Authoring - the Environment and Tools

The authoring environment of AEM provides various mechanisms for organizing and editing your content. The tools provided are accessed from the various consoles and page editors, dependent on the UI you are using.

The Sites console of the touch-optimized UI allows you to navigate and manage your website, using the header bar, toolbar, action icons (applicable for the selected resource), breadcrumbs and when selected, secondary rails (for example, timeline and references).

For example, card view:

You can edit a page with the touch-optimized UI page editor; for example:

   http://localhost:4502/editor.html/content/geometrixx/en/products/triangle.html

When editing a page, Help can be accessed from:

• the Page Information selector; this will show the introductory slides (as shown the first time you access the editor).
• the configuration dialog for specific components (using the ? icon in the dialog toolbar); this will show context sensitive help.

Further help-related resources are available from consoles.

The components browser shows all components that are available for use on your current page. These can be dragged to the appropriate location, then edited to add your content.

The components browser is a tab within the side panel (together with the assets browser). To open (or close) the side panel use the icon at the top left of the toolbar:

When you open the side panel it will slide open (from the left side). Select the Components tab if necessary; when open you can browse through all the components available for your page.

Component groups are indicated by text and color; General is always shown in tones of green, other groups are assigned a random color (up to a maximum of ten colors, with more than ten groups the colors are reused).

From the top toolbar in the Components browser you can:

• filter components by name
  
• limit the display to a specific group using the drop down selection
  

The actual appearance and handling is dependent on the device type you are using:

The assets browser shows all assets that are available for direct use on your current page.

The assets browser is a tab within the side panel (together with the components browser). To open (or close) the side panel use the icon at the top left of the toolbar:

When you open the side panel it will slide open (from the left side). Select the Assets tab if necessary, when open you can browse through all the assets available for your page. Infinite scrolling is used to expand the list when required.

To add an asset to your page, select and drag to the required location; this can be:

• An existing component of the appropriate type.
  For example, you can drag an asset of type image onto an Image component.
  
• A placeholder in the paragraph system to create a new component of the appropriate type.
  For example, you can drag an asset of type image onto the parargraph system to create an Image component.

From the top toolbar of the assets browser you can filter the assets by:

• Name
• Path
• Asset type (i.e. images, manuscripts, documents, videos, pages, paragraphs, products)
  
• Asset characteristics; this is available for certain asset types, for example images can by filtered by Orientation (Portrait, Landscape, Square) and Style (Color, Monochrome, Grayscale)
  

The actual appearance and handling is dependent on the device type you are using:

If your page contains Content Fragments then you will also have access to the browser for Associated Content.

References shows connections to the selected page:

• Blueprints
• Launches
• Live copies
• Language copies
• Use of the reference component
• References to Product pages (from the Commerce - Products console)

Open the required console, then navigate to the required resource and open References using:

Select your required resource to show a list of references types relevant to that resource:

Select the appropriate reference type for more information. In certain situations further actions are available when you select a specific reference, including:

• Instances of the Reference component (e.g. navigate to referencing/referenced page)
  
• References to Product pages (available from the Commerce-Products console)
• Launches
• Live Copies displays the paths of all live copies that are based on the selected resource.
• Blueprint
• Languages Copies

For example, you can fix a broken reference within a Reference component:

For appropriate resources (e.g. pages from the Sites console, or assets from the Assets console) the timeline can be used to show the recent activity on any selected items.

Open the required console, then navigate to the required resource and open Timeline, using:

Select your required resource, then either Show All or Activities to list any recent actions on the selected resources:

The Page Information (equalizer icon) opens a menu that also provides details about the last edit  and the last publication. Depending on the characteristics of the page (and the site it is located in) more options might be available:

• Open Properties
• Start Workflow
• Lock Page
• Publish Page
• Unpublish Page
• View as Published
• View in Admin
• Open in Classic UI

For example, when appropriate, Page Information also:

• Provides access to analytics and recommendations
  
• Allows you to perform a page rollout
• Allows you to promote a launch.

