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Information for users of the Classic user interfaces

If you are an experienced user of a Tridion SitesClassic user interface, that is either Content Manager Explorer or Experience Manager, use this topic to compare these user interfaces to Experience Space.

In Tridion Sites 10, the Experience Space user interface allows you to perform all typical tasks for authors and editors. Experience Space provides improved usability and even has some functionality that is not available in the Classic interfaces. Over time, RWS intends to completely replace the Classic user interfaces with Experience Space.

This topic summarizes how the Experience Space user interface currently compares to the Classic user interfaces.

Support for touch devices

Unlike the Classic user interfaces, Experience Space offers support for touch devices, specifically for 9.7-inch tablets running iOS.

Note that the user interface for touch devices is slightly different from a normal device. On a touch device, Experience Space cannot show tooltips and has some restrictions in terms of resizing.

Navigation

Unlike Content Manager Explorer, Experience Space offers the following navigational improvements:
  • Experience Space is designed as a single-page application, which means that by default, a content item screen replaces a list view rather than opening in a new browser tab. Users can, however, override this behavior in the following ways:
    • For items in the Central items area, you can use the Open editor in new tab option on the context menu (right click).
    • For on any hyperlink that is visible in Experience Space, such as the shortcuts in the panel, you can use CTRL+click (or +click on a Mac).
  • Experience Space lets users bookmark and share links to individual screens instead of the web application's home page.
  • The Back and Forward browser buttons are supported within the web application as a way to navigate between screens.
  • Experience Space offers keyboard support for navigating between screen areas and elements.
  • Users can collapse and resize panels and columns to their liking, and these operations are remembered across browser sessions.

List view

Like the Classic user interfaces, Experience Space shows you content items in lists. But unlike the Classic user interfaces, the new user interface offers the following improvements:
  • Clearer icons showing the publish status and lock or checked-out status for items, including locks started by the user versus locks by other users
  • Filtering and sorting support for the publish status and lock status
  • Quick type-ahead filtering in the publication tree and in the item selector
  • A link pointing to the originating ("owning") publication of the content item in the list
  • A link pointing to the Schema on which the content item is based
  • Exporting a list of selected items to a CSV (comma-separated value) file that can be opened in Excel

Insights area

When you select an item in the list view, Experience Space shows the many properties and relationships that can exist for that item in a multi-paneled area called Insights. The Insights area appears on the right side of the screen while the list view is still visible, which enables you to see detailed information without having to open the properties of each item in a separate view. For information on the various panels, refer to the Experience Space user interface overview.

Action bar

Instead of the ribbon toolbar in the list view of the Classic user interfaces, Experience Space uses an action bar above its list view. A difference to note are the following:

  • In Experience Space, the action bar displays only the action buttons that are relevant to the selected item. When you select multiple items, a button will appear if the action applies to at least one item in the selection.

  • In the Classic user interface, all toolbar buttons are always visible, but then enabled or disabled based on whether they apply to a selected item. When you select multiple items, a button is enabled only if the action applies to ALL items in the selection.

Rich text format area editing

Like the Classic user interfaces, Experience Space offers rich text editing capabilities (where this feature is enabled) but with the following improvements:
  • An improved table creating and editing experience
  • Full-screen editing (Tools > Full screen)
  • An improved accessibility checker (Tools > Accessibility checker)
  • Improved hyperlink management
  • Improved support for special characters
Compared to the Classic user interfaces, Experience Space currently works in a slightly different way with regard to the following features:
FeatureClassic user interfacesExperience Space
ID-only anchors, in compliance with HTML 5Render an anchor as <a id="example" name="example"></a>Renders it as <a id="example"></a>
Rendering of color attributesRender a color in a style attribute on the containing element using RGB color codes, for example, <p style="color: rgb(0, 255, 0);">example</p>,Renders the same input in a style attribute on a separate span element using hexadecimal color codes, for example, as <p><span style="color:#f1c40f">example</span></p>
Use of a p element rather than a div for indentationRender indentation as, say, <div style="margin-left=40px;">example</div> by defaultRenders it as <p style="margin-left=40px;">example</p> by default.
Automatic wrapping of <br/> elements for valid XHTML or HTMLDo not wrap the source XHTML or HTML if the author never presses Enter.Always wraps this content, even if the author never presses Enter.
Automatic creation of hyperlinks when pasting URLs
  • When you use the regular Paste option and paste a URL that is already a hyperlink, the text is pasted as a link (plus any other formatting). If the URL you are pasting is not already a hyperlink, it remains regular text and is not converted to a hyperlink.
  • When you use the plain text Paste option, it doesn't matter whether the original URL text is a hyperlink or not. The pasted text is always just text and not a link.
  • When you use the regular Paste button (or shortcut), the URL is pasted in the RTF area as a link regardless of whether the original text was a link or not. If the original text was not a link, the text gets converted into a link as soon as you continue typing or press Enter on the same line. The pasted text also includes any other formatting.
  • When you use the Paste as text button (or shortcut), the URL gets converted to a link regardless of whether the original text was a link or not. This is the same as URL text is converted to a link just as when using the Paste function except that no additional formatting is included.

