Display Page preview: That would certainly be useful. It would at least be nice to immediately see that a field is mapped instead of the default text.
The tricky part:
The thing is, while the fully flexible layout is awesome in some places, it also creates some issue for the editor. Previously, with the rigid layout some things were easier and some things were outright impossible (well, not true, but required coding/were really tricky).
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I have placed three standard cards on a page here and entered some stuff. Editors actually have a hard time with these cards and we have replaced them. While he current version of the card has a TON of options and the number of options is quite overwhelming, this still cannot be fixed by the editor. He can seemingly correctly align things for his resolution but it will break again for other resolutions when the page becomes broader or smaller.
But it is even worse for mappings. When editors map things, they can't see the result and only expect that all elements are correctly aligned. But that isn't true in some cases. This becomes even more true, when you can move them around. When we created the page and mapped stuff, we styled the elements to align correctly. We were asked to place the name of the author on the top left, then some heading and some other stuff.
The customer then asked: I would like the author on the bottom. We said: Oh, just move it down. He did that, but suddenly the margins or something did not add up and we had to fix it. At first, the subtitle had to be in the banner then, they wanted it in the left column, where the editor is.
You soon realize a few things:
The standard elements will get you only so far. You need custom fragments, e.g. for the cards. And a bit later you realize that it is still tricky to make it look good if the elements can be rearranged.
The customer doesn't want to arrange the page. (Ok, there are some guys who really like to fiddle with the page and usually wreak havoc ...) He wants it to look neat and cool and tell somebody "Make it happen".
I had a discussion today with a customer. He wanted to be able to "configure the colors themselves". I said, sure, theme settings and in 7.3 there is a neat new thing called "Style book". Then something weird happened: The person who asked was completely overruled by the rest of marketing: We don't want to do that.
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The tricky part:
The thing is, while the fully flexible layout is awesome in some places, it also creates some issue for the editor. Previously, with the rigid layout some things were easier and some things were outright impossible (well, not true, but required coding/were really tricky).
I have placed three standard cards on a page here and entered some stuff. Editors actually have a hard time with these cards and we have replaced them. While he current version of the card has a TON of options and the number of options is quite overwhelming, this still cannot be fixed by the editor. He can seemingly correctly align things for his resolution but it will break again for other resolutions when the page becomes broader or smaller.
But it is even worse for mappings. When editors map things, they can't see the result and only expect that all elements are correctly aligned. But that isn't true in some cases. This becomes even more true, when you can move them around. When we created the page and mapped stuff, we styled the elements to align correctly. We were asked to place the name of the author on the top left, then some heading and some other stuff.
The customer then asked: I would like the author on the bottom. We said: Oh, just move it down. He did that, but suddenly the margins or something did not add up and we had to fix it. At first, the subtitle had to be in the banner then, they wanted it in the left column, where the editor is.
You soon realize a few things:
The standard elements will get you only so far. You need custom fragments, e.g. for the cards. And a bit later you realize that it is still tricky to make it look good if the elements can be rearranged.
The customer doesn't want to arrange the page. (Ok, there are some guys who really like to fiddle with the page and usually wreak havoc ...) He wants it to look neat and cool and tell somebody "Make it happen".
I had a discussion today with a customer. He wanted to be able to "configure the colors themselves". I said, sure, theme settings and in 7.3 there is a neat new thing called "Style book". Then something weird happened: The person who asked was completely overruled by the rest of marketing: We don't want to do that.
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Thanks for providing so many details about the real world use case. All that information is gold for us!
What you are describing is the reason why we started with the ability to create custom fragments, because there will always be cases where they end up being the most optimal solution. Of course, we also want to make it possible to build sites and pages for as many scenarios as possible. As you've seen in 7.3 we've added much more flexibility in the page editor, but we also want to learn about cases where we might have added to much or at least common use cases that we could provide a simpler solution for. Please, keep the feedback coming
BTW, I'm particularly interested to find out how the conversation with that custom goes. The scenario that we have had in mind for Style Books is very similar to what you are describing, where for example Marketing defines the desired visual style (or even a full design system) and that's coded in a Style Book (or several variations when desired). The page editors will then be able to choose styling options but only among those defined in the style book. In other words, the style books are not for the person who asked you first, but for their marketing department. Makes sense?
What you are describing is the reason why we started with the ability to create custom fragments, because there will always be cases where they end up being the most optimal solution. Of course, we also want to make it possible to build sites and pages for as many scenarios as possible. As you've seen in 7.3 we've added much more flexibility in the page editor, but we also want to learn about cases where we might have added to much or at least common use cases that we could provide a simpler solution for. Please, keep the feedback coming
BTW, I'm particularly interested to find out how the conversation with that custom goes. The scenario that we have had in mind for Style Books is very similar to what you are describing, where for example Marketing defines the desired visual style (or even a full design system) and that's coded in a Style Book (or several variations when desired). The page editors will then be able to choose styling options but only among those defined in the style book. In other words, the style books are not for the person who asked you first, but for their marketing department. Makes sense?
Hi Krzysztof,
Regarding your comment about the Display pages for fragments: Since you need access to data related to the asset such as categories or tags, I was wondering if you were aware that you can get access to the Asset being displayed on the display page in the freemarker template of a fragment. This means that you can create a fragment that will render categories or tags however you want, when it is placed on a display page. The assetEntry can be accessed as follows:
Regarding your comment about the Display pages for fragments: Since you need access to data related to the asset such as categories or tags, I was wondering if you were aware that you can get access to the Asset being displayed on the display page in the freemarker template of a fragment. This means that you can create a fragment that will render categories or tags however you want, when it is placed on a display page. The assetEntry can be accessed as follows:
[#assign currentEntry = (request.getAttribute("LIFERAY_SHARED_LAYOUT_ASSET_ENTRY"))! /]