Element hierarchy

Hierarchy in web design refers to the structure of elements—like pages, sections and images—and the parenting model determines how the elements interact with each other. At the top of the hierarchy is the page and within that you have sections. Containers are added to sections along with elements like images and text.

Parenting and children

Elements with other elements inside them are referred to as parents. The elements inside the parent are referred to as children. An element can be a child of one element but a parent to another.

The Layers panel and a layer is chosen to open the floating action bar. Text is highlighted from the breadcrumbs.

Attaching & detaching

You can attach any element to a parent container. An attached element becomes the child of that container. You can detach it anytime by dragging it outside. This reparents the element. For example, if you drag an element outside of a container, it could attach to the section itself and become the child of the section.

Note: You can’t change the hierarchy of elements per breakpoint. If you change the hierarchy at one breakpoint, it changes the hierarchy for all breakpoints.

Several elements are highlighted together and the attach option is shown.

Resizing

You can set how a parent container and its children resize across all breakpoints. The size of a parent element can affect its child elements. If, for example, you size a parent to %, the elements inside will resize relative to it.

The Inspector Panel is open. The VideoBox is selected. Under the Layers section, the Sizing options are set to Fluid and the width percentage is highlighted.

Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs let you climb up in the hierarchy to navigate between, and select different elements on the canvas. For example, if you select a button, you can use breadcrumbs to grab the container it’s placed in. When an element is stretched, it can be tricky to grab the parent beneath it, so the breadcrumbs come in handy here.

Note: Elements on the same level of the hierarchy—like a button and paragraph text within the same container—will not appear in the same breadcrumbs thread.

The element has been right clicked and Arrange is selected to show more arrangement options.

Layers panel

You can view the hierarchy of each section in the Layers panel. Each parent container appears like a folder and the children appear as subitems underneath. Here, you can rearrange elements within their parent container using drag and drop. Click the 3 dots beside an element to hide it at a certain breakpoint.

The element is selected to show the floating action bar and the breadcrumbs menu below.

Follow these steps in the editor

Open exercise template →

Parents and children. Drag the title, paragraph, image and button element into the container on the canvas.
Navigate with breadcrumbs. Click the image and select Container from the breadcrumbs. From the floating action bar, choose a new background color for the container.
Layers. Click anywhere inside the container. Now, go to the top bar and open the Layers panel. You'll notice that Container is selected and its child elements are shown below.
Reorder elements. From the Layers panel, drag the title under the button and move the paragraph up.

Transcript

Let’s take a look at hierarchy on Editor X. We’ll explore the parenting model and how to navigate between the layers of your site.

The hierarchy of elements is part of the HTML structure behind each site. This means that changes you make to the hierarchy are reflected across all breakpoints.

The hierarchy of elements can be explained through the parenting model.

For example, this section here is a “parent” and this container is its “child.”

This relationship defines how the elements interact with one another.

When elements are placed inside a section, they become the children of that section, and siblings to each other.

You can see this parenting model clearly in the layers panel.

At the top of the hierarchy, you have the site page, then sections, containers and elements like images and text.

Here you can also keep track of your hidden elements. So while each container is a child of its section, each section is a child of the page.

Now let’s drag the button to this container. As soon as you drag an element into a container, it automatically docks to the nearest edges. This button is now a child of the container.

To control the vertical relationship between elements during resizing, use Stack.

The text and button are now placed inside a flex container, which acts as a parent.

You can see this clearly in the Layers panel on the left. To learn more about stack, watch the flexbox video in the series.

To navigate between the layers of your hierarchy and select an element, use these blue breadcrumbs.

For example, let’s grab this container. As you move it, notice how the parent element moves together with its children.

While the hierarchy remains the same across all breakpoints, you can style the elements differently for every screen size.

Let’s edit the color of this button on tablet. Any style changes you make to an element on your site cascade down to smaller breakpoints.

Here, you can see that the color change of the button carries over to mobile. But when you switch to desktop, notice how the style changes are not reflected.

Let’s go back to mobile, and drag the button outside of its parent container. Any change in hierarchy affects all viewports. You’ve changed the structure of this site, and the button is now a child of the section.

In the next section, we added a layouter, a smart layouting tool made up of responsive containers. In the Layers panel, you can see that this layouter is a parent container, with multiple items inside. To learn more about layouters, watch the flexbox video in this series.

Now let’s edit the image on the left. The hierarchy of an element is always visible at the top of the Inspector panel.

When using relative sizing units, elements are sized in relation to their parent.

For example, if you set the width of this image to 100%, it expands to 100% of the width of its parent container.

However, keep in mind that if you size an element using viewport height or width, it resizes in relation to the viewport, rather than its parent.

This social bar in the bottom left is a child of the container. But if you toggle on Fixed Position it becomes a child of the page.

Now when you scroll the page, the social bar is always visible.

Editor X is an advanced creation platform. To master it, continue watching this series of video tutorials.

EXPLORE MORE TUTORIALS

WEBINAR

Discover the Editor X workspace

TUTORIAL

Breakpoints part 1

TUTORIAL

Sizing

Go to library →

Go create on Editor X →

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