Editing & design of HTML in Connect leaves a lot to be desired compared to other web design tools (CoffeeCup, Dreamweaver, Pinegrow, etc.). I’ve been able to import into Connect Designer HTML/CSS/JS files designed in another tool, but once inside Connect I can’t find a way to further use an external editor.
What I’d like to do is start a HTML page design in Connect and then export it somehow to continue working with it in another tool and then import it back in.
I’ve tried changing the OL-template extension to .zip, editing and then zipping back up, but Connect sees the template as corrupt.
I’ve also tried to edit the temp files Connect creates in C:\Users\username\Connect emp\Connectdesigner when the Designer is open. The external tool can see the HTML and edit it, but Connect Designer ignores any edits made.
Having the ability to integrate with external HTML editing tools would be a huge plus. Is there a way to do this?
it depend what you have to create, if it’s web page or PDF/email. For PDF/email it’s better to use wysiwyg Designer and make correction on source code directly because of specific tag from the Designer, link to images and ressources etc…
Yep I understand about the advantages of the Connect Designer working with the email and print contexts. My question is specifically aimed at the web context though. Projects like web pages and forms that need to be part of a PlanetPress workflow.
My question still stands, is there a way to do external HTML editing with Connect?
We don’t have a build in feature to use an external editor for CSS, JS and HTML editing but I do like the suggestion. I’m interested to learn what you are missing in respect to the mentioned tools. Feel free to PM me a list.
In theory the unzip and zip approach should work. Did you zip the folder or its contents?
In 1.7 we will introduce the concept of remote HTML snippets (and remote JSON snippets). This means you could create resources referencing content on disk or in a CMS and use that as shared content. Not entirely what you requested but one step closer compared to exchanging HTML between the editor and the Source view.