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New Landing › How can we help? › Cardinal › Dante to Cardinal – some missing features. Logo resizing on sticky header etx.
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Kyle – SUPPORT.
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Posted in: Cardinal
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July 23, 2014 at 5:14 pm #94170
I just got Cardinal installed on my cloned localhost site and in general things went much better than expected. It needs some tweaking on several parts but it is not a mess.
So here are some missing features:
1. CSS Custom Code Area
The new custom CSS window is greatly improved and the hints are really great. However I can’t resize the content box anymore (the area where CSS is inserted). It might be not important for many users but I am using a 30″ 2560 X 1600 display and not being able to resize is kind of wasted screen real estate and upon entering longer code it results in an endless Scrolling affair.
If it is not possible to add a resizing option (due to the specialty of the field) it would be good to offer the alternative of the old CSS window if not hard to do. Else I guess I will have to resort to direct server editing of the file.
2. Header Options missing from Dante
A) Header Opacity setting (can be done with CSS easily tested that)
B) Logo Hover Opacity (I guess same as above since it is just an img)
C) Logo Resizing on sticky header. (this is quite a loss for me)
Unfortunately (c) option is not there and will need to read about how to do it if possible. Is there a way to achieve the same effect as in Dante?
i.e. Shrinking logo on transparent header when sticky?
This was a great option making the sticky menu very unobtrusive to the reader while retaining the capability to see current top level menu item selected by setting the right colors (although I use Ubermenu for that).
How can I have the shrinking logo on sticky header back? (tell me it is possible!)
Other than those need to change some shortcodes (no big issue) and several CSS customizations don’t quite work from Dante to Cardinal but nothing too serious. I had the basic site look back in about 1 hour.
I also lost some customizations (alignment and sizing issues actually) on my Ubermenu but they can also be fixed and with the almost out Version 3 of Ubermenu those will need changing anyway since the plugin has been rewritten.
Any feedback on 1 & 2 would be appreciated.
July 24, 2014 at 2:22 am #94235Hi @Sotiris,
1) We moved to the latest version of Redux in this update, which includes a lot of great features – mainly much more functionality and stability over the previous version we were using. It doesn’t seem as though there is any resize options for the field, but I have increased the size to 400px for you, and I’ll ask the guys if there is any options for this.
2a) We didn’t include this as there is only 1 header that is overlaid as standard (Header 5) Would make more sense just to add custom css for this I think. Have to draw the line somewhere on options else there would be insane amounts.
2b) We decided to remove this, as we didn’t think it made too much sense.
2c) We just introduced sticky header resizing in the latest update, have you checked it? The logo doesn’t resize however (just the padding above/below), as we’ve always had issues with images being distorted during resize. Something we may revisit though.
Hope that helps!
– Ed
July 24, 2014 at 10:30 am #94363Hi @ Ed
1) Understandable. If there is an option good if not there is always the option of working in Dreamweaver or Notepad+ and copy-pasting the whole info there in one move. Not that hard either.
2) This feature’s usefulness might be subjective but I liked it since as I said adds to unobtrusiveness when the header is sticky (and transparent). A great option to avoid distortion would be to allow the use of svg graphics in this field but I do not know how easy it is. Alternatively, inserting 2 or 3 fixed size images with break points might also work. In my case after playing around with the image size of the logo through Adobe Illustrator I had no distortion issues.
Nonetheless, I bought Cardinal as a latest technology platform and to be used with other similar plugins (i.e. Ubermenu 3) while testing the move from Dante. My site has not launched yet but I might have to launch it with Dante to avoid delays and then work on a cloned version with cardinal.
Another question is the appearance of Visual Composer as one of the premium plugins in Cardinal (I found it here in the forums).
1) Is it me or there is no way to build a page using both Visual Composer and Swift Page builder elements? I tried it and everything gets messed up and eventually I had to deactivate visual composer. Not a big loss for my since I really find your page builder much better. I hope you continue to add features to it such as more shortcodes and elements and easy options to change CSS styling (margins, padding, clearfix, borders etc).
2) I have a plugin called Intense Site Builder which is really good because of its wide variety of shortcodes. The problem is that it is mostly geared towards Visual Builder and while several of its shortcodes work when inserted in Swifts’ elements many do not.
It is a pitty since it adds a lot elements and “fancy” effects.Could you please have a look at it? You could even consider to bundle it with your themes in the future. Combined with your page builder it would be really hard to beat an in my opinion much better than how it works with VC.
July 25, 2014 at 3:51 pm #94788Ok after spending 10 hours with Cardinal yesterday I am taking notes of every single point o f interaction, possible bugs and/or missing features compared to Dante and I will produce a list of those and publish it here.
As ED mentioned above, there are a lot of great features added but there are also some useful things missing or I haven’t found their equivalent yet so I am holding till I finish.
One more note, I am using Ubermenu 3 (Release Candidate 3) trying create a relatively complex menu (50+ elements) and there is some strange behavior with the color settings .More when I am done but Ubermenu 3 is great and it works with Cardinal.
Finally I also found a possible bug on Dante but will start a thread on the other forum.
July 26, 2014 at 1:58 am #94840Hi @Sotiris
2) I understand completely, and svg graphics are definitely fine for resizing – however the percentage of svg usage would likely be < 1%, and thus we have to cater to the mass percentage. Thanks in advance for your feedback - I'll do my best to take any extra things in! - Ed
August 4, 2014 at 5:41 pm #97612After spending more than 70 hours on Cardinal and testing more than 25 plugins, it’s now time that I write some feedback.
