Layouts 1.0 and Views 1.7 Betas Ready

   Amir

Announcements

December 17, 2014
48

We are very happy to announce first betas for Layouts 1.0 and Views 1.7. After months of development, this update brings Layouts project to its first production-ready status.

Complete Integration Between Layouts, Views and CRED

This release of Toolset plugins beings complete integration between Layouts, Views and CRED. Now, you can create Views and CRED cells from the Layout editor and keep editing them until you’re happy. No more back and forth between different admin screens.

Layouts: Easier to Find the Cells You Need

Layouts 1.0 aims to make it easier to find the right cell for the right purpose. Our usability tests showed us that if you start in the wrong direction, things go from bad to worse very quickly. The new insert-cell dialog includes little icons that explain what the different cells do. When you select a cell, you see more information on the purpose of the cell, so you can decide if you’re really on the right path.

The search has been revamped and include more keywords, which should make it easier, in case the graphics don’t mean enough to you.

Layouts: Streamlined Layouts Editing

We’ve been using Layouts for our own site for the last 2 months. This has been a great opportunity for us to experience the good, not so good and really bad things about Layouts. We’ve tried our best to preserve the good, which fixing everything else. One of the things that we immediately noticed is how many (bloody) clicks it takes to make changes and see the results. We’ve trimmed that to just one click and hope that you will like the results too.

Now, cells have two buttons – Save and Save and close. When you edit a cell, just make your changes and click the Save button. Your changes apply and you can refresh the output page to see how it looks.

Views: Much Simplified Custom Search Workflow

One of the most powerful feature in Views is the custom search. We’re trying to make it even better by removing usability obstacles.

Custom search received two major updates. It now includes preset modes for how search works and it’s much easier to insert searches and results to pages.

Easy-Settings for Custom Searches

The custom search section includes several options, which give you a lot of flexibility. However, if you’re not familiar with these options, you can easily end up with conflicting settings that will not work together.

Now, you will see pre-defined settings, which ‘just work’. You can safely choose any of them to get the behaviour that you want. If you’re familiar with the different options, you can also choose the manual setting and have full control over different features.

The ‘Filter HTML’ editor has been revamped to make your work easier. If a certain control is needed (like a Search button), you will get feedback. If it’s needed and missing, you’ll see a red warning. If it’s needed and inserted, there’s a green confirmation.

Natural Workflow for Inserting Custom Searches to Content

The new workflow for creating a custom search is:

  1. Create a View for the search and results
  2. Insert the search part
  3. Select the destination and optionally insert a results View

I’m not sure how familiar you are with Views custom search, but this is a pretty big improvement to the process we’ve had so far.

Simplified View Edit Screen for Faster Creation and Updates

The View editor in version 1.7 has been updated and streamlined. There are no Update buttons, except for text inputs. As soon as you make any selection, it automatically updates the available options in other sections. All this is done in the background, with no alerts or notifications. The end result is a much more intuitive feel to the View editor.

Formatting Instructions in Editors

All the editors now have a little ‘Formatting and editing instructions’ box, which you can expand. These boxes contain full reference for the elements that you can use.

Most of the shortcodes you can insert via the toolbar. However, it’s really nice to have a written reference that reminds you what different shortcodes do. This helps read and understand the editors (even helps us and we know these shortcodes quite well).

Download and Try

We are still working on a few additions for both Layouts 1.0 and Views 1.7, but the current betas are already stable enough for your development sites. Actually, we think that you’ll enjoy these versions very much and you’ll be able to get more work done faster. After all, this is what Toolset plugins are all about.

To get them, go to your Toolset account and click on Downloads. Scroll down to the bottom and get both Views Beta and Layouts Beta. They should go together.

To update development sites from previous releases:

  1. Deactivate the current versions that you have of both Views and Layouts – don’t worry, no data will be lost.
  2. Delete the folders for both these plugins.
  3. Unzip the new beta versions
  4. Activate both Views and Layouts
  5. First time you edit a layout, refresh the page. This will help your browser reload everything and not used older cached files.

If you are running into problems, please first report it in our technical forum. You can paste a link to the forum thread here, so Views and Layouts developers can follow up quickly.

A production release is planned for after New Year. We don’t want to push major versions when half our team, as well as many of our clients are away with family and friends.

Update Dec/19

We’ve released an update for Layout beta. This update solves a problem that occurred to sites that have child layouts, upgrading from Layouts 0.9.2.

When upgrading from Layouts 0.9.2 to 1.0-b4, a blocking Javascript error may occur in the Layouts editor when editing a parent layout – a layout with a Child Layout cell. The error prevents editing the layout and may cause failure on the layout front end rendering. This is fixed in Layouts 1.0-b5.zip.

