Using the Visual Design Studio versus the Classic Designer

Last updated:

This article shows users who are familiar with the Classic (formerly Legacy) Designer how to complete common actions within the Visual Design Studio. For users who are comfortable with custom code and want to add more of their own customizations, they can continue to use the Classic Designer.

Introduction to the Visual Design Studio

We created the Visual Design Studio to make 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.

For a thorough introduction to the Visual Design Studio, Get started with Visual Design Studio.

Create a guide

Creating and editing a guide is now a simple process with the Visual Design Studio. For more information on creating a guide, see Create a guide and visit the Pendo Academy for a video on creating a guide.

Create a button

Creating a button in the Classic Designer requires you to manually code it with something like this:

code-button.png

Then, styling your button requires additional CSS coding. Creating a button in the Visual Design Studio is much easier. After choosing your desired layout and launching the designer, simply select the blue line that appears between items inside the guide to open the Building Blocks menu.

hover-edit-add-bb.gif

In the Building Blocks menu, select Button to start configuring actions and styling it according to your preferences. You can edit the button text, colors, and size, as well as what action it takes after a user clicks on it. No coding is required. For more information, see Add guide content using building blocks.

Layouts versus templates

Layouts are the Visual Design Studio’s form of templates. There are five general types of Layouts:

  • Lightbox
  • Banner
  • Tooltip
  • Poll
  • Walkthrough
saved_layouts.png

Pendo administrators can create and manage layouts so users with Create Guide from Layouts permission can stay within brand guidelines and update content as needed.

Note: If you already have existing templates created in the Classic Designer, feel free to keep using them in the Classic Designer.

For more information, see Guide layouts.

Navigate the guide's details page

Was this article helpful?
1 out of 2 found this helpful