First of all I would like to touch upon the features mentioned at my first post that I presented as missing:
A) Sticky Header opacity changing on scroll. This is useful and helps to make your sticky menu less obtrusive to the readers. I recreated this effect easily using code from the naked header demo in Dante. Problem solved.
B) Logo Opacity on hover. This is helpful to denote some “action” behind the logo especially if one is not putting a “Home” button on the menu-bar and using the logo link instead. Problem also solved easily through some CSS.
C) Shrinking logo on sticky header. This is debatable and have not made my mind up yet whether I want it to shrink or disappear altogether in order to reduce possible obtrusiveness of the sticky menu. At the moment I have used CSS to make it disappear (display: none;) but the jury is still out on what the final settings would be. Nevertheless, problem also solved through CSS easier than I originally thought.
So ED my suggestion for those features would be to offer them through Custom CSS if you do not wish to “clutter” the Theme options panels any further. Perhaps add a section to the documentation for developers that includes this or any other tricks.
Continuing, I would like to add some other “missing” features from the Swift Page Builder this time compared to Dante.
1) Alt-background option is missing on text blocks and some other elements. While there are options for padding and margins setting the background is not available in all elements as before. I really don’t know why but it was a nice time saving feature when you want to create text blocks.
2) Full width-text blocks were also nice and offered the ability to quickly add full-width rows or squares of colored background text. The “arrow-down” is also missing and was quite useful for point to things. However, I found a better workaround for it and with more flexibility.
I added a “Div” element to the text html and then used CSS code to create the triangle so I can now use up, down, left, right and with any color or style that I want.All in all, none of the missing features is a deal breaker to be honest and if asked I would say that the alt-bg and full width text block are the ones missing most as they have the potential to be used more often.
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In general and after testing more than 25 plugins with Cardinal all I have to say is AWESOME>AMAZING>GREAT>FANTASTIC job!!!! +5 stars!
– The new Custom Code fields (although not resizable) are a breeze to work with! No errors that you miss early in the morning after a long night’s work!
– There was something in Dante that caused an issue with a form-builder plugin that I am using and when I installed the plugin in Cardinal the issue went away. This was a very common issue with many themes and the specific plugin .
The plugin name is FSQM Pro (Form Survey and Quiz Manager).
Ed in case you are interested here is the narrow down of the problem from the plugin developer:
“I was looking into the problem. The issue is addition of empty lines on admin-ajax.php output. The very reason of problem like this is, some accidentally left empty line in one or more php files. Since you’ve already checked all the plugins, so the culprit is your theme indeed.
I would recommend contacting your theme developer to find out which file is leaving the empty line and correct it. This is not a FSQM issue, as you can see from here http://ipanelthemes.com/kb/support/topic/new-forms-or-updates-not-saving-anymore/#post-3189 , problems like this would affect other plugins as well (anything that will depend on ajax output).”(This is for Dante but it is worth mentioning since it does not occur in Cardinal)
Honestly, I keep reading about workarounds for several plugins in order to make them work with other themes and the fact that Cardinal has worked seamlessly with so many proves the quality of coding that has gone into that.
If I may make any suggestion is to keep working on adding new features to the page builder such as the possibility to work outside the strict logic of a row and add the ability to work like working with cells on Excel. E.g. Imagine a block with 3 cells X 3 cells where the left cells can be combined while the right cells can have 2 or 3 different elements.
August 5, 2014 at 11:07 am #97866Hi
A, B and C) We decided to remove these features as they were very minor features yet they caused big problems for us in Dante, therefore we thought it was best to remove them. Like you said they are easily done with CSS if you want to do so.
1) We removed alt bg’s because with Cardinal you can use rows to set any background you like, with Dante you were limited to the alt bg’s set in theme options.
2) Again, there is no use for a full width text block anymore as you would just put a text box inside a full width row and set the background on the row
As for your bottom paragraph, you can use columns to create these sort of layouts
– Kyle
August 5, 2014 at 12:58 pm #97931Hi @Sotiris
A) You can actually set this on a per page basis in the Page Header meta options – you can choose naked dark/light so that you don’t need to add the css for each page.
Glad that you are happy with Cardinal 🙂
– Ed
August 5, 2014 at 2:54 pm #98018The truth is that I have not spent lots of time with the page builder since I have been working a lot on other “structural elements” of the site such us custom menus, translation options and several plugins. That is why I said from the beginning that I need to spent time with Cardinal. At first I had a bigger list of features missing but worked on each one and now realized that nothing is missing and A LOT is added and improved. Kudos!
@Kyle
For A,B,C no worries I have come across several threads here with trouble caused because of them. No big deal at all and doing it with CSS gave me the possibility to learn and customize even further.For 1) and 2) I agree, no need for the full-width text block anymore. The only feature I used was the down pointing arrow but doing it through html and css also allows me to set the color matching exactly the row background color. When I am finished I will link the site and you will be able to see the use of this arrow.
3) I have not tested the columns options yet but now that I am almost done with menus and other items I will and get back to you. I have several other tools on disposal as well for “difficult” layouts so there is nothing limiting me here, certainly not Cardinal.
@Ed
Thanks for the tip! And yes I am really glad I made the move to Cardinal from Dante! Keep up the good work.
(P.S. Have a look at Dante and the ajax issue mentioned above when you have time.)August 5, 2014 at 2:56 pm #98019No problem 🙂
– Kyle
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Posted in: Cardinal
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