Row field and column field instead of Layout field#273

Having Row field and Column sub-field would create the power of a real page builder, it could compete with any other.

Benefits:

• Individal Rows settings
• Individual column settings
• Control what blocks can go to Row
• Control what block can go to column
• Less code needed
• Endlessly more powerful
• Better user experience

Layout field is good progress, but it is very static and restrictive:

• No control over the columns
• If user wants to change layout he must create new layout and transfer all content there manualy. Or delete everything and start again
• Lost option for complex blocks. Very complex blocks can’t go to column.

Great +1 for this. We have also the same problems that we have to create everytime a new layout field when changing columns and everytime all options are gone. Also that there’s no control for the columns is hard.

My idea would be to keep the layout field but just add a row field before columns and blocks.

I still have a little trouble understanding why the layouts aren’t already seen as rows. Maybe someone can explain this a little more.

I understood that changing layouts was a problem, but that’s solved with Kirby 4.

The only problem that still exists is that you can’t give any options to the entire right-hand column, for example. This is a kind of wrapper that combines all blocks within a layout.

For example, I would like to give the right column the class bg-primary box in the screenshot. There is no solution for this. You can only have options for the whole layout or the single blocks, but not for one column.

Jamie’s example is a bit misleading I think

@Nico if the layouts are already rows, then what’s missing is a wrapper for those rows that can have its own settings. You could then add multiple layouts (rows) to that wrapper with different column layouts, but add a background colour (for example) to the enitre wrapper. Maybe this is a seperate issue to what this ticket is about though.

@Jamie Hunter Layout and Row seems to be the same for me? What’s the advantage when placing several rows in a layout instead of creating multiple layouts?

@Oliver.mayer at the moment it is awkward to group rows in sections semantically. If I want to add a background colour to multiple rows, I have to do it to each layout and make considerations for the margins between each rendered layout in the frontend. An ability to add a wrapper would make this a lot more simple and more like a page builder. section -> row -> column is how I would build with pure html, if a Layout is a row, then Kirby doesn’t have a way to add multiple sections.

I understand the problem, but I think that this is clearly too specific and would complicate everything unnecessarily. I think it actually works just as well with layouts. Another wrapper is really too much nesting depth. Only my opinion

@Oliver.mayer fair point about it being too specific. Adding a Layout field to a Strucutre field does what I want, but the Editorial Experience is pretty poor. Maybe I should turn my attention to there: more inline ediiting options for structure fields.

I’ve found a way to do what I want by having Layout fields inside Blocks using the new Field Previews. I also built something for passing settings to individual columns, maybe this is useful here? I built a simple ‘Column Settings’ block that I can drop in wherever I need it (in this case, to control flexbox values), then use it in the frontend with $column->blocks()->hasType(‘flex’) to load a snippet.