What is the difference between Element Properties and Styles Panel?

And it might be a good idea to look at the bit In our docs I highlighted. I think there is an explanation or an image (blue cross for adding styles to sheet?) missing in the explanation

and the image at the top of the page is good, but maybe ALSO highlight the Bootstrap 4 (or whatever framework) part on the left , next to Layout, so that it can be seen that this element tab is styling WITH Bootstrap 4 styles.

sounds obvious but, if you have colours going on in several places, it would/could help the explanation.

ok I’m off to read our fine manuals again. :slight_smile: cheers, Ive worked some stuff out.

Any way, this is great! Im getting to the bottom of some of the interface stuff which still confuses me when I’ve been away for a while :slight_smile:

Ok, Attribute editor and Visual editor study for me tomorrow! :slight_smile:

Agreed. :white_check_mark:

?
ok then. Ignore the users that are highlighting issues.

Ostrich mentality.

we have v4 docs. v3 docs, beta docs, I guess v2 docs. thats a lot of docs to be keeping on top off and ordering.

there is no point patting yourself on the back and ignoring the feedback.

Opening with comments such as that (or others riddled throughout ) certainly does not compel a person to expound, paraphrase or help further.

:roll_eyes:




Speaking in general.
[ Off topic regarding documentation ]

There are obviously still attributes of the documentation that need filled out and finished, along with videos that were discussed back around last summer regarding whether to use a computer voice vs human voice. Having incomplete documentation of course does not help, as it fragments the understanding with users having to dicier across differentiating versions and UI’s, or with nothing at all.

No doubt more updates to the documentation resources (written and video) are still to come and the staff continues to work on these resources.

v4 was supposed to be the culmination of everything, the documentation, etc., but obviously this is still a work in progress. There has been indicators of a new main site appearance a few times, so I assume things are still underway for some major transition to the new version since the rewrite. We are now back to the dot release versions again (even though a few more milestones where seemingly reached), so not sure when that actual transition will culminate, v5 ?

Obviously the Pinegrow team is small yet nimble, and has a lot to accomplish between the main application development, new features, performance, bug fixes, documentation, marketing, participating and helping across communication channels, etc., etc. So a lot of times documentation can fall behind and suffer because of this. I have seen it be the case with other small development teams as well.

The other thing is developers obviously have a clear understanding of the how and why of features and workflows of their application. But sometimes that does not translate into documentation that is clear or simple for those that are just users, especially new users, or for new versions. Or fully encompass documenting all features, sub features, points of entry for usage and workflow, general intricacies and insight, best practices, tips and tricks, etc., which is a massive undertaking to document.

Many times things are taken for granted and only come out if specific questions are asked by users. It is easy for developers to take things for granted and not understand how to translate all of what they know as the developers down to the user about their application. But it generally comes down to time and resources, as documentation can be very time consuming, especially for small teams.

When writing documentation its hard to set aside the concise understanding for a developer and in contrast clearly and simply explain to the mindset of someone whom is a user and does not know perhaps anything. So many times, documentation is written from the developers point of view and understanding, not from a users point of view of not knowing.

Generally though users don’t take the time to understand software or familiarize themselves within a software through practice or trial and error, reading the documentation, gaining general understanding through general research of the underlying tech and terminology etc., before complaining or asking questions they could educate themselves on. So like most things, both sides play a role.

This is historical regarding documentation for many applications. But just like features, documentation can likewise be improved through user feedback, most developers gladly welcome understanding such deficiencies and ways for improvement. But any feedback should be as clear and concise as possible, without nonsense and precisely focused.

:evergreen_tree::hearts:

@Pinegrow_User, yeah I hear you on that one, but do you honestly think that replies such as

inspire people to post and ask for help here too?

Just MAYBE, they have studied the manuals intensely, before posting here, out of frustration, as the manuals contents changed for another version/release, or application has changed and manuals HAVEN"T been updated (which is far more common, with our amazing release cycle.) Or the manual simply contains mistakes or is a little confusing grammatically, just like many manuals.

We have several versions of everything, mixed up.

My riddling of comments throughout, was intentional.
This is a peer support forum mostly, but we are really lucky to have a dev team that actually lives here too and helps out! :slight_smile: but are pretty busy, so we should all do the best we can.