The entire Toolset team is eager to receive your feedback. Please tell us what you think, find and suggest by leaving your comments here.

 

Comments 48 Responses

    • As far as I know, VC works with shortcodes. It should be able to display Types and Views shortcodes just fine. Have you tried and seen any problems?

    • This version replaces Views 1.6.4, but please remember it’s a beta version, so don’t run it on production sites. It’s only intended for sites that are currently under development.

      To upgrade from Views 1.6.4, first deactivate, then unzip the new version on top of the old one and activate it.

  3. I’ve tried installing over my existing 0.92 layouts – and doing that seems quite unstable. My existing layouts have gone buggy – I can’t remove blocks (especially responsive menus) or edit them, and there’s some very weird screen behaviour. By the stable release will there be a solid upgrade path from 0.92? Thanks.

    • We want a solid upgrade path from 0.9.2. Obviously we’ve missed something.
      Please open a support ticket on our forum and we’ll help you sort out the upgrade issue. Add a link to the support ticket here and the Layouts team will follow it up.

    • Ian, here are some quick troubleshooting steps:
      1) Remove the entire Layouts plugin directory from your site (nothing will happen to your content)
      2) Unzip the current beta
      3) Activate it again

      When you edit a layout, first, click F5 to refresh the page. This will make sure that you are getting all recent versions of the files and nothing cached in your browser.

      If this isn’t helping, please do as Bruce asked and create a support thread. You can paste the link to it here, so we can follow up closely.

      Thanks!

  4. I would like to see an option for adding tabs through the Visual Composer in addition to the grid and table options.

  5. Does this fix the issue of CRED edit forms (in loop) not replacing the content on the page, but rather inserting the edit form anywhere there is a WYSIWYG field?

    • Have you reported this issue in our support forum? I need more details to follow up and see what was wrong and if it’s been addresses. If there’s a thread in our forum, please paste here the link.

      Thanks

      • Yes, I made a support thread here, https://toolset.com/forums/topic/cred-edit-not-displaying-correctly/

        This ended up being a bit of a work around, with me needing to add an extra wpv-post-body into my content template at the top, and adding a filter to my custom field to stop the form from appearing twice. This just made the edit form appear above the page content instead of replacing it. I’ve used CRED edit on other sites that don’t use Layouts, and it works normally.

          • Thanks Carolyn,

            We’ve fixed both problems you reported – the expansion of shortcodes in comments by Views. I’m looking into the CRED issue.

  6. Hello,
    Thanks to make it grow with new features.
    Any idea when the user creation will be available, as it was normally a feature that was planned in the 1.3 Cred version !!! For me, this is now the only weakness of Toolset not having a tool to make user creation.
    Regards
    Pat

    • Yes, this got pushed out a little. We are closing an update for CRED for WordPress 4.1 and embedded version. Then, we’re right back to managing users with CRED.

  7. Hello,

    I used toolset for my client about 2 years ago.
    I created mufti-lingual web site – e-commerce. Pretty complicated with your help.
    Very successful project.

    Now – I’m trying to create simple web site – to see how your technology moved – and I’m loosing myself.
    Documentation – is bad!!!

    What I need – step by step with all instructions in one place – without any references to other docs, just how to build the reference site from th every beginning. With all that “stupid” parameters and explanations.

    • Yes, this release of Layouts works with WPML and allows you translate layouts very conveniently. I didn’t mention it in the blog post, but I should have. This is a major feature that went into both Layouts and WPML. It’s not covered because the support on WPML side is still not published. We’ll try to publish it next week. If not, then right after the holiday.

  10. I’ve got a clean, local install of WordPress 4.1 with the latest Types, Layout beta, and Views beta but I can’t create a layout. It’s stuck on a blue progress bar. Thoughts?

  11. Finally got things working (dumped database and reinstalled everything from scratch). However, what happened to “Widget Areas” and “Theme Navigation” as usable cell types in the “Layout cell types” popup window?

  12. Yes! Loving this new integration.

    The flow is much better, and for new learners to this system will certainly be much better. I sometimes got a bit lost in my train of thought before, jumping from module to module. 🙂

  13. Please, please add a Custom Field option that allows us to select a wordpress user.

    Even better, when setting up the custom field, please include a checkbox option that allows us to limit the list of available users by Role. That way, a non-technical user will only see the appropriate subset of users when they associate a user with a custom post type.

    For example, why create a User custom post type just to associate a user with a different custom post? If the custom post has the wordpress user ID saved in a custom field, then we can query that post type where userID = xx. Right?

    Another example: only users with the role of Teacher are allowed to check out equipment. Why should the poor secretary have to scroll past 1000s of student users to find a single teacher?

