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Please refer to the separate page on Area Editing for an in-depth description of this concept.
The Toolbox
Magnolia 5 adds a toolbox to the page editing interface. It
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The toolbox replaces the edit bar dedicated to the page, which was shown at the top in preview-based editing in earlier Magnolia versions. The page properties are accessed using a regular page action. Page options like a language selector or information on page links have been extended and moved to the options rack (see definition below). The button to return to AdminCentral has been replaced with a button to leave editing in the Toolbox, which is also where the "Preview" button was moved to.
Racks and Units
A rack is basically an enclosure for mounting multiple modules. In Magnolia 5, a rack is a container for a basically arbitrary (but usually small) number of units. Each unit collects a number of UI elements logically belonging together, such as a language selector or an element representing the translation status of the current page.
The goals of the racks and units concepts are:
- to offer a great overview of various aspects of an element while keeping the interface simple
- to provide a scalable UI solution for adding functionality to pages, paragraphs, areas
A unit may either use a single-state or a two-state interface. If a unit can provide a short overview of its core settings, but needs more space to show all values, it is dubbed an expanding unit and uses the two-state interface offering both a collapsed and an expanded view. In the expanded view, the unit takes over most of the space available in the rack and thus has plenty of space available to show its data. In the collapsed view, only the brief overview fits in. If a unit only needs one interface to show its settings it is called a uniform unit and uses a single-state interface using the collapsed view only.
The toolbar
Working with a paragraph or the page
The toolbox features a two-level control at the top for the selection of a target and a rack. The target may be either a selected paragraph or area or the page itself. The targets you may choose depend on which elements are currently selected on the page, if any. If a paragraph is selected, the target can be either this paragraph or the page as a whole. If no element is selected, then the page is the only valid target left.
Once you selected a target, racks become available allowing you to choose either actions or options related to your target.
Note that while this concept may sound complicated, its day-to-day use actually isn't. If you select a paragraph on the page, the target selector is automatically switched to "paragraph". The same holds if you select an area. If you deselect any element, the target selector switches to "page". The only time you have to manually switch it is when you've selected a paragraph, but would like to switch back to work on the page level to e.g. activate the page.
Actions and Options rack
Uniform and expanding units
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