"Live" preview when customizing theme?
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Hi!
I'm currently considering Concrete5 for a new project and installed 5.7.3.1 for a test drive on my site. It's my first experience with Concrete5.
What surprises me a bit is the lack of "live" preview and the time/steps/number of mouse clicks needed to actually see the changes when customizing a theme (currently testing with the theme "Elemental")
For example, to change the color of the page background:
1. One click to open the color picker in the design panel.
2. After finding the color I want, one click to "choose". (Needed, of course).
3. I can see my site is reloading/working in the browser's status bar ("Waiting for [site name]...")
4. The page stops loading, and I can click "Save changes" in the bottom right corner.
5. A dialog pops up, letting me choose between applying the color to the current page only or to the whole site.
6. The page reload, and I can finally see what my page looks like with the new background color.
Is this behavior template dependent? Am I doing something wrong?
It would be so great to see my page with the new color in step 2. Or to see the font size actually getting bigger/smaller when adjusting the slider, etc.
Regards,
Espen
I'm currently considering Concrete5 for a new project and installed 5.7.3.1 for a test drive on my site. It's my first experience with Concrete5.
What surprises me a bit is the lack of "live" preview and the time/steps/number of mouse clicks needed to actually see the changes when customizing a theme (currently testing with the theme "Elemental")
For example, to change the color of the page background:
1. One click to open the color picker in the design panel.
2. After finding the color I want, one click to "choose". (Needed, of course).
3. I can see my site is reloading/working in the browser's status bar ("Waiting for [site name]...")
4. The page stops loading, and I can click "Save changes" in the bottom right corner.
5. A dialog pops up, letting me choose between applying the color to the current page only or to the whole site.
6. The page reload, and I can finally see what my page looks like with the new background color.
Is this behavior template dependent? Am I doing something wrong?
It would be so great to see my page with the new color in step 2. Or to see the font size actually getting bigger/smaller when adjusting the slider, etc.
Regards,
Espen
First of all, I truly apologize if I offended you, the community or the team behind Concrete5, that was not my intention at all with my previous post. I should have put down more effort to explain myself in a less rude or harsh way of writing. Instead of "attacking" features and the current ways of doing things in Concrete5, I should have asked for any possibilities of improvement/further development.
To answer some of your questions:
"So 4 clicks to get to where you want to be?"
4 clicks, two semi page reloads, server respond time. I rarely know exactly where I want to be, but starts out with a feeling and then make small adjustments (f.ex. slightly darker/lighter color). For each of these adjustments, I have to repeat the process. If I could see the adjustments "live", I would have to complete the process just once.
"I can't see how you could make it any less!?"
I'm not a skilled web developer, and I know very little about different frameworks, scripting languages and so on, so I would not know what the limits of Concrete5 are. When I got my new project I started looking at different web builders/CMSs. In addition to Concrete5, I also tested Webydo, Drupal and Squarespace. I have some experience with Joomla and Wordpress already. Squarespace, with it's "frontend" editing capabilities, is quite similar to Concrete5. Please take a look at this video, around 02:15:
http://help.squarespace.com/guides/making-style-changes...
Would a similar approach be possible for Concrete5?
Regards,
Espen
To answer some of your questions:
"So 4 clicks to get to where you want to be?"
4 clicks, two semi page reloads, server respond time. I rarely know exactly where I want to be, but starts out with a feeling and then make small adjustments (f.ex. slightly darker/lighter color). For each of these adjustments, I have to repeat the process. If I could see the adjustments "live", I would have to complete the process just once.
"I can't see how you could make it any less!?"
I'm not a skilled web developer, and I know very little about different frameworks, scripting languages and so on, so I would not know what the limits of Concrete5 are. When I got my new project I started looking at different web builders/CMSs. In addition to Concrete5, I also tested Webydo, Drupal and Squarespace. I have some experience with Joomla and Wordpress already. Squarespace, with it's "frontend" editing capabilities, is quite similar to Concrete5. Please take a look at this video, around 02:15:
http://help.squarespace.com/guides/making-style-changes...
Would a similar approach be possible for Concrete5?
Regards,
Espen
....and andrewjohnson wins the badge for "hey look at me, I'm an asshole today". Maybe he should just reboot his day and start over
Something seems to be wrong between step 3 and 4. The moment after making any change in the customize panel the page on the righthand side should display a preview of what it will look like. Sometimes this might take a little, depending on the speed of your server and the number of customizable options that a theme has (like Elemental, which has a lot.)
You definitely should be able to live preview themes as your customize them.
You definitely should be able to live preview themes as your customize them.
Thank you for your help, Andrew.
I will try to investigate what might be the cause of it.
Regards,
Espen
I will try to investigate what might be the cause of it.
Regards,
Espen
I can't see how you could make it any less!? Maybe if you asked them nicely to introduce a feature where you just shout at the screen and it will change the colour for you?