The following features that are available in the rich text format area in the Classic user interfaces are not (yet) available in Experience Space:
  • Ability to mark inline text as an abbreviation
  • Ability to mark inline text as being in a specific language
  • Ability to include text strings without an enclosing an HTML element (by default a p tag)
  • Support for custom Content Manager styles
  • Applying the custom Filtering XSLT defined for a format area; currently such XSLT is applied only to the Classic user interfaces.

Component editing

Like the Classic user interfaces, Experience Space lets you edit components but with the following improvements:
  • Inline field validation
  • Ability to collapse embedded sets of fields for a better overview
  • Clearer options with more help text in the user interface itself

Page editing

Like the Classic user interfaces, Experience Space lets you edit pages (as distinct from the components on the page) but with the following improvements:
  • The ability to edit components directly from within the page editor
  • An optimized component insertion feature, enabling quick insertion of components into different regions
  • Drag-and-drop support when reordering components within a region

Page metadata

If you create a page in Experience Space, you cannot associate a metadata schema with it. You can only do so in the Classic user interface, Content Manager Explorer. This is because metadata for a page should now be defined through its page schema, which is specified in the page template.

However, if an existing page has a metadata schema associated with it, you can see and edit those metadata fields when you edit the page in Experience Space.

External multimedia content

Like the Classic user interfaces, Experience Space lets you add external content, such as YouTube or Vimeo videos, to your webpages.

Compared to the Classic user interfaces, Experience Space currently works in a slightly different way with regard to the following features:
  • In Experience Space, search for external content items is limited to within the external system's folder structure. In other words, you must first navigate to the external system's folder (or somewhere in it) before searching.
  • Large item lists are not split up so they display across multiple pages that you can navigate through. Rather, the items display all in a single, scrollable list.

Translation

Like the Classic user interfaces, Experience Space lets you request the translation of content.

Experience Space provides support for basic translation tasks. If your organization has implemented the Translation Manager feature, you can perform the following tasks in Experience Space:

  • Send items for translation
  • View translation information for selected items
Compared to the Classic user interfaces, Experience Space works in a slightly different way with regard to the following features:
  • In Experience Space, when you create a translation job and select Send to Translation, the job is sent to the translation management system with no further step required. In Content Manager Explorer, you can also do in one step, but you also have the option to do it in two separate steps, one to create the job and another to send it to translation.
  • This release of Experience Space does not include a queue of translation jobs, but it does provide a Translation jobs button on the Action menu that lets you quickly switch to the Translation Jobs queue in the Classic user interface.

Taxonomies

Like the Classic user interfaces, Experience Space lets you classify content according to a taxonomy. Depending on how the system is set up, you can classify your content using internal Keywords that your organization has defined in Content Manager or Concepts that are managed externally in Taxonomy Space.

The following are the differences between Experience Space and the Classic user interfaces with regard to taxonomies:
  • Smart TaggingExperience Space provides a "Smart Tagging" feature for external taxonomies that support it. This feature is not available in Content Manager Explorer. With Smart Tagging,
    You can easily and consistently classify (tag) content with concepts from an external taxonomy system in the following two ways:
    • Individually, semi-automatically — When editing a component, some fields may support the ability to get suggestions for classifying the component according to an external taxonomy. When there are one or more fields that include this functionality, the user interface will include a Suggest tags button and each field that supports the features shows the following tag icon: The suggestions are based on the current content and metadata of the item you are editing and you can review and change the tags, if needed.
    • In bulk, automatically — From the list of items in the Content Area, you can select one or more items and use the Autoclassify option to quickly and consistently classify the items without any additional steps. The classification is based on the current content and metadata of the selected items.

    Experience Space does not include options for bulk, manual classification, which applies to internal taxonomies. You can manually classify individual items that you are editing, but the bulk classification options for Classify, Reclassify and Unclassify are available only in Content Manager Explorer.

