Affino 7 Design Centre Evolution

Since it’s introduction in Affino in 2002, Design Centre has continued to blaze a trail of innovation for DIY site implementation. The only downside what that it was Flash based and therefore a technological dead end.

In Affino 7 the Design Centre has had to be re-written from the ground up, keeping all the elements which made it great and improving on it futher. The move to HTML 5 for the Object Designer means much more solid Design Object / Skin generation. Affino 7 has also made a more pervasive switch to CSS, this should mean experienced designers will have an easier time of achieving what they want with their custom CSS. The key changes are as follows:

Improved Interface
We have captured everything that you loved about the Flash Design Centre, and simplified it for a more instantly gratifying experience - the key elements are the same - in a new clearer, colour-coded look and feel.

Fully Customisable CSS

Design Styles can now be completely customisable. You can take the CSS code that Affino generates for the Design Styles and override it with any CSS you prefer.

Smarter Save
Now when you change things the ’Save’ but switches from greyed-out to green - if you see the Green Save button it means you have made changes to the Design Object and need to hit Save to retain those changes - of course Affino still auto-saves if you hit the Preview Button too.

More Speed
Without a Flash and Flex display layer - Affino now processes Design Object arrays much more quickly and efficiently - which means that building Design Objects in Affino 7 should be a far quicker and more elegant process than ever before.

More Consistency
In Affino 6 we had clusters of buttons in different areas of the interface - now all the essential buttons are in the Live Edit Bar as for the rest of the system. Design Centre is still a fairly unique experience, although it now operates om much closer lines to the rest of Control Centre.

More Robust
We have re-worked how we store Design Objects and they are now less likely to error out and are much more robust.

Cell Padding
An essential requirement for Mobile Skin - Horizontal and Vertical Padding can now be applied on every single Design Object Cell.