This glossary is organized into categories that mirror your workflow in Candu. Terms are explained in plain English and connected to how they work in the Candu Editor. As you work with Candu, you'll develop intuition for when and how to use each feature. Bookmark this guide and return to it whenever you encounter unfamiliar terms.

Let’s dig in!

At the top of the editor, you’ll find a menu bar with key tools: segments, analytics, and settings.

In the Settings (⚙️) panel, you can view and manage:

To create new content, click the ➕ icon. And to create targeted content:

When you’re ready to go live, click Publish. Make sure Candu is installed on the page where you want the content to show. For troubleshooting tips when content is not showing, click here.

A Styleguide ensures consistent styles for typography, buttons, cards, badges, checklists, and other components. Define your styles early and clearly. It’s a best practice to treat your Styleguide as your design system in Candu.

For more details on setting up and managing your Styleguide, click here.

The left sidebar that serves as your main navigation and resource center while building content. The Palette contains five sections:

The building blocks in your content, like a layout, button, image, typography, or card. Think of components as LEGO pieces you can arrange, rename, and customize on your canvas.

It’s like a family tree for content. Shows all components in your content and how they’re nested inside each other. When content gets complex, the layers panel helps you select and organize components that might be hard to click on the canvas.

Pre-built layouts you can use as starting points instead of building from scratch. They’re especially helpful when learning Candu.

A timeline of all changes you’ve made to your content, allowing you to undo mistakes, see who made updates, and restore previous versions.

Keyboard commands that help you work faster without clicking through menus. Once you learn a few shortcuts, building content becomes significantly faster. Common shortcuts include:

The right sidebar that appears when you select a component, showing all available customization options. You’ll find key configuration tools:

A quick-access menu that appears when you click on a component. It offers different options depending on the selected component. For example, if you highlight text, you can add a link or input a variable. You can also:

Layouts are the foundation of almost everything you build and is how components are arranged and positioned relative to each other. Layout controls whether things stack vertically, line up horizontally, or wrap to new lines.

A good layout creates visual hierarchy and guides users through your content. Every container (things like single layout, columns, or cards) has layout settings. The most common choice is between “block” (stacks vertically) and “flex” (gives you control over arrangement).

Think of a Flex container as a flexible row or column, items inside can stretch or shrink to fill space, or wrap onto new lines like text in a paragraph.

In Candu, you can drag a layout stack component (three layouts stacked on top of each other), a single layout, right or left image layouts, and columns.

A component that divides content into vertical columns, like a newspaper or magazine layout. Columns are perfect for tables, content with sidebars, feature sections.

In Candu, you drag a columns component from the Layouts section. You can:

Controls how a component behaves in the layout. Whether it takes up full width or sits inline with text. This is often the first decision you make when building a layout. Options in Candu:

Flexbox

In Candu, when you set Display to “Flex”, you unblock flexbox settings:

This is how you create responsive layouts where some elements stay fixed (like a logo) while others expand to fill space (like a banner). In Candu, these options include:

Don’t worry if this feels abstract! You’ll get a feel for these settings by experimenting in the editor.

Controls where items are positioned along the vertical and horizontal axes within their container. In Candu, these options are available when using “Flex” and include:

Gap is a way to add spacing between items. One setting handles all the spacing instead of managing margins on each component. In Candu, when using flexbox, you can set column gap (horizontal space between items) and row gap (vertical space between items) by pixels (px) or percentage (%).

Proper sizing is crucial for responsive design.

The dimensions of a component, meaning how wide and how tall it is. In Candu, every component has size settings with different units:

You also see:

When content is too big to fit inside its container, it can be hidden, create scrollbars, or spill out. In Candu, you’ll find these settings under Size:

The space around and inside components.

In Candu, you can control margin and padding for all four sides (top, right, bottom, left) at once by clicking the 🔗 or individually. In the editor, you’ll see what this looks like around the component as well.

Controls the stacking order of elements (the z-axis or an imaginary axis perpendicular to the screen). This determines which elements appear on top of others when they overlap. In Candu, this setting is available for Overlays, Product Tours, and Hotspots.

The color or image behind a component’s content. In Candu, every container can have:

A line around the edge of a component, with customizable thickness, color, and roundness. In Candu, you can control borders for all sides or individually:

Use shadows to make cards look clickable or make elements pop off the page. In Candu, you can customize shadows with:

Content that appears to be a native part of your product’s page. Use Inline content for:

Learn more about inline content →

Content that appears on top of the page, typically with a backdrop behind it. Use Overlays for:

Overlay-specific settings:

Learn more about overlays →

A tooltip that points to a specific element in your interface, with a pulsing beacon to draw attention. Use Hotspot for:

Hotspot-specific settings:

Learn more about Hotspots →

A guided walkthrough that takes users through multiple steps, highlighting different parts of your interface in sequence. Use Product Tours for:

Tour-specific settings:

To learn more about product tours, see this guide.

Checklists drive product adoption by guiding users through setup and key actions. User checklist items can be completed manually or automatically via product events, user properties, or Candu events. You can create custom styles in your Styleguide and checklists come in two display types:

You can choose between tracking progress per User or Group.

Forms allow you to capture data about your users directly in your product. You can use them to build onboarding or sign up surveys, feedback surveys or contact forms. Styles are set in your Styleguide to ensure consistency. In Candu, forms include:

Multi-step sequences that users navigate through, like a slideshow or carrousel. Use Flows for:

Flow settings:

A container component that can display content and act as an interactive block. This means cards can be used as calls-to-action and set to be Dismissible. Cards are incredibly versatile:

Great for personalization! Show or hide content dynamically based on conditions you set (user properties, location, behavior, etc.).

Create conditional views by:

Learn more about conditional blocks here →

The interactions panel where you configure what happens when users interact with your content. Click the lighting bolt icon in the Toolbox to access interaction settings. Here you define:

Segmentation ensures your content is seen by the right audience. By default, Candu content is set to Everyone, and you can define a Segment by clicking on the honeycomb on the top bar next to the pencil icon.

Learn more about segmentation here →

Variables offer a great way to personalize your content at scale by allowing you to make the most of the data that you send through to Candu. All variables can be based on the same data that you pass over to Candu to create Segments. This usually consists of user traits like name, email, role type, and company. You can add variables to text and URLs.

For more details on variables, see this guide.

Ready to create your first content? Explore our template gallery for inspiration.

​Need more help? Reach out to us via chat or email us at [email protected].