New Fluid Engine section block update

Hello,
Yesterday I was tinkering with my website, and created new unlisted blank page. I was prompted with new tutorial tour for "Fluid Engine" it is really really sweet, but so far only that one blank page has this new option, if I create a new blank page or a section it resides to a "Default-layout engine", and there is no way to obtain new designing feature. Any clues why I am able to have this special treatment to a single page but not others? 😄 

Here is the only resource I found online about the update  - https://support.squarespace.com/hc/en-us/articles/6421525446541-Fluid-Engine-Squarespace-s-new-content-editing-experience#toc-identifying-fluid-engine

Thanks!

1 hour ago, Golmoris said:

if I create a new blank page or a section it resides to a "Default-layout engine", and there is no way to obtain new designing feature.

See Add a Fluid Engine section in the guide you linked. If this doesn't work as expected, please contact Squarespace Customer Care.

Hey, can you upgrade to fluid engine? It it so much more responsive than the classic editor and I am about to launch my site - really need to update...

I'm mostly just posting this so SS receives as much feedback as possible about how much this update sucks. I have never worked with something so buggy and temperamental before. Every time I make a change, I come back and it looks different. And trying to get the mobile site to look halfway decent takes way too much effort. 

I've created some pages using FE that I wouldn't have been able to make using the old editor, but now I'm afraid if I switch back to the classic it'll be even more of a headache. Has anyone done this successfully? 

Site URL: https://www.rochestertag.com/

So... I hate it — like, hate hate it, like can't use it without screaming curses... and I'm honestly confused as to why this isn't the dominant conversation topic in the SS community.

Can anyone shed light on this?

My experience: I've made oodles of sites in SS. I love(d) SS, and have been an enthusiastic evangelist.

When I started my newest site, I found out that I'm required to use FluidEngine. I wasn't excited about this — it promised a learning curve that I didn't want to take on in a busy month — but, whatever. Gotta roll with the punches.

My experience of FluidEngine so far has been nothing but woe. I have three questions for anyone who can share their experiences.

The primary benefit (to judge by all the videos I've watched on YouTube) is that now we can stack words on top of images. This is a neat feature that I do not need to use. So the primary improvement is, for me, no improvement.

(Am I wrong about this? Is there another, better feature that FluidEngine is supposed to give us?)

Even if I were really good at using Fluid Engine (and... maybe I will be, someday? maybe I'll stick with SS?... maybe?), it seems like it would still be significantly more work to make a simple page.

I get the drift that the old philosophy of Squarespace ("Build it beautiful") was to limit the number of decisions we could make, to nudge our sites into elegance. (Wanted to complicate it? That's what CSS was for.)

Now it feels like they've flipped the philosophy — we're forced to make tons of decisions just to put up something simple.

(Am I wrong about this?)

I loved — loved — how effortlessly my sites used to appear in mobile. There were times I had to wrestle with it, but they were rare, and only when I was trying to do something weird.

But now — please, please tell me if you have a different experience — the spacing for mobile is really hard to work out! Like, IMPOSSIBLE to work out.

I didn't trust my judgment of this until I saw this video by Will Myers. His solution (a code injection, some custom CSS, and some juggling) is ingenious — and should not be necessary to ensure a site looks good on a phone.

(It's telling that, during his explanation, he struggles to make it work. Check out 7:20 — "This is something you need to be careful of, because I don't think Squarespace really likes you doing this, it wants to just force the extra space for some reason, I'm not really too sure why.")

(God, am I wrong about this? Please tell me I'm wrong about this. Whenever I try to imagine the folks at Squarespace — who have up to now been such fastidious designers — saying, "ah, screw spacing, nobody cares about spacing!" my mind explodes.)

Is anyone else being driven flipping insane by this?

And does anyone know if there's a way to opt out of Fluid Design, even if for the near-term future?

I'm having a terrible time with this Fluid Engine and can't get my old layout back! I used it on one section of my site, which includes the home page and it completely screwed it up. I've tried to redo it several times. Images are overlapping, not fitting properly inside the image blocks without fudging with them, and then they show up tiny on the mobile. I can't believe Squarespace did this and won't let you get rid of it. What are we supposed to do with this mess???

