What Is Editor X In Wix?

Building a website used to require mountains of code and technical expertise. Thankfully, platforms like Wix, GoDaddy, Webflow, and WordPress have democratized website creation, making it accessible for everyone. These user-friendly tools empower individuals and businesses to create professional-looking websites. Anyone, from individuals to small businesses, can now create professional-looking websites without needing to write a single line of code. But what if you crave more design control and advanced features? Wix has your back with Editor X, a revolutionary addition to their website building arsenal.

Editor X is Wix's next-generation website builder, designed to cater to the needs of more advanced users and design-centric professionals. The platform takes website design and development to a whole new level, offering a comprehensive suite of advanced tools and features. Understanding what Editor X is unlocks a new level of creative freedom and control over your website's design and functionality. This blog talks about everything you need to know about Editor X—its key features, and how it can benefit your website development projects. Whether you're a professional designer, a small business owner, or an agency looking to offer more advanced services, this overview will help you determine if Editor X is the right choice for your needs.

Editor X: An Overview

Editor X is a powerful website creation platform developed by Wix, designed to cater to the needs of designers, agencies, and enterprises. It offers advanced design and layout capabilities, allowing users to create highly customized and responsive websites. With its strong features and tools, Editor X is ideal for those looking to build complex and sophisticated web projects.

Advanced Design Features of Editor X

Beyond the drag-and-drop functionality, Editor X showcases a range of advanced design features that empower you to create unique and responsive websites. These features give you precise control over how elements are positioned and displayed across different screen sizes, resulting in a professional and user-friendly experience. 

Using these tools can help users create intricate layouts that adapt smoothly to different screen sizes and devices.

Grid Layouting

Grid layouting is an advanced two-dimensional layout system based on CSS grid, which allows for precise control over the positioning and behavior of website elements. Users can divide sections and containers into a grid of columns and rows, and then position elements within specific grid cells. This enables the creation of complex, grid-based layouts that can be easily adjusted and rearranged at different breakpoints to ensure a consistent and responsive design across various screen sizes.

The grid layout can be customized directly on the canvas or through the Inspector panel, where users can add or remove columns and rows, adjust their size using a variety of measurement units, and set gaps between grid cells. The grid measurements can be toggled on or off to provide visual guidance and ensure accurate positioning of elements.

Docking

Docking is a feature that allows users to anchor elements to specific positions on the page, ensuring they maintain their desired placement as the viewport changes. This is particularly useful for elements like navigation menus or calls-to-action that need to remain visible and accessible to users as they scroll or resize the page.

When an element is docked, its position is relative to the viewport or a specific container, rather than the overall page layout. This means that as the page is scrolled or resized, the docked element will stay in its designated position, providing a consistent and intuitive user experience across different screen sizes.

Stacks & Scale Media

Stacking is a feature that allows users to arrange elements vertically, ensuring they don't overlap in different screen sizes. When elements are stacked, a flex container is created around them, and users can customize the spacing and alignment between items. This is particularly useful for creating responsive layouts that adapt to different screen sizes without losing their structure or hierarchy.

Editor X also offers a "Stack & Scale" feature for media elements like images and videos. This allows users to specify how media should behave as the viewport changes, ensuring it remains visually appealing and accessible across different screen sizes. Users can choose to have media stack, scale, or crop as needed to maintain its aspect ratio and fit within the available space.

Text Scaling

Text scaling is a feature that allows users to create scalable font sizes that adapt to the viewport without losing quality or readability. This is particularly useful for ensuring that text remains legible and visually appealing across different screen sizes, without the need for manual adjustments or separate text elements for each breakpoint.

Enabling text scaling helps users define a base font size and then specify how the text should scale up or down as the viewport changes. This ensures that the text remains proportional to the overall design and maintains a consistent visual hierarchy across different screen sizes.

Flex Layouter

The flex layouter is a smart layout system that utilizes flexbox technology to automatically reorganize content as the viewport is resized. This feature is particularly useful for creating responsive layouts that adapt to different screen sizes without the need for manual adjustments or complex grid systems.

