Having a way to ignore files would be interesting. I see the value for
ignoring CSS files, but I am not sure why would one need this on the
JS group? As Frank suggested, we can also add an ignore option to the
CSS blocks themselves for quick testing.
Take that a step further with the CSS and instead of just adding an option to "ignore" CSS blocks, incorporate the "Commenting" system instead. That would solve those issues all the way around for testing CSS blocks as well as giving us the Commenting option we've asked for, for quite some time.
Then take the CSS and JS another step further and incorporate the ability to use/not use specific files with specific HTML pages and that would also fix both the testing issue of using a specific resource as well as the HEAD listings of what files are used on each page upon export.
Kill multiple birds with one stone on both of these issues.
ignoring linked components on specific pages will be dangerous and
would lead to bugs. Maybe we can think of another way to help you try
things out quicker. Maybe a context menu option on pages “Unlink All
Components”. This way you can duplicate a page and unlink everything
on it?
This would be a good idea if there were easier ways to Link things than having to manually replace each item you unlinked with a linked item again should you change your mind a couple days later and want to return the rest of the pages to what the saved unlinked page is currently at. Would still be a good addition even if not though. The Linking system works pretty good, and I like it, but it's not as practical as it could be and not as easily used as it could be.
How about if I redo this Ignore Linked Items suggestion to this instead:
Can we get a Linked Library system for our Linking items so that we can then easily click a specific element or structure item and have a Linking context menu that you can choose what Linked item you want your selected component/element to change to? In other words it would be like this:
Make a page, add a bunch of linked items for the Header, Sidebar and Footer areas. When you create a Linked item it asks you for a name for that Linked item. Let the user be responsible to give it a practical name so they know what it is. That then is like creating a Linked items library system. Now you would be able to create more pages that don't have linked items in them yet.
You can then select an component/element on your page either in the Tree view or the Preview window, and get a right click menu with a Linked Items Library dropdown. You can then Choose the Linked item that you want to replace what is there. Undo is our friend so if you were to choose the wrong Linked item in the Library list it will obviously not fit right lol, so there are protections already in place for that problem (barring crashes and power outages of course).
Having said all that, this would then make your suggestion to turn all Linked items off much more practical, because we could easily just go to each component and turn it back on one by one on the page rather than having to
- go to another page
- copy the component/element
- go back to the other page
- paste it into the page
-delete the old one, and so on.
Then we could turn them off to test things, or to save a page in another folder for safe keeping while we mess with the others and can still get the old one back if needed. The most significant scenario I can think of that would benefit from this would be ....
you've unlinked the page components, made a ton of changes to a page that has the linked items in it yet so all the rest of your pages are changing as well. You change your mind and decide no, I think I like the old way better ... you go to hit Undo to put it all back and .... Computer crash, Power outrage [insert your disaster here lol]. Now you have changed all your pages to a new look that you wanted to change back, and all your Undo capability is gone. NO PROBLEM! Because all you need to do is re-establish that the components on the page that you "Unlinked" are the linking components, then once you have that set you can then go to each page and relink the components.
Yes this would still be manual, but ... it would take less than half the time it would take to do it the way it's setup right now with the process outlined above.
I might be talking out of my arse, I dunno lol, could be this would be a horribly hard thing to incorporate or almost impossible? Dunno that either, just thought I'd put my thoughts on the page and see where they go! Something like this would go a long way to simplifying the Linking system as well as safeguarding our files for future use.