RSD

User Guide for

Responsive Site Designer

Chapter 06

Inspector pane

View elements. Click to select or use the dropdown. Edit text.

This pane is very similar to the web inspectors found in browsers such as Chrome and Firefox. The top half of the inspector pane shows the DOM tree; a list of the page elements and their nesting. Mousing over an element highlights the element and shows its selector and dimensions on the canvas. The element itself is highlighted with the blue / gray color, and margins are displayed using the rose colored area.

Inspector HIghlight

CSS highlights when using Inspector

Elements can also be selected and moved to other positions. When selected, the canvas scrolls automatically to the element position. Double-clicking the element will bring up the Design pane for that element.

To move and element or element group, simply click and drag to move the element. While dragging, a gray indicator bar will represent where the element will be placed when dropped.

All the duplicate and copy and paste functions work when an element is selected in the tree. For example, the keyboard shortcut CMD/CTRL+C will copy it. Then select the element where you wish to place it and use CMD/CTRL+V to paste it (or use the right-click menu).

Element groups — rows, columns, containers and subgrids — can be collapsed by clicking on the arrow.

The orange dot next to an element signifies that it acts as a symbol — updates to a symbol will trigger down to all instances of the 'symbol element group.'

TOC
DOM tree

Tree displaying all elements in order on the page

6.1
Styling and editing hidden elements

Elements or element groups are not always visible to the visitor and therefore also not always visible on the canvas. Examples include mobile menus that slide into view, accordions of which only one container is visible at a time, modal dialogs...up to simple dropdown.

The strike through eye icon next to an element in the tree indicates whether it is hidden on the canvas at the current breakpoint or state.

To show a hidden element — so it can be styled — just click on the icon. It will change to an eye and Site Designer will override the styles that hide the item. You can also do that for all elements on a page by clicking the 'Show x hidden item' toggle at the bottom of the pane.

Please note that under certain circumstances this may currently override applied positioning styles such as flexbox. This happens only when the eye 'forces' the visibility and will not happen for the published or exported site.

Mobile Menu

A mobile menu for which the visibility is toggled on and off.

6.2
CSS Preview

The CSS that is applied to the selected element is visible in the bottom half of the inspector pane. By providing the CSS applied to the selected element at all breakpoints, the inspector gives you a sense of exactly what is going on "under the hood".

Read-only or editable?

We do have plans to add the ability to edit the CSS live. To help us prioritize our development work, please let us know how important you find this by leaving us a note in the forums. Or just hit us up on Facebook or Twitter!

CSS Read View

View all of the CSS styles applied