When using the flex layouter, users can specify how elements should behave as the viewport changes, such as stacking vertically, wrapping to the next line, or distributing evenly within the available space. This allows for the creation of flexible and adaptive layouts that maintain their structure and hierarchy across different screen sizes.

Custom Breakpoints

Custom breakpoints allow users to define specific viewport sizes at which the design should adapt to ensure optimal viewing and interaction. While Editor X provides default breakpoints for desktop, tablet, and mobile devices, users can add additional custom breakpoints to tailor the design to any viewport, not just the standard device categories.

Defining custom breakpoints helps users ensure that their design looks and functions its best across a wide range of screen sizes and devices. This is particularly useful for accommodating devices with unique aspect ratios or for creating designs that require specific layout adjustments at certain viewport widths.

Flexible Canvas

The flexible canvas feature allows users to resize the Editor X interface with handles, enabling instant visualization and customization of the design across different viewports. This feature is particularly useful for quickly testing and adjusting the design at various screen sizes without the need to manually switch between breakpoints.

Resizing the canvas helps users instantly see how the design will look and function at different viewport widths, allowing for quick iterations and adjustments. This feature helps simplify the design process and ensures that the final website will look great on a wide range of devices.

Editor X VS Wix Standard Website Builder

Choosing the right website builder depends on your goals and experience level. Wix and its more advanced counterpart, Editor X, offer distinct capabilities and features. While Wix is known for its user-friendly drag-and-drop interface and extensive template library, Editor X provides a more powerful and customizable experience tailored for designers, agencies, and enterprises.

Here's a comparison overview of Editor X and Wix Standard Website Builder across key areas:

Templates

Editor X offers a curated selection of 28+ fully customizable frame templates, allowing users to create highly unique and visually striking websites. These prioritize clean lines, modern aesthetics, and a smooth user experience, making them ideal for building professional websites. It's designed with a focus on advanced design elements and responsiveness, giving users the flexibility to fine-tune the layout and appearance to their specific needs. While the variety might seem limited compared to Wix, the focus on quality ensures a strong foundation for your project.

Wix's standard website builder offers a much larger template library, with over 800 pre-built options covering a wide range of industries and use cases. This increases the chance of finding a pre-made design that fits your vision. Wix's user interface is beginner-friendly, allowing you to get started quickly. That said, the sheer number of options can be overwhelming, and some templates might prioritize flashy visuals over optimal user experience. Extensive customization can also be challenging due to Wix's fixed-layout approach.

Collaboration

Editor X caters to designers and teams working together. The platform enables simultaneous editing by multiple designers, allowing team members to work on the same site concurrently. It offers features like live comments, task assignment, user permissions,  version history, and real-time collaboration, making it an ideal choice for agencies and enterprises that require smooth collaboration.

Wix's standard website builder, on the other hand, is primarily designed for individual users. It offers basic collaboration features like sharing your website for feedback. While it does allow for multiple users to be invited to edit a site, the platform does not offer the same level of collaborative tools as Editor X, limiting the ability to work on a project in a truly synchronous manner.

Developer Tools

Editor X caters to users comfortable with code, providing an integrated development environment for editing CSS and adding custom JavaScript. It also offers a dedicated Node.js server for testing and deploying complex web applications. The platform has features like custom code editing, access to the underlying code, and the ability to integrate with third-party APIs. This allows for highly customized and dynamic websites.

Wix's standard website builder, while user-friendly, has more limited customization options. Users are generally restricted to basic code injection, such as adding custom header or footer scripts, without the ability to directly edit the underlying CSS or integrate advanced JavaScript functionality. This might limit flexibility for users who want a high degree of control over their website's functionality.

Performance

Editor X prioritizes website speed and performance. It's designed to handle more complex, custom website designs, which can take longer to build compared to Wix's simplified approach. Its code is clean and optimized, leading to fast loading times and a smooth user experience. This trade-off allows for a higher degree of design flexibility and control, making it a preferred choice for agencies and enterprises that require sophisticated web experiences.

