SD 4.0 Newbie Questions and...

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I'm coming into this product from a cold start, not having experience with RSD and the standalone Grid Designer. So I have lots of newbie questions.
    0) Does an exhaustive reference document exist for SD 4.0's many options and choices? I haven't found such among the tutorials and videos. Such a reference would help answer some of my questions.

    1) SD's Preview function seems to work one page at a time; it doesn't follow inter-page links. Is that the expected behavior, or do I have a defective installation?

    1a) Sometimes a white line appears under the Preview toggle, sometimes a red line. I'd guess that red means trouble, but I don't notice any different behavior in that case. What's going on?

    2) What is the purpose of the Flat vs. Modular export File Structures in the Settings menu? The settings produce quite different export results.

    3) What is the purpose and meaning of importing and exporting components? What does the Add to Project button actually do?

    4) Frustrating that I can't just tweak Your CSS manually, but I understand: SD is about managing everything, so that SD can enforce consistency. If I want to mess with CSS directly, I can do so in the exported CSS file(s).

    5) What does the Empty Dropzone Pattern toggle do for me?

And so on and so on.

Does Coffee Cup collect newbie questions and drive documentation strategy with them in mind? Eventually I'll be immunized and won't even be able to dream up newbie questions. But 1000 new customers will ask them all over again. Better to anticipate that, I would think.
halfnium -AT- alum.mit.edu
Yes, I looked just like that in 1962.
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Hi Halfnium, welcome back here ;)

I'll try to answer at least some of your questions.

0) When you open SD4, to the very far right you have the 'Help dialog'. There is a link to the user guide, which is the most exhaustive document, although it is being updated with something quite regularly. The anchor links from the menu to most of the actual chapters still have to be fixed though, so if it looks like nothing is happening, just scroll down.

1) You need to preview in a browser to be able to check if the links to the various pages work.

1a) The white line is the 'hover' state of the button, the red line is the 'active' state.

2) AFAIK nobody has a clue about the flat versus modular export. My best advice: Don't touch it ;) - unless you get a reply from someone who happens to actually know.

3) That is actually a very good feature. Assuming you know what a 'component' is, if you have created some clever little thing for a website, say a menu, or some image effect or whatever, and if you want to reuse it in some other site, you save it to your component library. Then maybe I see it in your site and want to know how you made it, you can share it with me, by exporting it as a 'cccomp' and send it to me. I would then import it just by opening it, and then I have it.
The Add to project button places a component from your component library in a list of components that are ready to be imported into the projct you are working on. I would advise you not to make that list too long, though, then that will add to the file size of your project. Make a habit of adding a project to the said list, then place it on the project canvas, and then delete it from the list (that won't delete the component from the project).

4) SD is meant to be a 'non-coding' app, or as little coding as possible at least. But I have a hunch, that they are planning on letting the users edit some of the code (html/css) within the app. But don't expect that in the near future, they are working on some of the other programmes at the time being.

5) No clue here. Someone else will have to answer that.

I agree with you that newbie questions are important. I don't know if they scan the forums on a regular basis, but I do know that they have a to-do list covering a pile of pages.


Ha en riktig god dag!
Inger, Norway

My work in progress:
Components for Site Designer and the HTML Editor: https://mock-up.coffeecup.com


User 379556 Photo


Registered User
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Regarding item 2, there is a section at the end of this help article about this. It suggests at the end that, unless you want the extra features of the Modular export, you use the Flat option: that corresponds with Inger's advice as the default option is Flat.

Regarding item 5, I guess the drop zone patterns are there to show where elements can be placed, and toggling it off allows one to see the page clear of such patterns. There is mention of this in Suzanne's Change Log of 8 June 2018.

Frank

PS I find that it can be useful to use the Google facility for searching this website for help, i.e. in Google start the search clue with 'site:https://www.coffeecup.com/ ' (without the inverted commas).
User 556652 Photo


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Hey Frank,

I'm not sure I understand how you do what you're saying in this

I find that it can be useful to use the Google facility for searching this website for help, i.e. in Google start the search clue with 'site:https://www.coffeecup.com/ '
___________
Artist At Heart
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It's a fairly common way of searching any website. For example, if one wished to search the CoffeeCup website for entries about CSS, one just enters in the Google search bar (without the inverted commas)
'site:https://www.coffeecup.com/ css'.

For many websites I find this easier and better than using the website's own search facilities.

Frank
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On my sharing site I have a google search box of the kind that Frank mentions, that is set to search the CC site. Check https://eikweb.com/sharing/fixed-header … index.html You just have to enter the search term. Below the image on that page there is an explanation about how to create such a search box.
Ha en riktig god dag!
Inger, Norway

My work in progress:
Components for Site Designer and the HTML Editor: https://mock-up.coffeecup.com


User 2907842 Photo


Registered User
45 posts

Halfnium wrote:
*snip*
    *snip*

    4) Frustrating that I can't just tweak Your CSS manually, but I understand: SD is about managing everything, so that SD can enforce consistency. If I want to mess with CSS directly, I can do so in the exported CSS file(s).

    *snip*

*snip*


Since more of your questions had been answered snipped the rest.

CoffeeCup’s RSD is an extremely powerful software. However, a lot of its power is hidden, and not obvious at all. One of these hidden features is the ability to directly manipulate the CSS of your document.

I’ll try and make this straightforward as possible.

Say you’re working with materialize CSS and you want to change the tab indicator colors.
Responsive Site Designer can directly replace framework defaults by referencing CSS files in the <head>.

To replace default framework CSS you’ll need to:

• Create a file name it xyz.css
• Explicitly state the elements in xyz.css as they would appear in materialize.min.css
  • It’s important that you directly reference what element to change in your new css file. RSD can be aggressive about overlapping styling elements with generated styles.
• Crate a folder in resources named css
  • I discovered that this process can also be applied to JavaScript/fonts/etc..
• Import custom css

[materialize.min.css]
.tabs .tab a:hover, .tabs .tab a.active {
background-color: transparent;
color: #eee;
}

[xyz.css]
.tabs .tab a:hover, .tabs .tab a.active {
background-color: transparent;
color: #000;
}

This process is difficult to explain via post reply. I hope this makes some sense. look at my profile in my signature for some ideas on how to edit framework defaults.

Cheers





User 187934 Photo


Senior Advisor
20,181 posts

Adding !important can make targeting more forgiving.
I can't hear what I'm looking at.
It's easy to overlook something you're not looking for.

This is a site I built for my work.(RSD)
http://esmansgreenhouse.com
This is a site I built for use in my job.(HTML Editor)
https://pestlogbook.com
This is my personal site used for testing and as an easy way to share photos.(RLM imported to RSD)
https://ericrohloff.com

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