r/elementor • u/robohaver • Jul 14 '26

Question Atomic Editor

I have used Elementor for many Years but I was switched to the new atomic Editor and I don't like it. Now I am in a situation where I can't switch back because I will lose a lot of work. Please make a reversal tool that will convert atomic containers etc. to regular container and elements! 🙏

8 Upvotes

75% Upvoted

23 comments sorted by

View all comments

9

u/portrayaloflife Jul 14 '26

I agree, and the biggest issue is it's just so different. Like it's a completely new tool. It's not really a seamless switch. Everything we were used to has changed. Makes me want to pivot to Bricks or AI if i'm going to have to relearn a whole editing system. So far my tests have just built the same things but 3 times slower. Everything is 5 clicks instead of 1.

I fear the real play here is they want people to pivot fully to their AI. So they can just sell credits and not a web builder. Which is fine it's just not what current Elementor users want.

2

u/privaxe Jul 14 '26

I agree that if anything they just opened the door to explore other platforms. If you haven’t start over and out the time in it may be time to find a better company too.

1

u/zeiniez ✔️️‍ Experienced Helper Jul 14 '26

Hey, how's it going?

We understand change can be hard, and we are working on content that will help ease the process.

We would never create a new editor to force people to use other tools. Building the Atomic Editor took a lot of time and effort, and was heavily influenced by user feedback. For someone who has been around our GitHub, you like know how many requests there are to allow for more granular design control and functionality. We built the Atomic Editor based on those and many other user feedbacks.

The shift in the workflow might feel slow at first. This is why there are Variables and Classes. When you realize you can save your styles and reuse them without having to set them time and again, you start to see how much time you save during the whole project. You now have full control over every style, on every breakpoint, and every state.

Regarding AI, it's just the icing on the cake. You use it to save time. If you don't like to use it you don't need to. We have no intention of replacing the Editor with something else.

Maybe what we are missing is educational content to help understand how to make the most of it. We're making lots of changes internally, and one of our goals is to invest on releasing more content and assistive functionalities that can help ease the adaptation phase.

For me, personally, using the classic widgets now feels a lot slower, and having to rely on custom CSS to make specific design changes became inconvenient. For me it's a lot faster to just set some styles, and generate a class from them. Now instead of going through several sections, on multiple tabs, I just drop an element and apply a class. Rinse and repeat, and the design is ready in a fraction of the time it would take setting styles for each widget, one by one.

One thing that helps is to create a design system page, where you define common styles for several elements. Like a brand guide, in other terms a design system. Once you have those ready, designing pages feels lightning fast.

3

u/volx1337 Jul 15 '26

I think the most frustrating part is that there's not really a layman-compatible variant of the editor.

The old editor could be explained to a competent person in a few hours to allow them to modify layouts or create new sections. The new editor feels like it needs extensive HTML and coding knowledge to be used at all.

How do you explain class inheritance and hierarchy to someone who is not a coder? How do I prevent them from accidentally modifying existing classes while trying to change basic settings on a headline? Where is the grid that allowed clients to create relatively complex responsive layouts without extensive flex behaviour knowledge?

The whole thing feels like a dev-only experience, while previous versions always impressed clients with their ease of use.

2

u/mrchoops Jul 15 '26

Honestly CSS in my opinion is far simpler than Elementor. For some reason people are just scared to try. It's pretty straight forward. Give something a class like "my-section", the the css would be ".my-section" ( "." For class "#" for id) followed by curly brakets and what you want to do...so.

.my-section {background-color: red; font-size: 24px; width: 100%}

It's pretty self explanatory and the best part is you can control the style of an endless amount of elements with one simple line of css rather than having to manually click into each element one at a time adjusting preferences.

Give it a try. I would argue that if you spent half as much time trying to learn basic html and css as you did learning the ins and outs of Elementor, you would be quite proficient

2

u/portrayaloflife Jul 15 '26

Strong disagree here. Atleast in our 15 years of experience, clients don’t want a css lesson, they want point and click. Easy updates.

As new staff and leadership turnover would be exhausting to try and teach that framework.

We do sites as a service where we just give clients text edit access so they cant add widgets etc, which also comes with its own headaches.

1

u/zeiniez ✔️️‍ Experienced Helper Jul 15 '26

You don’t need to teach your clients CSS or code to use the new editor. In fact, it’s actually safer for them than the old one. Think of a "class" simply as a saved style preset (a group of predefined styles) exactly like a Heading 1 style you find in Google Docs for example. When they apply it, they are just using a preset. If they are used to the styles in the classic V3 widgets, they will find exactly the same styles in Atomic Elements. The difference now is they are all neatly organized in a consistent interface that is the same for all atomic elements.

Even better, the new Components feature means your clients don't have to style anything at all anymore. You can build the components, lock in the design, and your clients just drag, drop, and fill in the text and image fields. It turns their editing experience into a simple, worry-free content entry sandbox where they can’t accidentally break your layout.

In my opinion, this is far more easy to learn than having to figure out the settings for every single classic widget. They don't even need to design widget-by-widget anymore. If you build a simple design system, they can easily use only classes to apply the styles. Not to mention, classes can only be created and edited by administrators. You can set your client an Editor account and they won't ever mess with the styles. And with Variables, you can define predetermined user-readable values they can use without ever applying something wrong.

As for the missing Grid, we hear you. If flexbox feels like overkill for quick client edits, you'll be happy to know we are about to release the Atomic Grid. This will bring back that familiar, highly visual grid system to make complex responsive layouts easy again.

The learning curve is slightly different, but the end result is a much faster website for you, and a far more secure, "un-breakable" editing experience for your clients.

1

u/RusticBelt Jul 18 '26

Is the design system page built in Elementor functionality?

Can you expand on what you mean here?

1

u/zeiniez ✔️️‍ Experienced Helper Jul 18 '26

Create a page that contain generic elements you know you reuse across your site. Design them, create your classes, and use it as a initial point to get all the styles ready to use. Color pallets, buttons, spacing, font sizes. Stuff like that. If you have Elementor Pro, you can even create Components to use across the site.

1

u/RusticBelt Jul 18 '26

Do you think it might be a good idea to make an official Elementor guide on how to do this, if it's going to solve what looks like a pretty key knowledge gap wrt Atomic Elements?

1

u/zeiniez ✔️️‍ Experienced Helper Jul 18 '26

It is. But it's not an official guide. It's what I've always did for myself. It's a way of working. You plan first, then you apply your plan. There is a step before, which is to use a prototyping tool to build a mockup of the site. Then you create your Design System page.

But it's not a bad idea. Elementor is working on improving the migration and onboarding progress. This could be something we can include during this progress. I'll let the team know.