Typography > Tag Confusion

Elements Beta Feedback
1

I’m still struggling to find a way to use the Typograph component as it’s currently designed. The inability to add lists, figures/images, blockquotes, etc - all things commonly found in passages of text - is endlessly frustrating. I’m also unsure of the Tag dropdown as <header>, <footer> and <span> (an in-line element?!) aren’t really suitable for use with Tailwind’s Typography extension IMHO.

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Also, when editing text we have a few options, paragraph, and headers that make sense, but quote and code are a bit ambiguous as they could reference a block element (ie: <blockquote>) or an in-line element such as <q>. Again, there’s also no way to add lists, pictures/images, etc.

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While I think the recent UI polish is lovely, I’m still a bit concerned about the core product. I want to use Elements, but as the weeks and months roll on I’m resolving myself to the fact that the product doesn’t (and will possibly never) do what I need it to do (build and deploy a modern website - not just fancy landing pages).

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We have plans to further extend and polish the Typography settings, it was always intended to be a base to start from. We have other areas of the app that we need to address before we come back to Typography (sorry).

Do you have a live example of a page you are trying to build? It sounds like you want to be long text heavy pages, is that right?

Anyway, an example would be most helpful in making sure we can meet your needs.

If you really don’t think Elements is right for you, we can give you a refund. You can then come back and check out Elements once it ships as a 1.0 and see if it meets your needs then.

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Hey @Dan, in recent weeks I’ve been slowly working on a vanilla html + css template (not my preferred approach, but I’m now at the point where I can’t wait much longer), a basic example of which can be found at: https://bryanrieger.com/example.

What I’m trying to do is publish a number of very visual short stories for kids (and those who are still kids at heart). The layouts themselves aren’t terribly complicated, often just a single responsive column set to a comfortable line length max-width (there’s also a ‘spread’ layout that’s double-width when needed), but being able to visually style the page content is very important.

I will be making use of custom fonts (incl. some of my own, variable, colour, etc), animated SVG (simple looping scenes using Keyshape, and Hype for more complex animations), art directed layouts using the <picture> element with media queries for screen sizes, format support, etc.

Also the ‘menu’ for each will be customized for each story, often including a table of contents to multiple pages, links to stores, blurbs, and custom artwork.

I’m fine making custom components, but I don’t want to be in a position where I’m having to essentially recreate many of the base components (ahem, Typography). That’s simply too much work and maintenance that takes me away from my actual focus (telling stories).

My gut feeling now is that Elements is probably not going to be suitable for the type of work I’m focused on, but as it’s still in ‘beta’ and the future direction is still unclear I’m holding on to that tiny bit of hope that I won’t need to hand code everything, and will be able to primarily use a visual editor. Mind you, I still find the component Inspector more overwhelming (and time-consuming) than using code.

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I totally understand, and I think when Elements is a little more mature you’ll certainly be able to create what you need… but, right now, as Elements is in beta and constantly moving and developing I’m not sure it’s going to be a good fit for a project you need to build now-ish.

Maybe hand-code it now (because you can), but keep an eye on Elements and see how it develops over the rest of the year.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to seeing your stories online, your art style is really lovely :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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Yup, that’s pretty much where I’m at. :slight_smile:

Anyway, I’m looking forward to seeing your stories online, your art style is really lovely :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

Thanks. :blush:

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ummm I hope you won’t be saying that in December!!!

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Me too, but realistically it’ll take as long as it takes — We are reacting to user feedback so can’t give an exact shipping time.

I do think Elements will be vastly different in a years time, especially if the past year is anything to go by :wink:

Onwards and upwards!

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