In-app guides are created with guide designers, which are guide-building interfaces that launch over the top of your application or next to your application. Pendo has four different designers for creating in-app guides:
- Visual Design Studio for web apps
- Visual Design Studio for mobile apps
- Adopt Studio for Pendo for Employees
- Classic Designer
The designer you use is dependent on the version of Pendo you're using and the end-users of your application (customers or employees).
Visual Design Studio for web apps
The Visual Design Studio for web applicationss is the guide-authoring interface that launches over or next to your web application for you to build and edit guides. The Visual Design Studio makes guide creation accessible to teams across an organization, regardless of their technical knowledge. Whereas the Classic Designer requires a basic knowledge of coding languages, such as HTML and CSS, the Visual Design Studio uses a visual point-and-click interface. This makes building and editing guides a more intuitive experience.
The Visual Design Studio was launched on February 18, 2019, and this is the designer you're using if you became a Pendo customer after this date. For more information, see Introduction to the Visual Design Studio.
Visual Design Studio for mobile apps
The Visual Design Studio for mobile applications is different from the Visual Design Studio for web applications. The Visual Design Studio for mobile applications uses snapshots of pages. When you tag a page in Pendo, snapshots of the pages are added to Pendo and these are the pages that you work on.
For guide building, there are some feature differences between the Visual Design Studio for web applications and the Visual Design Studio for mobile applications. For example, the custom code building block or the poll bulidng block aren't available for the Visual Design Studio for mobile applications. For more information on creating guides for your mobile apps, see Create a guide for mobile.
Adopt Studio for Pendo for Employees
Adopt Studio is the name of the designer in a Pendo for Employees browser extension application that allows you to create in-app guides, communications, polls, and content, with no technical expertise required. For more information about Adopt Studio, see Take a tour of Adopt Studio.
Classic Designer
The Classic Designer is the old guide designer for users who are comfortable with custom code. The Classic Designer requires a basic knowledge of coding languages, such as HTML and CSS. The designer lets you create and edit guides. The Classic Designer leverages an iframe to deliver your application preview to provide a streamlined guide creation experience over your environment. The Classic Designer is the first guide designer in the Pendo platform and is the designer you might be using if you were a Pendo customer prior to February 18, 2019. For more information about the Classic Designer, see In-app designer (Classic).