To merely dismiss some (non daft) requests with a mere
must try harder, your not trying hard enough statement,

also is a not a great incentive to encourage people to try and ask for advice that many others may also be struggling with.

Not every questioner is as gifted/smart/clever as every responder thinks they are. So while pointing out some links might be spot on and very helpful, the comments that go with them aren’t always.

Touche, if you like.

worth thinking about.

Anyway , this is off piste to the actual topic and I do agree with your larger, secondary (and again, off piste) comment.

This has been a great topic! it has forced me to yet again, RTFM and battle on to figure some stuff out thet had also confused me and I have read a lot of docs, but still lack some understanding, so, while certainly having tried to get my head around some stuff have failed or become confused and couldn’t quite find the answer - that was right for MY WAY of thinking.
Since I am limited by… my way of thinking! :slight_smile:

So docs are for someone else way of thinking.
Thats why we have forums.
Thats why we have feedback.
And thats where and why we can ask questions :slight_smile:

And if the dev team sees the same topics or questions constantly being asked, then if they are lucky enough to have the time, they can address these with an FAQ section or, actually address the topic or area, with the extra hindsight of the though process and viewport of actual consumers, which , after all, is who this is now intended for.
This is great! constant extended beta testing for free, its not negative, (mostly) its feedback.

Anyway… back to the manuals for me.
This is great, trying again, now with V4 which is certainly much better than 2.951, which I still also use, but its damend confusing going from one to the other.

Ok, ciao, keep up the good work :slight_smile:

It could be said, that this all has nothing or pretty less to do with application. It could be further said, that if you use a framework you should be aware of what a framework is and what it can do for you. This all could be said - it could be even said, that the original question is somehow confusing or misleading, making the job hard to answer.

What is a framework?

It shares (beneath HTML and JS stuff) a whole lotta bunch of predefined classes. This makes styling quick and efficient. While you usually have to seek those special classes within a large documentation, PG makes you the stuff much easier. It comes with a “GUI”, where you can set those classes intuitive. So if you want your button blue, you click on the color-spot for blue - the button appears to be blue AND a class of “btn-primary” has been added to the element. This is just because the underlying properties for this is class is

.btn-primary {
color: #fff;
background-color: #007bff;
border-color: #007bff;

}

Why the heck under “element properties”?

Because you add a class to the element which is “element-land”

So in fact, the GUI is just a placeholder for styles - not a “style painter”. Cause if you now want to overwrite a frameworks class, you have to bring them on a overwrite.css style-sheet. The framework itself is not dedicated for to overwrite.

Cheers

Thomas

1 Like

Yeah. Pretty much so, @Thomas and I guess you mean, at the end there,
that you shouldn’t edit and overwrite the Original Framework’s Class styles, which, say, declares a button’s colour as Danger and save that back to the Original framework’s stylesheet,

But rather, the correct way is to replicate that framework’s style in an external custom style sheet, which is attached AFTER the frameworks actual style sheet and, so doesn’t touch the actual frameworks, pristine classes.

which is, as you know, how it works.
but trickier to figure out, as a beginner (or intermediate) when first encountering our interface and maybe, have frameworks thrown in the mix too, just for fun.

so good points Brought up.

And the interface has just had me with a few more Gotchay’s! so, back to the manual again for me

its the mechanics of this process which catch me out, in our interface, even though I understand the process. and , I just ended up, back at the original question again, trying to do something.
ok, back I go

mmm… and do you mean that the Element Properties tab, in the GUI , is just a place holder for styles? (and somewhere to add and remove them, but not edit/create them)
oh, and attributes.

you can just list them, add them, remove them… er well actually, you can edit them, at the top section.
just no funky drop downs, you just edit the blue text.
Ok, manual…

The other thread you noted has nothing at all to do with Pinegrow or the manual, it’s a generalized question.

They also later asked for a full and complete explanation / solution of the conversion. Having previously been immersed in the same tech as they were speaking of, I fully understand the transition is not 1 for 1, hence the general response that it will require effort to learn and move on. The same person posted about centering CSS, and also made a thread that Pinegrow does not support transparent images which they quickly deleted.

