Page History

Ready, but will get extended

Basic concept

A region An area is a structural area on block of a web page and collects one or more paragraphs. Web developers commonly sub divide a page into a number of regions areas to group together similar content in order to improve the usability, legibility and, in general, the overall structure of a page.

Currently, core basic tempting in Magnolia does not know the concept of a region or an area. A page merely consists of a number of paragraphs. With STK, the area has made its first appearance. The list of paragraphs an area supports as well as and the template it uses to render itself are already configurable. With STK 2 will continue to use areas.

In Magnolia 5, areas will likely get expanded even more. Region Area Editing is introducing the concept of a region or an area on the editing level as well. The idea is to hide all editing related elements of a region an area such as newBars or editBars when an area is not currently edited to solve two the main areas of concern with of current page editing.

Region Area Editing improves page editing as it:

• clearly visualises visualizes the page structure as defined by the site designer and thus improves your understanding of the page
• avoids disorientation by providing too many editing elements bars at once
• focuses your the attention on just the region you're area a user is currently working on
• improves the preview already when you're still editing a pageduring page editing, since the browser does not have to render all edit controls and thus disturbs the DOM tree less

Story

Magnolia allows me to select a region for editing by simply selecting it. Selecting a different region moves the selection from the previous to the newly selected region seamlessly.

The following image shows the comparison of the current page editing vs. Visual Page Editing of Magnolia 5 with Area Editing.

Image Added

How Area Editing works

Magnolia 5 allows to select an area or a paragraph by selecting its edit bar. This emphasizes the bar and de-emphasizes a possibly previously selected bar.

When you select an area, its edit bar is visually emphasized, while the bars of its siblings are visually dampened (e.g. drawn in a darker color). At the same time, all edit bars of its direct When I select a region (for editing), all edit controls of its sub paragraphs become visible. If any of these sub paragraphs the area contains additional paragraphsareas, the edit controls of the latter are not visible until I select their parent paragraph. The edit controls of all parent paragraphs (only, not their siblings as well) remain visible. I can thus easily explore the page structure and move the edit focus by simply selecting regions and paragraphs.

Description of desired behaviour

Selecting a region when editing a page selects it for editing - this is, of course, only possible when editing the page and not when previewing it. All edit elements of its sub paragraphs fade in or become visible using other means.
Care must be taken that any such transition is smooth and does not disorient the user, while still feeling snappy as to not hold up editing too long.

their edit bars become visible as well, but those of their children remain hidden. As for the edit bars of the parents of a currently selected area, those remain visible to visualize the chain of containing paragraphs and areas.

Collection paragraphs - normal paragraphs containing other paragraphs - are treated like implicitly defined areas: their edit bars are shown, those of their children are not, unless you select their parent. Note, however, that collection paragraphs shall be called "paragraphs" in the UI and must not be referred to as "areas" - this term is reserved for actually defined areas.

Only one bar

To further reduce the number of bars visible, Area Editing shall combine the edit bar and the new bar of an area by mounting the actions to add a paragraph and to edit an area onto the same bar.

Empty areas occupy space

If an area If a region has not been added to a page yet or if it has been added, but is currently empty, it should nevertheless occupy some configurable space on the page, both physically with a configurable default height and visually by inking it with a background color. This is necessary to visualise expose the overall page structure already on an empty page already.

To further reduce the number of bars visible, Region Editing shall combine the edit bar and the new bar of a region by mounting the possibility to add a paragraph and to edit a region onto the same bar.

With region editing, the default position of a newly added paragraph is configurable to be either at the top or at the bottom of the existing set of paragraphs.

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The height and background color of an empty or not yet added area could be specified with a new attribute on the tag declaring the edit bar of an area.

No need to add an area first

It should not be necessary to add a region an area first before adding any sub paragraphs. Currently, you first have to add e.g. a news list paragraph before you're able to add its first news item. It is highly desirable to add a news paragraph directly together with the news list region area being added implicitly when adding its first sub paragraph.

Adding a paragraph could be possible anywhere within the same region - currently, it is only possible at the place where the new bar is. It would allow for quicker editing of a page, if I could directly choose a new paragraph to be added before or after any existing sub paragraphIf an area requires the user to provide values for mandatory parameters, the forms collecting them will have to show up before the forms asking for parameter values of the actual paragraph. These forms must explain why additional values have to be given - please see the page describing how adding a paragraph (TBD) works for further details and mockups.

Mockups

This image shows the same article page as previously shown in the sections describing the areas of concern in page editing.

The above mockup shows a home page with four main areas: a side column for ads, one for extras, a central main area and a footer. The bars of the containing paragraphs are hidden.

Area

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Editing on a new page

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Selecting an area

The edit bar of the selected area is colored using the selection color to guarantee consistency across the interface. The background of the area is slightly colored to emphasize its entire block. All edit bar of its sub paragraphs slide in. Care must be taken that any such transition is smooth and does not disorient the user, while still feeling snappy as to not hold up editing for too long.

I've tried solutions using an overlay dialog for editing a region an area instead of inline editing, but these won't work. The interface becomes too jumpy and rendering problems are very likely due to only a part of the DOM tree being visible. The team currently favours favors the fade-in variant above over the greyedgrayed-out edit bars (shown below), since it doesn't render any bar at all and thus further improves the preview character of page editing.