  • Editing parent keywords — Like in Content Manager Explorer, Experience Space lets you create and edit categories and keywords. Experience Space provides an additional capability when editing keywords, namely that you can edit a keyword's parent keywords. In Content Manager Explorer, you can view the parents but cannot edit them.
  • Experience Space shows different icons for tags that can be used for classification and those that cannot be used for classification, such as those used only to group together related Concepts.
    • Keywords in an internal taxonomy that can be used for classification have a solid orange tag icon: solid orange tag
    • Keywords in an internal taxonomy that cannot be used for classification have an orange outline tag icon: orange outline  tag
    • Concepts in an external taxonomy that can be used for classification have a solid blue tag icon: solid blue tag
    • Concepts in an external taxonomy that cannot be used for classification have a blue outline tag icon: blue outline tag
  • Like in Content Manager Explorer, Experience Space lets you view a list of all the content items that are classified with a selected keyword or taxonomy concept. After selecting a classified item in the list view, you can perform any of the actions that are supported in Experience Space for that item type. From the Where used > In use by panel, you can locate the item in the publication.

Workflow

Experience Space and the Classic user interfaces both support workflow in Content Manager by enabling authors and editors to view and perform assigned workflow activities.

To access the list of assigned and started activities in Experience Space, click the Activities button at the top of the page. The Workflow Activities list shows all assigned, started and finished activities (for in-progress processes) in a single list. In contrast, the Workflow Activities page (accessed from the slide-out navigation) shows assigned, started and finished activities in three separate lists.

Compared to the Classic user interfaces, workflow in Experience Space offers the following improvements:
  • Experience Space offers improved support for bulk actions on activities, that is, applying workflow actions to multiple activities at one time.
  • Where the Classic user interfaces provide a single search field to locate workflow activities in the list, Experience Space enables you to filter and sort the list by a variety of filter options and use multiple filters in combination for a highly refined view.
  • Experience Space allows you to start or finish an activity in the 'editing flow'. For example, if a component is in workflow, you can immediately start the corresponding activity and begin editing directly from the component editor.
  • The panels in the Insights area provide more details on a selected activity, included related items and process history

The status of an activity is the same whether working in Experience Space or in Classic user interface, although the terminology used is slightly different. Outside of a technical issue, every activity will have one of the following statuses:

Experience SpaceClassicDefinition
AssignedAssignedThe activity is assigned to an individual user or a group, but work has not yet begun.

If assigned to a group, any user in the group can pick up the activity.

In progressStartedA user has picked up the activity and work to perform the activity is in progress.
CompletedFinishedThe user who performed the activity has explicitly indicated that they are done with the activity.
Unlike the Classic user interface, Experience Space does not include the following features:
  • A "Things to do" list
  • The ability to create Tasks (A Task is a simple workflow process that involves no content items. )
  • Advanced options for workflow management are available only in Content Manager Explorer under Administration > Workflow Management. These include the ability to manage workflow process definitions and associations.

These things remain available in the Classic user interfaces.

Publishing

The release of SDL Web 8, a (now retired) version of the Tridion Sites product, introduced a new publishing framework and deprecated the existing publishing framework. The Tridion Sites product still allows users to use this deprecated legacy publishing framework. But such publishing is not possible from the Experience Space user interface. To perform publish actions based on the legacy publishing framework, refer to the Classic user interfaces instead.

Authorization

User authorization in Experience Space is largely the same as in Classic user interfaces, including the following:
  • You must be granted access to the Experience Space user interface, and in most cases, you are required to sign in before using the system. The way you sign in depends on how the system has been set up.
  • Your ability to perform specific tasks and to work in publications depends on your membership in one or more user groups. More generally, the rights and permissions granted to you by the Classic user interfaces equally restrict what you can see and do in Experience Space.

Unlike the Classic user interfaces, Experience Space offers the ability to sign out of the application, provided that your organization uses the Access Management feature. Note that you may need to close the browser window to completely sign out of the application.

Localizing and unlocalizing

Partly in response to customer feedback, Experience Space only lets users localize or unlocalize items one at a time. Localizing and unlocalizing are high-impact tasks, which need to be made with care. That is why we disallow batch localizing or unlocalizing in Experience Space.

Not yet available

The following author and editor tasks are not (yet) available in Experience Space:
  • Creating items of types that are not normally created by authors or editors, such as publications, schemas and templates
  • Wizards for creating a page type, content type or site
  • Managing promotions using Experience Optimization
  • Promoting and demoting items in the BluePrint
  • Cropping images