So I’m not sure what your general point is to try and take little excerpts from that thread. But the overall example certainly proves the following point.

If you look across the landscape of the internet where peer to peer communication exists via Forums, Blog Comments, StackOverflow, etc., and the numerous endless venues to do so. You will see constantly people asking the same or similar questions, or asking for a complete solution from others. Which shows they either clearly fail to search and self discover, or do not desire to learn at all and instead wish to have others do their work for them.

So there is nothing wrong with encouraging people to learn and help themselves. However sometimes it seems from a perspective of harshness, because sadly people adamantly do not wish to do so.


Give a Man a Fish, and You Feed Him for a Day. Teach a Man To Fish, and You Feed Him for a Lifetime.


You’re welcome.

or, the one big point you miss,

the resources, they are all checking… suck
in some respect that is confusing them all.

so pointing to the source of all suck is not helpful.
Addressing source of suck is.

if something isn’t explained well, is confusing, or has multiple versions of explanations, for multiple versions of interfaces, and they don’t correlate with the version your using, well,
Suck might be playing a part.

Don’t overlook this .
Try and re read the source of suck from another point of view, ie, that of the recipients point of view, as indicated by the question, not as someone who creates said, suck

this is the missing point < otherwise, yeah I agree with you.

Lets help eliminate suck in Pineland,
same as BBEdit land :wink:

https://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/

N.B. and by suck I mean they fail to explain in some way,

You seemingly missed mine completely. :wink:

Is that intended to be encouraging for all the effort put into Pinegrow and it’s developers? :anguished:

Nice edit / save.

Sorry, I can spend no more time on your whimsies,
Im concentrating on the actual question, how best to deal with it and my grasp of the interface too.

You just concentrate on whatever point it is your trying to make, IM interested in the originators question, our interfaces and how best to answer the confusion that sometimes arrises from it.

Im not spending on more time discussing this with you.

Sounds good, I was tired of your reading your drivel anyway.

Thanks. unike your BS reply.
You might as well have replied with

http://jfgi.herokuapp.com

your attitude is both patronising and condescending in many posts.

if you can’t be bothered to attempt to explain something well,
its best to just be quiet.

maybe you could try that for once

Certainly. But by just using a class, you do not have to declare anything at all. Just hook it to the element and the appearance will automagically come from the default frameworks’ css. So danger is danger and will deliver the expected result.

This is only required, if an existing class (and its properties) does NOT come up to your expectations. So you’d need to cascade the current class by a new declaration. That’s the nature of CSS. And at this point, the styles palette comes into game which should hereby explain the difference.

Cheers

Thomas

1 Like

It’s ok, I will let you get back to as you say “RTFM” and letting @matjaz and @Emmanuel know the documentation and parts of the UI “suck” as you put it. Should be encouraging to them, after more than a year of effort.

Have a wonderful day @schpengle.

@Pinegrow_User.
Please stop being a d*ck.
this is a positive forum.
you’d be better off spending the time it took you to post this, correcting the grammar of your previous septic post.

I love Pinegrow, and everything about it. it confuses me but I love it.
I don’t love you, funnily enough.
Your showed what you were about, when you DEMANDED I gave you my Macaw beta testing serial and then complained how I had wasted your time , by spending hours looking for years old software for you, for you just too dur realise that you couldn’t use it - without a serial.

I would not release you my beta testing serial, you have been unpleasant since.

Get over yourself. you are not important. Pinegrow is , so is its documentation and its user base and their valid questions.

Matjaz and Emmanual can read, and will read this. I have no problem with that, they know what I mean and how I feel about Pinegrow.

go be poisonous somewhere else and stop lowering the tone of this place.

As for our previous correspondence concerning the Scarlet Beta, it was not as you are trying to depict here, there was no demand as you try to insinuate. Amusingly however its you whom seem to hold the grudge towards me with the necessity to bring that up from almost a year ago and how vehemently you are directly targeting me with your responses.

The tone you set is appropriate ?

Get over yourself. this Forum Question regarding Styling and the different approaches is important.
Your replies are of no consequence or help to that. and amusingly I still have the scarlet Beta emails.

now , back to the recipients question.

You may wish to ponder if the nonsense you sprinkle your posts with offer benefit to anyone.


Again you’re welcome.