11 hours ago, brandonhendrickson said:

Site URL: https://www.rochestertag.com/

So... I hate it — like, hate hate it, like can't use it without screaming curses... and I'm honestly confused as to why this isn't the dominant conversation topic in the SS community.

Can anyone shed light on this?

My experience: I've made oodles of sites in SS. I love(d) SS, and have been an enthusiastic evangelist.

When I started my newest site, I found out that I'm required to use FluidEngine. I wasn't excited about this — it promised a learning curve that I didn't want to take on in a busy month — but, whatever. Gotta roll with the punches.

My experience of FluidEngine so far has been nothing but woe. I have three questions for anyone who can share their experiences.

1. What's the benefit supposed to be, again?

The primary benefit (to judge by all the videos I've watched on YouTube) is that now we can stack words on top of images. This is a neat feature that I do not need to use. So the primary improvement is, for me, no improvement.

(Am I wrong about this? Is there another, better feature that FluidEngine is supposed to give us?)

 

2. Now it's more complicated to make a page, right?

Even if I were really good at using Fluid Engine (and... maybe I will be, someday? maybe I'll stick with SS?... maybe?), it seems like it would still be significantly more work to make a simple page.

I get the drift that the old philosophy of Squarespace ("Build it beautiful") was to limit the number of decisions we could make, to nudge our sites into elegance. (Wanted to complicate it? That's what CSS was for.)

Now it feels like they've flipped the philosophy — we're forced to make tons of decisions just to put up something simple.

(Am I wrong about this?)

 

3. It's hard to get the spacing to work on mobile, right? Like... REALLY hard, right?

I loved — loved — how effortlessly my sites used to appear in mobile. There were times I had to wrestle with it, but they were rare, and only when I was trying to do something weird.

But now — please, please tell me if you have a different experience — the spacing for mobile is really hard to work out! Like, IMPOSSIBLE to work out.

I didn't trust my judgment of this until I saw this video by Will Myers. His solution (a code injection, some custom CSS, and some juggling) is ingenious — and should not be necessary to ensure a site looks good on a phone.

(It's telling that, during his explanation, he struggles to make it work. Check out 7:20 — "This is something you need to be careful of, because I don't think Squarespace really likes you doing this, it wants to just force the extra space for some reason, I'm not really too sure why.")

(God, am I wrong about this? Please tell me I'm wrong about this. Whenever I try to imagine the folks at Squarespace — who have up to now been such fastidious designers — saying, "ah, screw spacing, nobody cares about spacing!" my mind explodes.)

Is anyone else being driven flipping insane by this?

And does anyone know if there's a way to opt out of Fluid Design, even if for the near-term future?

Not wrong 🤯

On 8/8/2022 at 8:07 PM, brandonhendrickson said:

Site URL: https://www.rochestertag.com/

So... I hate it — like, hate hate it, like can't use it without screaming curses... and I'm honestly confused as to why this isn't the dominant conversation topic in the SS community.

Can anyone shed light on this?

My experience: I've made oodles of sites in SS. I love(d) SS, and have been an enthusiastic evangelist.

When I started my newest site, I found out that I'm required to use FluidEngine. I wasn't excited about this — it promised a learning curve that I didn't want to take on in a busy month — but, whatever. Gotta roll with the punches.

My experience of FluidEngine so far has been nothing but woe. I have three questions for anyone who can share their experiences.

1. What's the benefit supposed to be, again?

The primary benefit (to judge by all the videos I've watched on YouTube) is that now we can stack words on top of images. This is a neat feature that I do not need to use. So the primary improvement is, for me, no improvement.

(Am I wrong about this? Is there another, better feature that FluidEngine is supposed to give us?)

 

2. Now it's more complicated to make a page, right?

Even if I were really good at using Fluid Engine (and... maybe I will be, someday? maybe I'll stick with SS?... maybe?), it seems like it would still be significantly more work to make a simple page.

