The Experience Editor

Version: 9.0

The Experience Editor is a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor that allows you to easily make changes to items directly on the page. You can edit all the items that are visible on the page — text, graphics, logos, links, and so on.

In the Experience Editor, you can edit the fields of the current item and the fields of any items rendered on the page. For instance, if the menu on the page consists of titles of the product items, you can edit the titles without navigating to the product items themselves.

The Experience Editor

This topic describes the following:

The ribbon in the Experience Editor

In the Experience Editor, the ribbon with all the available functionality is displayed at the top of the webpage. The functionality on the ribbon varies depending on your security roles and the customizations of the website that you are accessing.

If you have full access to all functionality in the Experience Editor, you have access to all the tabs on the ribbon, each with its own collection of commands.

The Experience Editor ribbon

As a minimum, you can expect to be able to insert a page and delete a page on your website. Regardless of the ribbon that you use, there is always a Save button in the top-left corner.

When you edit an item, you can click Hide Ribbon  to hide the ribbon temporarily and give yourself more space to work with. Click Show Ribbon  to display the ribbon.

Customize the view in the Experience Editor

If you have the appropriate access rights, you can change the way the Experience Editor presents the editable items for you.

On the ribbon, on the View tab, you can set up the Experience Editor:

  • To show the editable text fields, select the Editing check box. When you move your mouse over the fields in the Experience Editor, the text fields appear with a dotted outline.

  • To show the renderings and placeholders, select the Designing check box. When you move your mouse over the fields in the Experience Editor, the renderings and placeholders appear with a dotted outline.

  • To show outlines of all the objects on a page, select the Controls check box. Use this feature to understand how the page is organized. This check box is only active when the Designing or Editing check box is selected.

  • To outline, with a green dotted line, all the components on a page that contain associated content, select the Associated content check box.

Improve the ribbon load time

If you have the appropriate access rights, you can improve the time it takes to load the Experience Editor ribbon if you turn off the request that displays the number of items you have locked.

The View tab on the Experience Editor ribbon

To improve the ribbon load time:

  • In the Website\App_Config\Sitecore\Experience Editor\ folder, open the Sitecore.ExperienceEditor.config file. In the WebEdit.ShowNumberOfLockedItemsOnButton setting, change the value to false.

You can suppress notifications displayed in the Experience Editor that are related to presentation. For example, you can suppress a workflow notification.

Example of a workflow notification that you can suppress.

To disable notifications:

  1. In the Website\App_Config\Sitecore\Experience Editor\ folder, open the Sitecore.ExperienceEditor.config file.

  2. Go to the getPageEditorNotifications pipeline and remove any of the following processors to disable notifications:

    • Sitecore.ExperienceEditor.Pipelines.GetPageEditorNotifications.LanguageAccessNotification, Sitecore.ExperienceEditor - displays notifications related to language, for example, "The security settings for the current language prevent you from seeing this item".

    • Sitecore.Pipelines.GetPageEditorNotifications.GetWorkflowNotification, Sitecore.ExperienceEditor - displays notifications related to workflows, for example, "The item is in the "Final" workflow state in the <sample workflow> workflow".

    • Sitecore.Pipelines.GetPageEditorNotifications.NeverPublishNotification, Sitecore.ExperienceEditor - displays notifications about publishing restrictions, for example, ""Publishing is restricted for this item".

    • Sitecore.Pipelines.GetPageEditorNotifications.FallbackFieldsCountNotification, Sitecore.ExperienceEditor - displays notifications for fallback items showing the number of fields that contain a fallback value.

    • Sitecore.Pipelines.GetPageEditorNotifications.ReadOnlyNotification, Sitecore.ExperienceEditor - displays notifications for fallback items related to the language version, for example, "No version exists in the current language. You see a fallback version from <original language>".

    • Sitecore.Pipelines.GetPageEditorNotifications.GetLockingNotification, Sitecore.ExperienceEditor - displays notifications about an item when it is locked by a user, for example, "You cannot edit this item because <user> has locked it".

    • Sitecore.Pipelines.GetPageEditorNotifications.GetWriteAccessDeniedNotification, Sitecore.ExperienceEditor - displays notifications about the write access of an item, for example, "You cannot edit this item because you do not have write access to it".

  3. Save your changes.

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