Drag-In Wizard
The Drag-In Wizard is Grid Elements' own direct-authoring tool. It puts the same element types that the New Content Element Wizard offers directly inside the Page Module, as a panel an editor can drag items out of, and turns creating an element into a single motion: pick an item, drag it into the structural area it belongs in, and it exists there, already placed, the moment it is dropped.
This is the practical core of Structure-first Authoring. An editor builds a page's structure and fills it with content in the same place, in one continuous act, rather than switching between a separate creation dialog and the layout it is building.
Opening the wizard
A toggle button next to the Page Module's own Create new content element button opens and closes the wizard panel. Once open, it stays available while an editor keeps working, so it can be left open for a whole session of building out a page rather than reopened for every element.
What the wizard presents
The panel lists the same categories and element types the New Content Element Wizard would offer for the current page, grouped the same way, with the same icons and descriptions. Nothing needs to be configured twice: the Drag-In Wizard is a different way of reaching the same set of choices, not a separate catalogue to maintain.
What the panel actually shows is pre-filtered before any drag begins. It examines every column currently rendered on the page, page-level Backend Layout columns and any Grid Element's own cells alike, and offers an element type only if at least one of those columns would accept it under its restriction configuration, see Restrictions, Validation & Permissions. An element type that no column on the current page allows does not appear in the panel at all; an editor is never offered something that has nowhere to go on the page being edited. This pre-filtering of what is offered is a separate mechanism from what happens once a drag is already in progress, described below.
Creating an element by dragging it in
Dragging an item out of the panel highlights the structural areas on the page that would actually accept it, exactly as ordinary Drag and Drop highlights valid targets for an existing element. Dropping it there creates a new element of that type, already placed in that column, in that Grid Element's cell, or nested inside another Grid Element, wherever it was dropped. Selection, creation and placement happen as one interaction, so there is no intermediate step where the new element exists but has not been placed yet.
How restrictions shape what is offered
Restrictions act at two separate points, not just one. Before a drag starts, they decide which element types appear in the panel at all, see above. Once a drag is in progress, the same restriction configuration decides which columns and cells light up as valid drop targets for the specific item being dragged: only the columns and cells that would actually accept that item's type light up. A cell restricted to a particular set of content types, or one that has already reached its maximum number of elements, simply does not become a drop target for anything it would reject. This is the same restriction configuration described in Restrictions, Validation & Permissions, applied here as it is applied to any other way of placing content.
Why one interaction instead of two
Without the Drag-In Wizard, adding content to a specific cell means opening the New Content Element Wizard from that cell's own create new content element control, choosing a type, and waiting for the dialog to return to the page. The Drag-In Wizard removes that detour: the wizard is already open, alongside the structure it will fill, and placing an element is the same motion as choosing it. Used consistently, it covers ordinary element creation directly, so an editor building out a page's structure does not need to open the New Content Element Wizard, described next, for that part of the work.