Setting Up Design Tools

The Users Settings area of Design Tools allows you to personalize options for DesignPLUS and enable advanced tools that are hidden by default. 

Accessing Design Tools Settings

To open the Design Tools User Setting pane, click the three dots in the top right corner of the sidebar and then click “User Settings.”

The following are what we would recommend for initial settings as you’re getting started with Design Tools. 

⭐ Launch Sidebar

The Launch Sidebar settings allows you to customize how the Design Tools sidebar opens.  

  • Checking “Automatically Launch Sidebar” can be helpful if you’re using Design Tools often and don’t want to enable it manually. 
  • If you would prefer to open Design Tools using a button in the top right corner of the screen rather than the keyboard shortcut, check “Show Launch Button.”

⭐  Hide New User Intro Message

Check this setting to hide the new user intro message from the yellow notifications section at the bottom of the sidebar.

We recommend hiding this if you have already viewed the walkthrough since they make it harder to see the notification to upgrade your page when it’s present.

By default, this message will appear for all new users until they check this setting either through the User Settings tool or in the notification itself:

⭐ Overwrite Current Block with Template

If this setting is enabled, then the Content Block tool will overwrite the current block when a template is selected. 

We recommend this because otherwise the Content Block tool will add a new block under the current block when a template is selected and you’ll need to remove it. 

This setting can be toggled from the User Settings tool or in the Content Block tool itself:

overwrite current block setting in the content block tool

⭐ Arrange Content Shortcut

One of the options we recommend enabling under the “Advanced Tools” section of settings is the Arrange Tool Shortcut. This setting will create an additional shortcut button in the action toolbar that will load the Arrange Content tool with the active tool element targeted. 

You can also get to the Arrange Content tool option by clicking on the three dots in the top right corner of the sidebar, but this makes it available in the action context of the tool bar itself. 

Arrange content tool shortcut can be added to action toolbar

To enable this, scroll down to the bottom of the Settings pane and check “Enable Arrange Tool Shortcut”

Note: You can access the Arrange Content tool anytime by clicking the More Options menu anytime

Other Settings

The remainder of the settings are for advanced tools and can usually be ignored if you’re just getting started with Design Tools. 

Switch to the legacy sidebar

If you need to edit content in the old version of design tools you can switch back to that version of the sidebar using this setting. 

notice to switch to legacy sidebar

Display Quick Style panels

This setting controls the visibility of the Quick Style panel for the active tool.

The Quick Style panel offers all the custom Quick Styles for the current element as well as global styles. These styles can be applied to the current element with a single click. The Quick Style panel also offers shortcuts to remove the style, edit the style in the Style Editor, add new styles, or jump to the Quick Style Manager tool.

We recommend leaving the Quick Style panel hidden if you don’t use the Style Editor or Quick Style Manager to create and manage quick styles.

Enable all Advanced tools

Select the checkbox in the setting title to enable/disable all Advanced tools, or enable desired Advanced tools individually.  These tools are all disabled by default for all new users and must be turned on by individuals.  

Learn more about advanced tools from Cidi Labs

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