Improving CB UI

Hi Mark,

thanx a lot for this very nice extra. Developing sites with CB is awesome and brings a nice flexibility to the editors without breaking the CI.

While working with CB i thought about some UI improvements for a better experience and would like to share that with you.

My biggest problem is this small editor area for elements (layouts, templates etc.). Of course i can maximice the editor window, but this will stick to the parent popup. So i think it would be nice to move CB more into the regular manager area (see Screenshot) we are all used to.

By having a CB tab inside the modx sidebar with all the elements (fields, layouts, templates, etc.) inside, we would have the whole main area for the editable items. This would give us a way bigger editor area, just like editing a template, chunk or snippet.

It is just an idea - i thought i share this with you.

The idea of using the sidebar to have the fields and layouts has come up before, but I don’t think it would be ideal. Users are used to having their sitemap in the sidebar, and I think adding the layout/field selection into that same place is not intuitive, cause people to have to switch tabs when editing multiple resources.

I do agree that we need to do a bit more work in MODX 3 specifically to use the full width, and reimagining the overall UX is something were doing for v2.

At the moment there is a setting that allows you to choose between a few options of where to place the canvas (including on a new tab and below the main resource section); you may find that to be a step in the right direction.

Hi Mark,

i think i did not be very clear and we misunderstood each other. I did not talk about the editor UI and not about MODX 3. I think this is perfect as it is.

I was talking about the Admin-Area of Content-Blocks (independent of MODX 3). I just used MODX 3 to template/moqup my ideas - to show you how this could look like:
Right now the admins work in a CMP of CB and have very small areas for the Code. I attache a Screenshot. Even if you maximice the code-areas it will stick to the popup-windows size. In my example this is ok. But sometimes you have much more code and than the small window will be very hard to code in.

That way i thought about moving the CB Admin-Area inside the sidebar. This would make all items (Templates, Layouts, Fields, Rules Categories) much faster accesabble and provide the whole main Area on the right for coding and settings of the item.

This would also be the workflow every admin is used to by editing MODX Templates, TVs and Chunks. Just switch the Tab to Content-Blocks and edit the Fields, Layouts, Templates, Rules and Categories.

The CB-Tab in the sidebar would just be visible for the site-admins.

Ahh, yeah I totally misunderstood that. :smile:

The possibilty to set templates as static files would also help
RDG