What the heck did you do to my text objects?!?!?!

Dragging a corner now produces proportional resizing of the text. OK, I can almost live with that. But the geometry editor does not show the new dimensions, and the text editor does not reflect the new text size or ruler size. How can I be sure my text objects are using the same sized font (other than not resizing them)?

I also notice the geometry editor dimension are not updated when a code object is resized.

Do you think you can go back to normal resizing when a handle is dragged and only do proportional resizing when the Ctrl-key is pressed. It gets confusing to remember when to use or not use the Ctrl key on the various drag handles.

I think you must be working in the desktop or mobile tabs in the Dual layout mode. In Dual layout mode, the desktop and mobile layouts are versions of a page with the objects re-scaled and/or re-positioned, for a desktop or mobile browser, using CSS. So when you drag the corner you are re-scaling not re-sizing. That is why the geometry doesn’t change.

If you need to re-size a geometry, go to the Objects tab or, if you are not working on a dual desktop/mobile site, use the Single Layout mode. In Single Layout mode dragging the handles will re-size in the same way SiteSpinner does.

The corner drag handles now keep the aspect ratio fixed and adjust both dimensions. The side handles adjust only the one dimension. Hold the CTRL key down to reverse the behaviour of a handle.

Thank you Harpo. I was in Dual Layout mode using the Desktop tab. I will leave Dual Layout mode alone until I can understand what it is used for (obviously not what I originally thought).

Okay. Can you say what you had originally thought? We are still thinking about the best way to explain/present Dual mode.

When I first saw the dual mode layout, I was surprised that it used two toolbars. I figured the advanced display modes (Object, Desktop, and Mobile) would replace the Preview tab; sort of a simple vs advanced thing.

But the only difference I have found (so far) is that you can scale while in the Design+Desktop (or Design+Mobile) mode, which is confusing to me as the changes are not reflected in the single layout Design mode. (A right-click option to revert the scaled object to original geometry would be nice to quickly recover from a scaling error. Ctrl+Z would only work if the error were immediately detected and corrected.)

I also find it strange that if a text object is rescaled while in the Design+Desktop mode, it effects all text of that same .txtX class when in the Preview+Destop mode, but this is not shown in the design page. I think this is "breaking" the WYSIWYG of SS. If the re-scaling changes were reflected on the design page it would be OK. But making display appearance changes and not seeing it in the design page is strange.

I really like the dual layout's Object tab, but think it would be more useful if the objects could be filtered by type; show "all", or just text object, or just code objects, etc.

I would like page rulers put on the Preview tab. If I use CSS (or the Design+Desktop rescaling), any effected object could overlap other objects. To adjust the object placement, a ruler would give me a starting point to guess where I need to move things around.

And can the Preview toolbar be placed horizontally at the top of the preview page? It sure eats up a lot of valuable screen space where it is now.

Now I'm getting totally confused with the dual layout mode.

In dual layout mode: I place 2 text objects on a work page. If I scale the first text object and Preview, both text objects show the scaling.

I open the Quick Edit and adjust the scale values back to 1. The object's outline goes back to its original setting (width and height), but the text is still displayed scaled.

Start a new work page (still in dual mode) and place 2 text objects on it. Now I scale the 3nd text object. It looks scaled on the work page. Go to Preview and see normal sized text but the object's div width and height has been adjusted to the scaled values. And nothing happened to the first text object - it previews as designed.

Also, how do you get things back to "normal" after rescaling them?

Thanks for that Larry.

This is the our thinking on the two modes:

In single layout, only one layout is available and all objects are in that layout. All browsers will display a page based on that single layout.

The essential idea of dual-layout mode is to have to two different layouts based on the same set of objects. In each layout an object can only be re-positioned, re-scaled, or hidden. You cannot, for example, rotate an object in only one layout because HTML does not allow that. (that is, you would need two separate objects to have one rotated and one not rotated)

If you move, scale, add or remove an object in the desktop or mobile tabs it is only changed for that one layout. So, for example, if you add an object to the mobile tab, it will not appear in the desktop tab but will appear in the objects list. You can see and change which layouts the object will appear in using the quick editor’s Layout tab (or the object’s right click context menu).

Once a page is published, the layout that is actually displayed on a browser depends on the browser type (primarily desktop or mobile) and the project’s media type and media query settings. With the dual mode’s default project settings, you should see the desktop layout in desktop browsers and the mobile layout in mobile browsers .

In general, we wouldn’t expect people to changed back and forth but rather choose one mode or the other for a project. Of course if you change your mind you can switch but we are still thinking about the conversion rules.

Currently, if you convert from single to dual mode, the single layout is reproduced in both desktop and mobile layouts. You can then adjust one or the other independently.

If you convert from dual to single mode, all objects in the project are retained (that is everything from the dual mode’s Objects tab whether it is used in the desktop or mobile layout) and given the desktop scaling. You can then delete any objects that you won’t need. Because all objects are included you may see overlapping objects if a mobile object is in the same location as a different desktop object.

An alternate way of doing this would be to keep only the desktop objects and use the desktop scale but then you would lose some objects and would not be able to convert back to dual mode without loss of the mobile only objects.

On text object scaling:

When you drag the corner of a text object in the desktop or mobile tab (in dual layout mode), the object boundaries and the text are scaled with a fixed aspect ratio. The idea here is that, just as images generally need to be smaller for mobile browsers, you will most likely want text on mobile devices to be smaller than text on desktops. In fact you could, if you wanted to, select an entire page and scale it down to mobile size. If you don’t want the text/fixed ratio scaling, hold down the CTRL key when dragging the corner or drag the sides instead.

The scaled text in the design tab should be just the same in the preview tab. What you are describing sounds like a bug. We will look into that.

To reset a scaled object’s text and boundary scaling you can use the quick properties editor’s object tab ‘Reset’ button

Other requests:

The preview toolbar ( I assume you mean our ‘Publish’ toolbar) should be on top and horizontal. Try pressing the Toolbar Options ‘Reset All’ button. If that doesn’t help can you send us a screenshot of what you are seeing?

I’ll pass on the object list filter request.

I will pass on the request for rulers in the preview mode but I am not sure how achievable that is (the mouse position goes directly to the browser so you'd have to eyeball the location). BTW have you tried ruler software? There are many handy little programs, some free, that let you measure anything on your desktop).

quote:

... I was surprised that it used two toolbars. I figured the advanced display modes (Object, Desktop, and Mobile) would replace the Preview tab ...

We had considered having those three replace the design tab. So Object, Desktop, Mobile and Preview (dual) or Design and Preview (single) but what we have is now considered more heirarchical. Desktop can be design or preview, likewise with Mobile. You can drag the tab bars and move them so that they occupy the same row if you want to save some space.