Improve navigation to blocks when using non culture specifc Content Areas

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A pretty specific request this, but one which I guess must impact most multi-languages sites and make the editor experience slower and less fluid.

When a ContentArea is not marked as culture specific then it is displayed as 'greyed out / disabled' when viewing it on the non master language version of a piece of content.

This means for an editor to navigate from a non master language version of a page to edit the same language version of a block used in a content area on that page they have to:

  • Navigate to the specific lanaguage version of the page/content in the CMS
  • Switch to the master language version (forcing a full editor reload)
  • Find the block they wish to edit in in the content area  and use the hamburger menu for the block to load the edit preview for that block
  • Switch back to the specific language (again forcing a full editor reload)

Quite a number of steps and two full editor refreshes!

Admittedly there are other ways for the editor to get to a block (such as directly navigating to it if they know where it is sotred in the Blocks folder, or scanning in the 'Blocks for this page folder'. However this assumes that Editors have a very in-depth knowledge of where content is stored.

You could solve this by still displaying the edit hamburger context option for block even if the Content Area is not culture specific (but limiting the other interactions)

(Let me know if that makes sense, otherwise I can add a screengrab)

#190335
Apr 09, 2018 17:09
Vote:
 

+1 from me.

I've certainly hit this issue and I'd like to see it resolved by just showing an edit icon in place of the hamburger icon that can be clicked to go to the block.

#190344
Apr 09, 2018 20:26
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Great suggestion. We have an upcomming story around simplifying publishing of blocks. Translation is one area where I would like to make some improvements, but we haven't exactly nailed down how much ground we will cover yet. Would you say this problem affects blocks used on a single page or blocks that are used on multiple pages more?

#190607
Apr 12, 2018 17:17
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Thanks for the response Martin.

In answer to your question. I think its both and its not really about translation, its more about simplifying navigation. Some of the more junior editors don't really know where Blocks are stored and actually don;t really need to. They usually have a task to update a particular bit of copy. So they navigate to the page, so they can find the block in the content area that requires the edit. If (as in our case the content area isn;t culture specific then they have to switch languages (to master) to be able to navigate / edit the block they need to. They then have to switch back once they've loaded the block so they can edit the content

Another thing I wondered about is moving the 'Blocks for this page' folder to the top of the asset folder list. It gets hidden and I see alot of editors not know about the functionality and replicate it by creating asset folders specific to a page.

#190637
Apr 13, 2018 12:06
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Thanks for clarifying!

#191164
Apr 23, 2018 9:12
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