This is just about as bad as the email form limitations roll out…
Keyboard shortcuts are good for people who can remember and… stare at a computer all day. Just curious, how do you think novice users will be this recent change? Will they be able to find it easily… or do they have to know to keep typing 15px, 16px, 17px, 18px… SLOWS DOWN DESIGN for us visuals
Can you reverse this or make an option for us to re-enable these?
Webflow - Do you really want your customer base to have to ‘learn keyboard shortcuts’ to use your system. Does that not fly directly in the face of what you market and your brand??? It sure does …
Thanks for the feedback John. In general we will be moving away from really small controls like the input button incrementers since there’s more room for error and it’s generally more time consuming to click the right button. Designers and devs who have used other design software are familiar with these patterns. For novices that haven’t used design software before, they already have so much to learn to be successful in Webflow. For example, these users have to understand how the box models works, how to create layouts with CSS, and many other foreign concepts. We will be making these easier and we’ll be encouraging new users to follow best practices.
In this case, however, I am forced to use the keyboard shortcuts that I do not use a lot. The Undo and Redo buttons were perhaps among the most clicked buttons by me.
These keys (or similar) are present in many interfaces-editors, just because globally recognizable and still widely used. I can even force myself to use the keyboard with CMD + Z keys to UNDO, but to REDO, pressing CTRL + SHIFT + Z on Windows is really very uncomfortable. At least CMD + X for the REDO function would be better but I sincerely hope you can rethink about this “update”. Thank you.
Hey Ray, maybe I could have phrased that differently. I didn’t mean to imply that we are trying to make Webflow harder for novices. In fact it’s the opposite. We are working on many initiatives to make novices more successful in Webflow - from adding context-aware tooltips to building a comprehensive text and video course. These resources will guide users to become familiar with important shortcuts for undoing and incrementing. This will especially help new users become more familiar with other software in the space and will help our industry move forward. We are also working on new features that make the hardest part of Webflow (like building custom layout) easier for people new to web design. I hope that’s more clear.
I agree with all others put the undo and redo buttons back. I use them all the time. I thought it was a bug. I was about to throwing around things her when undo/redo buttons disappeared. I am done for to day. I am really disappointed.
I like the undo button A LOT. Sometimes it’s an indicator of where I’m at, and it’s conveniently located. Speaking of that you have the real estate right there, so why not just have it there.
@webflow@thesergie
I am not liking these changes… It doesn’t seem to be logical changes. I could understand if there was screen space/real estate issues. I don’t see those as motivations for these changes. If you look at usage stats, I bet the undo button was one of the most use buttons in the system! I also used it as an indicator to see if there were changes on the page. I would guess the up/down buttons on values where runners up. These are a set back… Change for the sake of change?
I expected the undo buttons to be missing after reading the change log. I immediately wondered though how I would know if I undid every new change. Sometimes when experimenting I will reload the designer page, do my changes and if I’m not happy I’ll hit ctrl+z until the undo arrow turns grey signifying all changes have been undone.
I do miss that visual. I never did actually press the undo buttons physically, but it was a nice indicator. Maybe replace them with a classy unobtrusive icon that changes color if undo history has been cleared.
I agree, I probably used ctrl-z and may not have been pressing the button…but why remove the ability. Just keep it as is…if you are occupying the space with a change indicator…why not just keep it as is. Also, the key sequence for redo isn’t obvious to me as I would use ctrl-y…so will miss that button for sure.
In addition: If you make any change, the green circle with check-mark changes to a grey circle with dots. That indicates one or more changes were made. However, if you back out all of your changes (ctrl-z till hearts content), that grey circle will not change back to green with check-mark and if you try to navigate off the page the ui will remind you to save your changes (that don’t exist). This Ui is broken in this area of ‘change control’.
So, really there are two deficiencies -
Broken change indicator in UI / not sync’d with save indicator
No point and click of undo-redo (which is very popular in UI design) in editor
Hey everyone, thanks for providing your feedback! After talking it over with the team we decided to bring the undo/redo buttons back to the top panel (should be live soon). We want to keep this workflow available since so many of you depend on it. From our internal user testing we knew the change would take some getting used to, but it was hard to know what the actual impact would be for everyone that uses Webflow. We’ll work on improving our testing methods so that we can gauge impact, especially for changes like this that remove previous functionality. Thanks again for your passion to make Webflow awesome!
Undo/re-do buttons
Thanks @thesergie for the undo and redo buttons back. I DO use the CMD+Z and CMD+Shift+Z all the time instead of the buttons – BUT every time I do so I refer the the Re-do button that gives me visual feedback when:
• my first undo was successful
• I’ve reached the last undo or redo
• to see whether there is anything to undo or re-do at all
So, even for those who use these shortcuts these are so useful. How else would you get all these three types visual prompts covered?
Increments buttons
I will miss them. The way I work, I have my right hand on the mouse most of the time. Shortcuts I generally operate with my left hand. I’ve used the arrow buttons all the time without much trouble. Having them gone means I now have to let go of the mouse and take time to find the right buttons on the keybord. Not an improvement at all to me.
I work in Illustrator, Photoshop and Indesign a lot. These have increment buttons, which I use, and this is the pattern that I as a designer am familar with.
What would help me with these buttons gone, I guess, would be the ability to click+hold and drag from a field, just like you can do in Adobe Animate. That would allow me to not have to let go of the mouse all the time.
Also to say @thesergie : for changes like this you should give a notification and proper explanation when doing so. This would re-assure people and make them feel less at the merci of ‘random’ changes to the system.