Scott Reed
Mar 14, 2023
  3402
(5 votes)

Restoring Help Text For Description in Latest Optimizely CMS

It's been a well known CSS hack for a while to force the showing of the description text for a property in to the editor view rather than a hover as per these articles

https://buildoptimizely.com/episerver/optimizely-cms-12-help-text-and-expanded-input-text-boxes/ 

https://talk.alfnilsson.se/2014/12/18/display-help-text-in-on-page-editing/ 

However in a recent version of CMS this broke due to updated UI around the all properties view.

With the following replacement CSS this will restore a similar features

div.dijitTabPaneWrapper div:has(div.oui-pop--over) {
    display: block !important;
}


div.dijitTabPaneWrapper div.click-area {
    display: none !important;
}

div.dijitTabPaneWrapper div.oui-pop--over {
    border: none !important;
    max-width: 600px;
    font-style: italic;
    color: red;
}

With this applied you'll get an interface that looks like this

This is working in Chrome and Edge and will restore the inline text and remove the popup icon, only for the main properties area.

I've highlighted it red but feel free to modify.

As per the previous guides this needs to be placed in a CSS file such as this editmode.css

And then registered in a module.config in the application root (not wwwroot) such as

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<module>
	<clientResources>
		<add name="epi-cms.widgets.base" path="Styles/editmode.css" resourceType="Style"/>
	</clientResources>
</module>
Mar 14, 2023

Comments

Mike Malloy
Mike Malloy Sep 15, 2023 06:27 PM

Did this break again? I saw it working on EPiServer.CMS 12.20.0, upgraded to 12.22.6 and now the icon is hidden but the Description doesn't display.

Bartosz Sekula
Bartosz Sekula Oct 12, 2023 10:50 AM

Mike, can you please share a screenshot? I can see help icons next to each property:

Bartosz Sekula
Bartosz Sekula Oct 12, 2023 10:53 AM

OK, sorry, I did not read the post clear enough. Why the icon does not work for you and you need the help text to be visible?

Mike Malloy
Mike Malloy Oct 12, 2023 12:11 PM

Correct. I would like to hide the icon and always show the Description.

Eric Petersson
Eric Petersson Oct 23, 2023 02:21 PM

I stumbled upon a breaking change when upgrading from Optimizely CMS 12.12 to 12.23 with my previous registered custom dojo scripts and styles.

Simply moved the containing folder from WebProjectFolder.Name/ClientResources to wwwroot/ClientResources

And my module.config looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<module>
	<clientResources>
		<add name="epi-cms.widgets.base" path="Styles/editmode.css" resourceType="Style"/>
	</clientResources>
	<dojo>
		<!-- Add a mapping from alloy to ~/ClientResources/Scripts to the dojo loader configuration -->
		<paths>
			<add name="alloy" path="Scripts" />
		</paths>
	</dojo>
</module>

Please login to comment.
Latest blogs
Optimizely Opal: How to Build Effective Workflow Agents

If you're building workflow agents in Optimizely Opal, this post covers how specialized agents pass context to each other, why keeping agents small...

Andre | May 20, 2026

ReviewPR: An Azure Function That Reviews Your Azure DevOps Pull Requests With Claude

A while back I wrote about an  Azure Function App for PDF creation that we use to offload PDF rendering from our Optimizely DXP site. That same...

KennyG | May 19, 2026

Accelerating Optimizely CMS and Commerce upgrades with agentic AI (Part 2 of 2)

The Real Transformation in Optimizely CMS 13: Why the Upgrade Itself Is the Easy Part. A field-tested playbook for enterprise teams moving from...

Hung Le Hoang | May 18, 2026

Is the most powerful AI model really the best value?

Artificial Intelligence is already becoming part of everyday software development. Developers now use AI tools to generate code, write documentatio...

K Khan | May 16, 2026