Information for users of the Classic user interfaces

If you are an experienced user of the existing user interfaces for Tridion Sites, that is, Content Manager Explorer and Experience Manager, use this topic to compare these Classic user interfaces, as they are now collectively known, to Experience Space.

In Tridion Sites 9.6, the Experience Space user interface enables you to perform a subset of the tasks that you can do using the Classic user interfaces. Experience Space also has 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. The user interface for touch devices is slightly different from a normal device:
  • On a touch device, Experience Space cannot show tooltips.
  • On a touch device, Experience Space has some restrictions in terms of resizing.

Navigation

Unlike Content Manager Explorer, Experience Space offers the following navigational improvements:
  • Experience Space is a single-page application by default, which means that by default, a content item screen replaces a list view rather than opening in a new browser tab. To override this behavior on a non-touch device, users can use CTRL+click (or +click on a Mac) on any hyperlink that is visible in Experience Space, such as the shortcuts in the panel.
  • Experience Space lets users deeplink individual screens and share the link with other users.
  • 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 UI 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 property panel

The many properties and relationships that can exist for a selected item in the list view are now shown on the right hand side of the screen, in a new multi-tabbed panel called Insights. Use this area to see, among others:
  • The content and metadata of Components
  • The structure and metadata of Pages
  • BluePrint relationships, showing shared and localized items across the BluePrint hierarchy
  • Translation information, showing the translation status for the item across the BluePrint hierarchy
  • Where Used relationships, showing how an item is used across the system
  • Published To properties, showing where the item was published across Publications
  • History

Action bar

Replacing the Ribbon toolbar in the list view of the Classic user interfaces, Experience Space introduces an Action Bar above its list view, which shows only the actions the user can perform on the selected item(s), as distinct from the properties and relationships of the selected item(s), which are now on the right hand side. Actions in the Action Bar include:
  • Create
  • Cut, copy, paste, delete
  • Finish and revert (save and finalize changes or undo checkout)
  • Publish and unpublish
  • Autoclassify
  • Add to a bundle
  • Export
Actions that are available in the Classic user interfaces, but not (yet) available in Experience Space include the following:
  • Promote and demote
  • Crop image
  • View on site

Rich text format area editing

Like the Classic user interfaces, Experience Space offers rich text editing capabilities where this feature is enabled. But unlike the Classic user interfaces, the new UI offers the following improvements:
  • The ability to paste with inline styles removed (also called a clean paste or merged paste)
  • The ability to paste as plain text
  • An improved table creating and editing experience
  • Full-screen editing
  • The ability to align paragraphs using "justify" alignment (so that text is aligned evenly along the left and right margins)
  • Numbered lists
  • Improved hyperlink management
  • An improved accessibility checker
  • Improved support for special characters
  • ID-only anchors, in compliance with HTML 5: Classic user interfaces render an anchor as <a id="example" name="example"></a>, while Experience Space renders it as <a id="example"></a>
  • Improved rendering of color attributes: Classic user interfaces render 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>, while Experience Space 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>
  • Automatic wrapping of <br/> elements for valid XHTML or HTML: Classic user interfaces do not wrap the source XHTML or HTML if the author never presses Enter, while Experience Space always wraps this content, even if the author never presses Enter.
  • Use of a p element rather than a div for indentation: Classic user interfaces render indentation as, say, <div style="margin-left=40px;">example</div> by default, while Experience Space renders it as <p style="margin-left=40px;">example</p> by default.
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
  • 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 unlike the Classic user interfaces, the new UI offers 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 unlike the Classic user interfaces, the new UI offers 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.

In this release, 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 currently 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.
  • In Experience Space, translation jobs include by default any items that are nested in the items you select and add to the job. As of this release, the jobs do not translate Pages or organizational items and you do not have the option to translate them as you do in the Classic UI. If you need to translate these items, you can still do so from Content Manager Explorer.
  • 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 Content Manager Explorer.

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 interface 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 UI 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 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

Support for workflow in Experience Space is currently limited to starting and finishing activities as part of the normal editing flow. The following author and editor tasks are not (yet) available in Experience Space:
  • Seeing a workflow activity list
  • Progressing a workflow activity or assigning a workflow task
  • Seeing workflow lists

Publishing

The following author and editor tasks are not (yet) available in Experience Space:
  • Seeing publishing lists – This release of Experience Space does not include a queue of publishing jobs, but it does provide a Publishing queue button on the Action menu that lets you quickly open the Publishing Queue in the Classic UI.
  • Use of legacy 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:
  • Experience Space does not (yet) support creating items of types that are not normally created by authors or editors, such as Publications, Schemas and Templates.
  • The Content Manager Explorer wizards for creating a Page Type, Content Type or Site are not (yet) available in Experience Space.
  • Managing promotions using Experience Optimization is not available.
  • Extensibility is limited to integration with External Content Library (ECL).