I get the drift that the old philosophy of Squarespace ("Build it beautiful") was to limit the number of decisions we could make, to nudge our sites into elegance. (Wanted to complicate it? That's what CSS was for.)

Now it feels like they've flipped the philosophy — we're forced to make tons of decisions just to put up something simple.

(Am I wrong about this?)

 

3. It's hard to get the spacing to work on mobile, right? Like... REALLY hard, right?

I loved — loved — how effortlessly my sites used to appear in mobile. There were times I had to wrestle with it, but they were rare, and only when I was trying to do something weird.

But now — please, please tell me if you have a different experience — the spacing for mobile is really hard to work out! Like, IMPOSSIBLE to work out.

I didn't trust my judgment of this until I saw this video by Will Myers. His solution (a code injection, some custom CSS, and some juggling) is ingenious — and should not be necessary to ensure a site looks good on a phone.

(It's telling that, during his explanation, he struggles to make it work. Check out 7:20 — "This is something you need to be careful of, because I don't think Squarespace really likes you doing this, it wants to just force the extra space for some reason, I'm not really too sure why.")

(God, am I wrong about this? Please tell me I'm wrong about this. Whenever I try to imagine the folks at Squarespace — who have up to now been such fastidious designers — saying, "ah, screw spacing, nobody cares about spacing!" my mind explodes.)

Is anyone else being driven flipping insane by this?

And does anyone know if there's a way to opt out of Fluid Design, even if for the near-term future?

Exactly!! 🤯🤯🤯🤯.  Summed it up perfectly. SS main attractiveness is that it was simple for just about anyone. It was perfect for a lot of people. This new change has caused me not to even want to open square space anymore and ask for a refund. Committed users like me for years, don’t have time to deal w this crazy type of change. We are busy running out business and this wasn’t fair. Help. SOS please. Thank you’ 

Oh my lanta, I'm close to loosing my mind with Fluid Engine. I can't even get the options to make images and text bigger with the resizing - is there something I'm doing with my Browser?? This is the 5th square space site I've built and I spent more time trying to resize an image today than I did the last site I built...

On 8/9/2022 at 12:10 AM, Sydbat said:

I'm mostly just posting this so SS receives as much feedback as possible about how much this update sucks. I have never worked with something so buggy and temperamental before. Every time I make a change, I come back and it looks different. And trying to get the mobile site to look halfway decent takes way too much effort. 

I've created some pages using FE that I wouldn't have been able to make using the old editor, but now I'm afraid if I switch back to the classic it'll be even more of a headache. Has anyone done this successfully? 

@Sydbat it’s unlikely the people who need to will see it here. A formal ticket/complaint needs to be logged …they are taking notice of these.

The new editor is such a headache!!

... before my pages automatically looked good when I resized, now, text overlaps where they're not supposed to, the padding between elements is all out of whack. Overall it just ends up looking so much less professional.

Before I didn't really have to worry too much about editing my pages in the mobile view, now I absolutely have to preview in both desktop and mobile before publishing a page. Something that looks great on desktop will look totally different in the mobile view, and not just a little different. No, it's like elements all slammed together overlapping at the bottom of the page bad.

Plus - it's super frustrating trying to centre text in an element when it doesn't align with the grid, or when I'm in the middle of editing a section and elements in the section resize or move on me in weird ways. Takes me twice as long building a section out as it used to with the classic editor, and then it still doesn't look good.

I don't understand what advantages this system has other than creating collage-styled sections?

I've been working and using SQSP as a designer since 2008 when it was version 5. I am in agreement with everyone here that this version is not ready for prime time. I thought I would immediately convert a project I was working on for a new client, into fluid engine page layouts. OMG! This is so not fun to work with and has literally made me noxious trying to figure out how to work with it. It's mind blowing that SQSP released this and even more that there's a whole army of people trying to make it seem like everything is totally cool and awesome! Not cool and definitely lightyears from awesome. 