When editing a page with the touch-optimized UI there are various modes:

• Edit - the mode to use when editing the page content.
• Scaffolding - help you to create a large set of pages that share the same structure but have differing content.
• Developer - allows you to perform various actions (requires privileges); these include inspecting the technical details of a page and its components.
  
• Design - allows you to enable/disable components for use on a page; also to configure the design of the component.
• Targeting - increase content relevance through targeting and measuring across all channels.
• Live Copy Status - allows a quick overview of the live copy status and which components are/are not inherited.

• Preview - used to view the page as it will be shown on the publish environment; or to navigate using links in the content.
  
• Annotate - used to add or view annotations on the page.

You can access these using the icons in the top right corner, the actual icon will change to reflect the mode you are currently using:

The Websites console of the classic UI also allows you to manage and navigate your website; using the two panes the structure of your website can be expanded and actions taken on the required element:

There is a separate page editor with the classic UI, using the content finder and the sidekick:

http://localhost:4502/cf#/content/geometrixx/en/products/triangle.html

Various Help resources can be directly accessed from within AEM:

The Components tab of the sidekick allows you to browse the components available to be added to the current page. The required group can be expanded, then a component dragged to the required location on the page.

The Content Finder is a quick and easy way to find assets and/or content within the repository when editing a page.

You can use the content finder to locate a range of resources. Where appropriate you can drag an item and drop it into a paragraph on your page:

• Images
• Manuscripts
• Documents
• Movies
• Scene 7 Media Browser
• Pages
  
• Paragraphs
• Products
• Or to browse the website by repository structure.
  

On all options you can search for specific items.

This tab lists any images in the repository.

After you have created an Image paragraph on your page, you can drag an item and drop it into the paragraph.

This tab lists any documents in the repository.

After you have created a Download paragraph on your page, you can drag an item and drop it into the paragraph.

This tab lists any movies (for example, Flash items) in the repository.

After you have created an appropriate paragraph (for example, Flash) on your page, you can drag an item and drop it into the paragraph.

This tab lists any products. After you have created an appropriate paragraph (for example, Product) on your page, you can drag an item and drop it into the paragraph.

This tab shows all pages. Double-click any page to open it for editing.

This tab allows you to search for another page. All paragraphs from that page will be listed. You can then drag a paragraph to your current page, this will create a reference to the original paragraph.

This tab can be used to locate manuscripts:

This tab shows all the resources in the repository.

On all options you can search for specific items. Any tags and any resources that match the search pattern are listed:

You can also use wildcards for search. Supported wildcards are:

• *
  matches a sequence of zero or more characters.
  
• ?
  matches a single character.

For example, if there is an image avaialable with the name:

    ad-nmvtis.jpg

the following search patterns will find it (and any other images matching the pattern):

• name:*nmv*
• name:AD*
  the character matching is not case sensitive.
• name:ad?nm??is.*
  you can use any number of wildcards in a query.

AEM lets you view which pages are linked to the page you are currently working on.

To show direct page references:

In certain situations further actions are available from Sidekick, including:

• Launches
• Live Copies
  
• Blueprint

And other inter-page relationships can be seen in the Websites console.

The Audit Log can be accessed from the Information tab of the sidekick. It lists the recent actions taken on the current page; for example:

The Website console also provides information about the current status of the page; for example, publication, modification, locked, livecopy, etc.

When editing a page with the classic UI there are various modes that can be accessed using the icons at the bottom of the sidekick:

The row of icons at the bottom of the Sidekick are used to switch modes for working with the pages:

• Edit
  This is the default mode and allows you to edit the page, adding or deleting components and making other changes.
• Preview
  This mode allows you to preview the page as if it were appearing on your website in its final form.
• Design
  In this mode, you have the possibility to edit the design of the page by configuring the components accessible.

Various keyboard shortcuts are available in the touch-optimized and classic UIs.