    Adding some way to select wordpress users would be a huge help. Thank you,

    • We’re definitely going to add both ‘post reference’ and ‘user reference’ fields. It’s not going to be included in the upcoming release, but it will be there eventually. So many good plans and not enough time to do them all…

  14. HI Amir
    Love the direction this is going. looking forward to the production release.

    For me though the big learning curve has been getting parent child relationships to work in views and content templates. It would help enormously if you had a type of drag and drop feature where you simply drag your parent & child fields on a workspace to get desired data.

    Also lots more work needed on documentation, it’s not so easy to follow guides when links are missing!

    Lee

    • We’re planning on adding this sort of drag-and-drop interface to post relationship, but we’re not sure when. We want to do this together with many-to-many relationship. What documentation do you find particularly missing or difficult to follow? We are working on this, I just want to make sure that what you need is also covered.

    • Foe weeks I struggled with creating views and content templates, I searched for examples on the website, what I was able to find left me scratching me head but many times I ended up at dead links. I eventually figured it out by trial end error

      At the moment I’m trying to create an accordion menu using a view to select all categories and child posts, again I’m looking for examples and found this dead link – https://toolset.com/snip/view-loop-bootstrap-accordion/

    • The problem with the widgets area cell is that you cannot register new areas via the GUI. It’s not because we don’t want, but because WordPress makes that functionality particularly difficult. We will be adding back widget zones when we figure out a way to register them dynamically. Until then, most people find it really confusing when they have to register the widget zone in PHP, in order to add it to a Layout. Does this make any sense?

    • I’m sorry Amir however, to me, no that doesn’t make any sense.

      Would have made more sense to have given users a courtesy headsup of its pending removal.

      Should I be temporarily downgrading my version of WP and layouts etc
      or looking for another plugin that does have widget area functionality??

      • If you’ve already built a site with the widgets zone, we can help you restore that cell type. Please create a new support thread that explains you need to have the widgets zone cell back in Layouts 1.0. Send me the link and I’ll ask one of Layouts developers to take that thread and send you the necessary PHP source files.

        You should regard that patch as a local change and apply it when you update Layouts. As such, I recommend that you only use it for existing sites and not for other sites, as this process will be manual.

        We did do extensive usability testing and we realized that most other people confused that cell type with other things, so we pulled it out from Layouts. We can add it back when we figure out a way for Layouts plugin to register widget zones.

  16. Hi. I have been a Toolset user for some time now, and love the products! However, Layouts 1.0 has some serious menu bugs that have broken a major site development I’m busy with. The menu systems (none of them – the menu cell, responsive menu or theme navigation bar) work properly. The issue is with more than one level of drop down. Levels 2 and 3 simply do not work.

    I have been appealing desperately to support for ages now to look at this, and the best I get is one mail a day saying ‘try this’ – none of which works. I have tested this repeatedly on a blank install of WordPress 4.1 with just your plugins running. Would it be too much to ask that your developers do the same? This is so easy to verify.

    This is becoming incredibly frustrating. Surely a working menu system is the most fundamental building block on which any site is built? PLEASE could I get some support on this. This is not uniquely my problem, I’m sure.

    Thanks, Ian

  17. Hi, Nice updates!

    Still missing the option to sort the results on the front of the parametric search.
    Is there any news on that?
    I know it kind of works with results in tables format but it’s far from perfect.

    • Hi H

      This is Juan, lead Views developer. Not sure I get your question completely, but let me try to answer 🙂 I assume that you are missing a way to custom sort the results on a parametric search. For the record, this is basically the same as providing a way to custom sort any other View output 🙂

      By default, you can set a sorting parameter when setting the View, so I assume that you are talking about something like having links “Sort by title” or “Sort y date” that would return the same results, but, well, sorted by those other parameters.

      I can tell you that this is in our to-do list of feature requests, but we are still not sure when this will land on Views yet. There are some considerations to be made (will it reload the page to display the new order? can this be done without a page reload? how will this play with our features to automatically update the results on parametric searches?) and we should iron all the details before jumping to a release. My plan is to implement automatic sorting on table formats (that is, without needing to refresh the page) as a first step, and then extend from there to provide canonical shortcodes to display those kind of links “Sort by X”.

      Sorry if we are delaying this too much, but Views 1.7 packs so many new and exciting things that we can not wait anymore!

      Cheers!

      • One more thing. Personally I would not mind to reload the page for another sorting.
        Much other websites have the sorting as a parameter in the url. And that also reloads the page.

    • Hi Juan,

      Thank you for your reply! Our client wants a filter search function on his website and we are still in the design fase, so we have some flexibility on how we can implement this.

      Is the automatic sorting on table formats completely functional? If so, we can begin making the designs with tables in mind.

  18. One more thing. Personally I would not mind to reload the page for another sorting.
    Much other websites have the sorting as a parameter in the url. And that also reloads the page.