I'm cursing too!! This new site design is not working for me either. I upgraded one section on the home page and now all the spacing is off. Looks terrible on mobile and all I was doing was updating a product picture. I've been trying to align buttons and text to match the rest of the page and look good on other platforms but for hours now it has been fruitless. I want the classic version back as well. It was much easier to use and looked clean and crisp. I have no idea how to fix things and I certainly don't want to continue to use the new version. If anyone has ideas on how to fix or go back to the older version I would love it.

On 8/8/2022 at 7:07 PM, brandonhendrickson said:

Site URL: https://www.rochestertag.com/

So... I hate it — like, hate hate it, like can't use it without screaming curses... and I'm honestly confused as to why this isn't the dominant conversation topic in the SS community.

Can anyone shed light on this?

My experience: I've made oodles of sites in SS. I love(d) SS, and have been an enthusiastic evangelist.

When I started my newest site, I found out that I'm required to use FluidEngine. I wasn't excited about this — it promised a learning curve that I didn't want to take on in a busy month — but, whatever. Gotta roll with the punches.

My experience of FluidEngine so far has been nothing but woe. I have three questions for anyone who can share their experiences.

1. What's the benefit supposed to be, again?

The primary benefit (to judge by all the videos I've watched on YouTube) is that now we can stack words on top of images. This is a neat feature that I do not need to use. So the primary improvement is, for me, no improvement.

(Am I wrong about this? Is there another, better feature that FluidEngine is supposed to give us?)

 

2. Now it's more complicated to make a page, right?

Even if I were really good at using Fluid Engine (and... maybe I will be, someday? maybe I'll stick with SS?... maybe?), it seems like it would still be significantly more work to make a simple page.

I get the drift that the old philosophy of Squarespace ("Build it beautiful") was to limit the number of decisions we could make, to nudge our sites into elegance. (Wanted to complicate it? That's what CSS was for.)

Now it feels like they've flipped the philosophy — we're forced to make tons of decisions just to put up something simple.

(Am I wrong about this?)

 

3. It's hard to get the spacing to work on mobile, right? Like... REALLY hard, right?

I loved — loved — how effortlessly my sites used to appear in mobile. There were times I had to wrestle with it, but they were rare, and only when I was trying to do something weird.

But now — please, please tell me if you have a different experience — the spacing for mobile is really hard to work out! Like, IMPOSSIBLE to work out.

I didn't trust my judgment of this until I saw this video by Will Myers. His solution (a code injection, some custom CSS, and some juggling) is ingenious — and should not be necessary to ensure a site looks good on a phone.

(It's telling that, during his explanation, he struggles to make it work. Check out 7:20 — "This is something you need to be careful of, because I don't think Squarespace really likes you doing this, it wants to just force the extra space for some reason, I'm not really too sure why.")

(God, am I wrong about this? Please tell me I'm wrong about this. Whenever I try to imagine the folks at Squarespace — who have up to now been such fastidious designers — saying, "ah, screw spacing, nobody cares about spacing!" my mind explodes.)

Is anyone else being driven flipping insane by this?

And does anyone know if there's a way to opt out of Fluid Design, even if for the near-term future?

100% fully agree with all points. SS is really screwing up. 

"To disable Fluid Engine on your site, visit the Settings > Circle Labs panel, check Disable Fluid Engine, then click Save."

4 hours ago, vjtk said:

"To disable Fluid Engine on your site, visit the Settings > Circle Labs panel, check Disable Fluid Engine, then click Save."

What about non-circle members?

I'm scared of accidentally clicking on that upgrade button. Srsly, I tried FE on a test website and it's a half-baked attempt at a website builder. It looks like Wix, lmao, and it's glitchy as hell.

On 8/17/2022 at 4:03 PM, FabiSantiago said:

What about non-circle members?

I'm scared of accidentally clicking on that upgrade button. Srsly, I tried FE on a test website and it's a half-baked attempt at a website builder. It looks like Wix, lmao, and it's glitchy as hell.

idk maybe you can contact support and ask them to give you complimentary access to circle specifically so you can turn FE on and off. I find it useful for some sections and not for others. It can be toggled during design, and each section has its own editor type, either classic or FE.

Squarespace, your Fluid Engine is a disaster. Turn it off!