The plain HTML an author reaches for constantly — a section, a column grid, a heading, a list.

Why this exists

The editor had two ways to put something on a page and neither of them was "an empty box". The palette lists a UI kit's components; MishkaCmsCore.Runtime.PageBuilder.Blocks lists whole finished sections. To get a <section> of your own you had to drop a Hero and delete everything inside it, or open the Code window and type. Every other builder — Elementor's Layout group, Gantry's structural particles — puts the primitives first, because they are what a page is actually made of; the finished sections are the shortcut, not the foundation.

What an element is

The same %{id, title, category, description, template} shape a block has, so one panel lists both and one search covers both. The difference is intent: a block arrives finished and is edited down, an element arrives empty and is built up.

Plain HTML and Tailwind utilities only, for the same reason blocks are: an element that reached for a kit component would fail on an install without that kit, and every node here has to be something the Inspector already knows how to style. <.form> and <.input> are inside that rule rather than outside it: they are Phoenix.Component.form/1 and MishkaCmsCore.CoreComponents.input/1, imported into every compiled page and resolved by the editing canvas, so they are there on every install — the standing <.link> already has.

What the Forms elements are

A form is a real Phoenix form: for={assigns[:form_form]} names the page assign that holds what the visitor typed, as={:form} scopes the params, and the two phx-* names are the handlers MishkaCmsCore.Runtime.Compilers.LiveViewCompiler generates from the markup. All five names come from one seed, minted and renumbered by MishkaCmsCore.Runtime.PageBuilder.PageForms.Naming, so a second form on the page cannot share the first one's assign. el-form therefore ships with a field and a button in it rather than empty: the five attributes are the point of it, and an empty one teaches none of them.

The bare controls — el-input, el-textarea, el-select, el-checkbox, el-radio-group — keep a literal name, because a palette card and a hover preview render them on their own, outside any form. MishkaCmsCore.Runtime.PageBuilder.PageForms.FormPlacement rewrites that name into a binding on the way in, and wraps the control in a form first when it is dropped where there is none.

Two rules that decide whether these are usable at all

Containers ship empty, and the canvas draws them anyway. An empty <section> is zero pixels tall, so without help it cannot be clicked, cannot be dropped into, and looks like the drop failed. MishkaCmsCoreWeb.Live.Admin.Builder.CanvasLive gives any childless container a dashed outline and a minimum height while editing — never in preview, and never for a void tag like <img>, which is childless on purpose.

Text elements ship with words in them. An empty <p> has the same problem and no good answer: a paragraph is its text. They arrive saying what they are, and the first thing an author does is type over it — which is exactly what the inline text editor is for.