I know you folks are working hard to improve and fix Elements, and I want to say that I am impressed with what you have done so far. I encountered a few issues this morning.
This issue seriously messed up my entire project and I could not undo to restore. Even closing without saving did not restore my project. Here’s what happened: I duplicated a page, and even though my Globals on the page were named, they showed as “Container.” Not knowing this is a bug (I think), I renamed this containers on the duplicated page giving them the names I had given the Globals previously. That action completely messed up my project. I had to grab a recent Time Machine backup, Then I duplicated that project to test. I duplicated the page again, and the Globals once again were named “Container” and not their given names. I did not change their names this time. I saved the project, closed it, opened it again, and then the Globals had their given names again.
Duplicating a page causes the other pages to render slowly for some time. Then clicking another page and not seeing what is expected there is very concerning. This has gotten me more than once. I assume this gets worse with more pages. I have 4 pages in my site. I have some large images which I plan to reduce their size. That might help, and/or maybe a Mac restart will help. That’s something I need to test.
This is a minor issue. Any component place above the last component in the node browser cannot be moved down to the bottom without being placed inside the bottom component. All components two or more above the last component can be moved to the bottom. Here’s an example: The Container above the footer cannot be dragged in the node browser to be under the Footer, it goes into the footer. If that Container is above the Banner in the node browser, then it can be dragged to be under the Footer.
@dan This problem with drag and drop has been around for some time and can be very frustrating. Whenever, I drop a component into the bottom of the node tree it always places the component inside the last component open in the tree. It is almost impossible to get it to be appended to the end of the tree on its own. The insertion point never gets to a point of indicating that it will be placed at the root level.
My feeling is that when dragging a component into the node tree it should only EVER be placed inside another component if you first drag INTO that component. So the default should be an APPEND as opposed to an INSERTION.
This has been a source of endless frustration for me as I’m constantly fighting to get the component to be added in the correct location. Sometimes the only way I can get it appended is to drag it up higher in the hierarchy at the root level. Then close the last component and try to drag it to the bottom. Often this does not work and I have to drag it down so it is the second to last item. Then I drag the last item above it. Very tedious to say the least.
I have been meaning to raise this concern many times, but keep forgetting.
The insertion indicator seems to contribute to the problem and makes it very hard to really tell where something will go when dropped. Hopefully, this can be improved as it is one of those quality of life issues that can really smooth out the use of Elements.
If the insertion indicator could somehow be enhanced to indict whether an insert or append is going to be performed, that could make a huge difference. Right now you can only tell based on the position of the left edge of the indicator. Possibly a color change or something else to differentiate between the different targets.
I know it can be a bit fiddly sometimes, you just need to know where to drag it. We can certainly look at ways to improve it in the future (we have a few bigger issues to take care of first before we get to the nitty-gritty polish).
However, right now I’d recommend using the keyboard shortcuts if you’re having issues moving components, these are really good once you get used to them…
If you mean dragging to the very buttom of the node list, I totally understand, but there’s a quick workaround:
At the top of the node list, you see the name of your current page. If you drop the component onto there, it will en up in the complete bottom of the list.
Completely forgot about them, I’m going to have to reprogram my brain to use these to move stuff around as it is likely to be more predictable for now.