Wix's standard website builder is generally faster and easier to use for basic website creation. Its focus on simplicity and out-of-the-box functionality makes it a suitable option for users who prioritize a quick and easy website-building experience. Extensive customization or adding numerous features in Wix can impact loading times. 

Advanced Tips when Using Editor X

Editor X is a powerful website creation platform that offers advanced design and layout capabilities. Beyond the basics of dragging and dropping elements, mastering these advanced editing techniques will elevate your creations and simplify your workflow.

Here are some tips to help you make the most of its features:

Use Sticky Positioning

Imagine a navigation bar that stays fixed at the top of the screen no matter how far you scroll down a webpage. This is achieved with sticky positioning. It's particularly useful for elements you want users to access easily, like menus, shopping carts, or "back to top" buttons. 

It's important to note that the sticky effect will only work if the layout of the section containing the sticky element is properly structured using CSS Grid. If the section layout is not grid-based, the sticky positioning may not function as expected.

Understand Responsive Design Inheritance

Editor X's responsive design works on a cascading model, where the design is inherited from higher breakpoints within the same device category. This means that if you have multiple desktop breakpoints with different styles, the design will not be automatically inherited, and you'll need to manually copy the styles from one breakpoint to another using the "Copy from Breakpoint" feature.

Understanding this inheritance model is important for maintaining consistency across different screen sizes. When designing for multiple breakpoints, be mindful of how changes at one breakpoint will affect the design at smaller or larger screen sizes. Use the "Copy from Breakpoint" tool judiciously to ensure a cohesive user experience.

Optimize Breakpoint Management

While Editor X allows up to 6 custom breakpoints, the more breakpoints you have, the more time you'll need to spend maintaining and synchronizing the design across them. Carefully consider your target audience and only add breakpoints that are necessary for your project.

Limiting the number of custom breakpoints can simplify the design process and reduce the complexity of managing responsive layouts. Focus on the most critical screen sizes for your website's users and use the default breakpoints (desktop, tablet, mobile) as a starting point. Only add custom breakpoints when you have a specific need that the default breakpoints cannot address.

Utilize the Editor X CMS

Editor X includes a powerful content management system (CMS) that allows you to create dynamic, content-driven websites. Take advantage of the CMS features, such as the Blog Post Collection, to manage and display your content in a responsive and customizable way.

The CMS enables you to create collections of content, such as blog posts, products, or portfolio items, and then display them on your website using repeating layouts. This allows you to easily update and maintain your website's content without having to manually edit the design or layout.

Implement Hover Zoom Effects

Adding a touch of interactivity can significantly enhance user engagement. Hover zoom effects are subtle animations where an image or element slightly enlarges when a user hovers their mouse cursor over it. To create engaging hover effects in Editor X, use the Interactions tab. You can easily set up a zoom-in effect that keeps the content within the container boundaries, providing a polished and professional look. This feature is useful for enhancing the user experience by making elements more interactive and visually appealing.

To add a hover zoom effect, select the element you want to apply the effect to, then go to the Interactions tab in the Inspector panel. Click "Add a Trigger" and choose "Hover" as the trigger. Then, select the "Grow" effect and customize the start and end points to achieve the desired zoom level.

Conclusion: What Is Editor X In Wix? 

Editor X isn't just a website builder, it's a powerful tool that empowers you to create a website that reflects your unique vision and stands out from the crowd. While Wix's standard website builder is great for beginners and those looking to create simple websites quickly, Editor X caters to the needs of users who require more customization, control, and flexibility in their web design. Whether you're a seasoned designer or just starting out, Editor X offers the perfect blend of creative control and user-friendly features. 

If you're looking to create a highly responsive, visually stunning, and feature-rich website, then Editor X is worth considering. The advanced design capabilities, collaborative tools, and developer-friendly functionality of Editor X  goes beyond the limitations of basic tools. Remember, a well-designed website is an investment in your business growth. It fosters trust with potential customers and positions you as a professional in your industry. So, take what you've learned here, unleash your creativity with Editor X, and watch your business attract more visitors, engage your audience, and ultimately drive growth to new levels.