Containers are a step in the right direction to allow more flexibility - and simplicity - for editors to add content that can be fine-tuned for responsive demands.
They are still quite some steps behind though. We were longing for years for something like containers, but with parameters. So a user can add a container and choose from a dropdown for example a preset of styles.
It’s tedious to make a half/half container with 8 clones to deal with options like which of the elements gets order 1 on responsive.
Can we get a modern solution for this? We see so many useless updates for concrete5 that aren’t used ever, while some of the basics are severely lacking in modern approaches. Less fluff, more basics would be really helpful.
Thank you John. I am looking for a solution that I can give directly to Editors who fill in content. This is a step too abstract and would be more a help for anyone preparing containers I think.
@Kiesel I’m not sure exactly what you want to do with the parameters but when everything I need to do can be done with some CSS and eventually a bit of JS, I just create a bunch of class names.
These class names can be added to the container when editing the page (container design) and all my CSS and JS acts on those class names.
Yes. That’s in an ideal world. Over all those years, 95% of editors I have dealt with don’t have the slightest idea of css or js and are overwhelmed with adding class names in a submenu. They often edit pages only a few times a year.
That needs the most simple and basic approach. And that simply isn’t given in Concrete5. Simple is that I as the dev create templates and they can use a template and maybe change a few fixed parameters on the first glance and then fill in content.
It’s actually not that complex. I give my class names names like wide-column-red and they appear in a list so all they have to do is select the one they want.
Let’s say they want to choose a half/half css grid, with black background, where the second half is listed on top for mobile view.
half/half container with 3 background colors, an option to have title lowered or not and a simple reverse option ends up in 12 containers already.
That’s unpractical and tedious. Classes make it a little better, but that needs additional menus and going deeper to make it happen. It can still turn into lists with 100s of entries.
From experience I can tell that that’s overwhelming them. So they stick to the basics. If they could choose those settings in a dropdown, with some comments on each, maybe even a preview for each… that would work.
They use blocks and options of blocks. So a block that could create those containers… that would simply be magic. So many of C5’s problems would be sorted with that.