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Learn your way around the Webflow Designer.
In this lesson:
The Webflow Designer allows you to build your site structure, design the look and feel, add content, interactions, animations, and custom code to create fully functioning websites, landing pages, prototypes, presentations, and more.
In the Designer you can visually manipulate HTML content, set CSS properties, and create interactions without writing JavaScript. As you build your website, the Designer creates clean, semantic, web-ready code.
There are 3 ways to access the Webflow Designer:
Webflow officially supports the Designer on the latest version of Chrome or Safari’s evergreen release, plus 2 versions for varying update cycles. Webflow also unofficially supports the use of all modern browsers.
* Degree of browser support depends upon features used (e.g., flexbox has partial support in IE 11, filter has no support in IE 11 and partial in Edge). More details can be found at:
Webflow doesn’t support IE 9 or IE 10 in any situation. Read more about this decision.
Good to know: An evergreen browser is one that updates itself automatically, meaning that most people have the newest, automatically updated version.
If you run into issues using Webflow on experimental browsers, please report your issue under the experimental browsers category on the Webflow Forum.
Note: You can determine the browser and operating system version you're using with What's my Browser.
The Designer requires a monitor or laptop that has a screen width of at least 1268px. This requirement is the sum of the left sidebar, the Designer canvas, and the right sidebar.
The Designer consists of the main canvas and a set of toolbars and panels. Following is an overview of:
The left toolbar provides a set of links and tools that allow you to structure your web project. The icons at the top of the left toolbar hide away many of the Designer panels:
When you click the Webflow icon, you'll see a menu which allows you to navigate to the Dashboard, the Editor, or the Project settings of the currently open project.
This opens the Add panel from where you can add elements from the Elements panel or prebuilt layouts from the Layouts panel.
This opens the Symbols panel from where you can add symbols from the Symbols panel
Shows the hierarchy of every element on the page you are currently on. Here, you can visually interact with these elements. Learn more about the Navigator.
This opens the Pages Panel where we can organize and manage page settings. Learn more about the Pages panel.
It opens the CMS Collections panel where you can create and modify Collections and Collection items.
It opens the Ecommerce panel where you can create and modify products and product categories. Here, you'll also see the orders that you've received. Learn more about the Ecommerce panel.
It opens the Assets panel. From here, you can upload and organize assets you use or link to in your project. Learn more about the Assets panel.
It opens the settings panel where you can set up various settings such as search settings and Backup settings.
It opens the Audit panel where you can address common accessibility-related issues in your project. Learn more about the Audits panel.
It opens the Quick find tool that is a powerful search bar in the Designer that will speed up your workflow and boost your efficiency as you build in Webflow. Learn more about Quick find.
It opens the Video Tutorials Panel where you can watch all Webflow video courses.
Help settings provide you with tools to make using the Designer easier.
The major area in the Designer is the Canvas. It's where you can interact with the page in real-time. You can select elements, move them around, and edit content right on the page. Learn more about the Canvas.
The top bar provides another set of view settings as well as some useful tools to save, publish and even export your site. Starting from the left-hand side, right next to the menu button, and moving to the right, you have the following set of tools:
Shows which page you are currently on. And when you click this indicator, it opens the Pages Panel.
Toggles between the preview and design mode of the Designer, allowing you to see how your project will look when published.
Located in the middle of the top bar, these icons allow you to switch between different breakpoints to see and edit the design of your project on these breakpoints. Learn more about breakpoints.
Allow you to undo or redo actions you took in the Designer like applying a style or deleting an element.
Shows you when your work is being saved – indicated with gray ellipses (…). and when your work is saved – indicated with a green checkmark. Your work in the Designer is saved automatically. You can manually save your project by pressing CMD+S in Mac or CTRL+S in Windows. Clicking this icon will not save your project.
Allows you to export the code of the current project, which is prepared and downloadable in a zip file. Learn more.
This option allows you to enable and share a preview link to the current page of the Designer with your friends or the Webflow community and staff when you need advice or design help. This link opens up the Designer in read-only mode and allows anyone with access to see and manipulate the layout and design of the project. Changes cannot be made to your project when it's opened in read-only mode. It’s only used for troubleshooting and exploration purposes.
From here, you can also invite collaborators and allow them to edit the content of your site.
Allows you to choose your publish destination and publish your changes instantly to either your subdomain and/or your custom domain. Learn more.
The button bar shows you the hierarchy of the selected element. You can see where it’s located, inside which other parent elements, You can even select any parent element by clicking on its label in this breadcrumb bar.
The third major section — the panels on the right, give you extremely granular control over your elements.
Here you have 4 major panels:
Gives you access to all CSS properties available for the select element. You can simply enter these values in their appropriate fields and see the style applied to your elements on the canvas instantly. Learn more.
Gives you access to various settings available for the select element.
Displays a complete list of classes, combo classes, and tags you've created or edited in your project. It's a quick way to rename or even clean up any style that aren’t being used anymore. Learn more.
Allows you to create interactions and apply them to the selected element. Learn more.
If you're on a team plan, it's not possible for multiple people to access the same Webflow project in the Designer at the same time.
The Editor, on the other hand, allows multiple people to edit static and dynamic content at the same time. A person can also work in the Designer even as many people work in the Editor at the same time. If two people are editing the same content at the same time, the last edits "win," so you'll still want to coordinate editing times with your teammates.
The Webflow Designer is an online app/hosted program because we believe that web design tools should let you design in the browser and immediately see the results. Here are a few more reasons why Webflow is a hosted program rather than a downloadable program:
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