This is the Designer.
From here, we can visually manipulate all
our HTML and CSS and interactions.
And we'll divide this into three groups:
On the left toolbar, we have our controls.
On the top, we can click to quickly switch
to our Project Dashboard, our Project Settings,
or the Webflow Editor, but for now let's stay
the the Designer.
Underneath, we can click Add to access our
Elements panel and our symbols.
We have our Pages panel, where we can organize
and manage page settings.
We have CMS which gives us access to our collections
— all our dynamic content.
And of course, we have the Asset Manager.
From here, we can upload and organize assets
we use or link to in our project.
At the bottom of the left toolbar, we have
more granular controls for working with elements,
as well as links to video lesson content,
help, keyboard shortcuts.
That's the left toolbar.
The major area here is the Canvas.
It's where we can interact with the page in
real-time.
We can select elements, we can move them around,
we can access our element hierarchy.
And we can edit content right on the page.
Rest assured, the layout of everything we
build on the Canvas is following the box model.
That is: when we drag in an element, each
element — each box — is as tall as the
the content inside — unless it has a set
height.
Boxes stack on top of each other from the
top of the page to the bottom.
Of course, this gives us tremendous flexibility
to not only develop powerful, responsive designs
— which we can test on all our different
views — but it ensures that we're generating
clean, production-ready code.
Speaking of which, at any time, we can go
in and export our code, which is prepared
and downloadable in a zip file.
Or we can publish our changes instantly without
having to worry about FTP and file versions
and unsecured networks.
Sloth attacks.
Or FileZilla asking us, again, to update to
the latest version.
Now we don't even have to publish to see how
a project would look live.
We can just hit Preview.
A quick way to interact with the project as
if it was fully published.
Let's click again to leave Preview.
Finally — the third major section — the
panels on our right, give us extremely granular
control over our elements.
What we have here is the Style panel — and
we cover the other panels in additional content,
like the Settings panel, which lets us go
in and configure based on the element that's
currently selected.
But the Style panel gives us immediate access
to all our CSS.
And we can manipulate these values in real-time.
So instead of doing the guesswork when it
comes to things like 3D transforms, we can
go in and manipulate our CSS values visually.
We can spend less time switching back and
forth to tweak our code and more time focusing
on the design and the functionality.
Quick recap.
Three major sections: Our tools to the left,
including add (which lets us access our Elements
panel); the Canvas, which has all the content
on the page; and the panels to the right,
including the Style panel (for visually manipulating
our CSS).
And that's a brief overview of the major areas
we can access in the Designer.
