Experience Space user interface
SDL Tridion Sites 9.5 introduces a new browser-based user interface: Experience Space, alongside the existing Content Manager Explorer and Experience Manager user interfaces, now jointly called the "Classic user interfaces."
As from SDL Tridion Sites 9.5, the Classic user interfaces are considered legacy functionality. The term "legacy" does not mean that these interfaces are already deprecated, but it does mean that over time, starting from SDL Tridion Sites 9.5, Experience Space will gradually incorporate more and more of the functionality of the Classic user interfaces, and that Experience Space is the recommended user interface for such functionality. For the SDL Tridion Sites 9.5 release, Experience Space will offer the most commonly used, core editing functionality.
- Working with Classic user interfaces and Experience Space
- Experience Space has a different URL than the Classic user interfaces, and Experience Space has a shortcut to jump to the Classic user interfaces. When you open items of certain item types in Experience Space, they will open in Classic user interface pop-ups. Ideally, users should keep both user interfaces open in separate browsers or tabs, switching as needed. Note that Experience Space is supported on a different set of browsers than the Classic user interfaces. For best results, use a browser that supports both.
- Component editing in a form view
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Compared to the Classic user interfaces, component editing in a form view has been improved in the following ways:
- Inline field validation
- The ability to collapse embedded sets of fields
- Improved drag-and-drop abilities
- Clearer options and descriptions for editing options
- A cleaner, simpler and more focused interface: most item actions are found in the list view, and item viewers (relationships) are embedded as tabs within the form.
- Page editing in a form view
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Compared to the Classic user interfaces, page editing in a form view has been improved in the following ways:
- The ability to directly edit component content in the page editor
- The ability to see a quick preview of the components on the page and their info (such as who locked the component or which approval status it has)
- The ability to insert components, optimized for a quick insert of multiple components into different regions
- The ability to use drag-and-drop to reorder components within a region
- Editing rich text formatting areas
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Compared to the Classic user interfaces, rich text editing introduces the following improvements:
- The ability to paste with inline styles removed ("clean" or merged paste)
- The ability to paste as plain text
- Improved table creation and editing experience
- Full-screen editing
- Improved hyperlink management
- Improved accessibility checking
- Improved special character support
- Syntax highlighter (markup) editor
- Rich text formatting always wraps elements with either paragraph tags or the existing tag
- Support for links to anchors based on IDs rather than name attributes, following HTML5 standards
- Support for color codes in hexadecimal instead of RGB
- All markup is automatically wrapped for valid (X)HTML
- Inline alignment attributes use margin instead of padding
- List view
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Compared to the Classic user interfaces, the Experience Space list view includes improvements such as:
- Clearer item status icons for Publish and Checked-out status, on which the list can also be filtered and sorted
- A Schema column that lets users know the type of content in a given list at a glance
- Quick type-ahead filtering in the item selector
- The publication filter offers users the ability to type in parts of the publication, tree, or Publication Type name, which then reduces the list of publications shown
- A link to an item's owning publication lets users quickly navigate to the item that controls related items in a BluePrint hierarchy (relationship)
- A link to the Schema on which the item is based
- Page metadata
- Whilst the Classic user interface page editor still allows users to associate a Metadata Schema with a Page, the recommended approach is to define page metadata in the Page Schema.
- Context menu items
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The main list view in Experience Space has an Action Bar, which shows which actions are applicable to the current selection. Supported actions include:
- Cut, copy, paste, and delete
- Publish and unpublish
- Localize and unlocalize
- Finish editing and Revert
- Item viewers
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The Experience Space property panel shows information and relationships for items selected in the new content explorer. This includes updated panels with actions for:
- BluePrint relationships, showing shared and localized items across the BluePrint
- Where Used relationships, to show how an item is used throughout the system
- Published To status across Publications
- History
- Navigation
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Compared to the Classic user interfaces, Experience Space offers several improvements to navigating the inferface:
- Experience Space is designed as a single-page application: by default, items such as Component and Pages open within the same browser tab. However, users on a desktop computer can use standard browser controls to open an item in a separate browser tab.
- Browser forward and back support to navigate between screens
- Experience Space screens can be deeplinked, allowing users to copy a specific location in the content manager, which can be shared with other users. This replaces the Classic UI "email" feature.
- Keyboard support to move through the interface between and within panels
- External Content Library (ECL) support
- Experience Space provides limited support for External Content Library (ECL) items. Experience Space gives users the ability to add external content, such as YouTube or Vimeo videos, to their web pages.
In this release, ECL support differs from the Classic Content Manager in the following ways:
- Editing ECL items is not available.
- The workflow actions that users can perform on ECL items are limited to Publish and Unpublish.
- Pagination is not supported in lists. Rather, the ECL items display all in a single, scrollable list.
- Copy-pasting into rich text format fields
- Because it is built on different technology, Experience Space is less tolerant about what a user can paste into a rich text field. Specifically, Experience Space strips out markup when a user pastes from Microsoft Word or HTML. Also, code is not supported in rich text format fields.
- Responsiveness
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Compared to the Classic user interfaces, Experience Space offers several responsiveness improvements:
- Panels and columns are collapsible and resizable, and panel sizes are remembered by the browser.
- Experience Space is supported on selected touch screen devices.
- Extensibility
- In the SDL Tridion Sites 9.5 release, Experience Space allows for External Content Library (ECL) extensions only. Refer to the dedicated topic about extensibility to learn more.