The form-based content editor is completely written in HTML 5 for ease-of-use and speed. The editor is automatically generated based on XML schemas describing the structure of content types. It provides a rich user interface for the content managers. All fields of an XML content can be edited via intuitive widgets.
Main features of the content editor are:
The form-based editor is the standard editor for XML contents. It opens when you click the pencil at a content element in the page editor, or when you edit an XML content from the workplace. The editor shows all content fields in an intuitivly editable way. Dependent on the type of the content field, special editor widgets are used.
FigureĀ [content_editor_example] shows a content opened in the form-based editor. In the example you see:
To edit a content, just click on the editor field displaying the content value you want to edit. Then, it depends on the widget used for the editor field, which options you get for editing. Typically, each widget is intuitive and you should not need extra information on how to use it. For more information on the available widgets, and on how to configure them, see here.
The form-based editor's toolbar provides options to store, and publish content, to close the editor and to handle multiple languages. Here are the options one by one.
Save and publish the content.
Save changes (for all languages) and close the editor.
Save changes (for all languages).
Undo the latest change in whatever editor field you edited last.
Redo the lastest change in whatever editor field you edited last.
Choose the language you want to edit.
Delete the content in the currently displayed language.
Copy the content values of the currently displayed language (or locale) to another language. A dialog pops up, where you can select to which language you want to copy the values.
If the option is activated, help is shown whenever you click in an editor field to edit content. If the option is deactiviated, you still can get help by hovering over the names of the editor fields.
Close the editor without saving changes.
In the following sections, we discuss several details of the form-based content editor. Here we only briefly hint on some things that may be discussed in detail below.
When you edit content, or latest when something behaves "strange" in your eyes, you should be aware that:
When you edit content values, fields you edit may get highlighted yellow or red. If so, the entered value does not comply with the intended format. Usually, you also get a warning or error message shown.
When errors or warnings appear in tabs, the tab is highlighted accordingly - either yellow or red. Errors or warnings in other languages you cannot see directly.
But, what's the difference between errors and warnings? Warnings you can simply ignore, but errors will prevent saving changes. The save buttons will be deactivated when an error is present and pressing publish will result in an error message.
When you edit a content, you can potentially always edit it in multiple languages. But, when you create a new content, it is created only in one language. This language depends on the locale of the page where you add the content. E.g., if you add a content on an english page, it will be available in english.
If you want provide your content in more than one language you can:
For each content type, it can be configured that special fields of the content should be the same in all languages. This may in particular be used for images or links.
If a content is edited outside of the form-based or the inline editor, it may happen that usually synchronized values are out of sync. To sync them again, use the "Synchronize" button in the "Copy locale" dialog. Then all fields that should be synchronized are set to the values of these fields in the currently edited language. Note that the "Synchronize" button only appears in the "Copy locale" dialog if there are synchronized fields defined.