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Better Contextual Editing

#1

Contextual editing can be a pain when the padding and margins are at zero where you have widgets stacked on widgets.

Could I suggest a left or right ‘gutter’ option in additional to ‘bottom-right’, ‘top-left’, etc for controls (gutters are x-max or x-min +/- controller area width). If the control buttons were on display in y positions (y stacked) and named in y-index order + plus meta names, this would make life so much easier as every control would be displayed and accessible without countless hovering attempts. It would also look really cool as well!

A line connecting the gutter button to the div would be nice but not important. The important thing is being able to edit widgets that are close to other widgets, which can be impossible at the moment without excessive padding and margins.

#2

Hi hexitex, are you aware of the blockLevel: true option to apos.area? If you use it consistently for “parent” or “layout” widgets, and don’t use it for those nested inside, there are some nice affordances to improve the nested experience.

#3

No, I wasn’t - the problem I have is my widget can be both a container and nested so it would not help.

#4

OK I see. This sounds like a reasonable area for community contributions. The reason we don’t automatically do this every time is because horizontal and vertical indentation changes how WYSIWYG the result is and creates alignment and styling differences bertween the logged-out and logged-in views. But for some projects it might be a practical necessity.