparent so that it “uses” the color of the container it is in?? Also, to be able to center the items in the grid, there was one setting I had to change for it to work which took me a while to find it / figure it out. (Container → Sizing → Auto instead of Breakpoint where it was defaulted)
All in all very happy to see direction where Elements is going and I am a happy camper. Now to convert rest to V2 and continue building!!
Is it just me or is there some sort of problem with the v2 container. I drop one into the editor and it shows up with a WHITE background. I then set the background to either a COLOR or an IMAGE, but nothing shows up until I drop something into the container.
This does not seem right it should immediately apply the color or image to the background. Am I missing something?
Also I’m still getting crashes with resources, not sure if resources were addressed in this build. The first time I opened the resources to access them it did the normal thing where no thumbnails were showing. Like before this meant it had hung.
The Text control needs a way to set font sizing at different breakpoints and probably Typography as well. This is when I selected just part of the text, or will the overall sizing just work at scaling things down, no matter what size we set different text parts at?