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Hi Nuno,

Draft mode is currently not implemented for the Visual Editor, and there are no concrete plans to implement it.

There are multiple issues regarding draft in Visual Editor, not the least of which is "what am I seeing". It's not easy to tell which paragraph you're looking at, the draft or the published. Pages in draft mode don't make sense in Visual Editor since page content isn't editable there, and rows don't support draft at the moment. We could maybe implement some kind of draft, but the question is, what would be the scope? Content only? Horizontal position? Vertical position? Both? Positioning is equivalent to paragraph order, which isn't part of draft mode currently, and if we did implement a version of draft, we would have to add more information to an already crowded UI. I'm not saying that it can't be done -- we would have to discuss it internally. What I am saying is, it's not an easy fix; it requires some thought.

If we were to implement draft, what is the MVP you need?

- Jeppe

Hi Jeppe,

Yeah, I figured the complexity is big. The visual aspect of the page definately makes it hard.

I guess in my mind I would expect the entire page to be in draft mode, as if there was an exact copy of the entire grid. I would not expext the granularity of a row or a paragraph to be individually controlled as it is today, in the sense that, if you have 10 paragraphs only 1 is in draft mode; So to be clear, all of the rows and paragraphs would be in draft mode at once (have a copy of them), which should make it really simple and clear for a user to realize what they are seeing.

I attached a possible representation of it. The yellowish area is simply a copy of the Grid (created when draft mode is enabled). Then maybe in the Visual Editor have a button to switch between draft and published mode, sort of how we change device simulation. There is already a UI to compare draft vs published mode from DW9 so that can be used IMO.

Does that help?

Nuno Aguiar

Hi guys,

I am with Nuno on this one (no surprises here) as we have received very often questions from customers about the publication of the content while they are playing with the visual editor. It was not a Deal Breaker so far but we see more and more content-centric projects and can easily become a concern.

Admins will probably expect an implicit Draft mode for the entire page until they are done and decide to "publish" their changes. I am convinced it is not an easy task and since there is no definition of the request, we should aim at what is easier to implement. The entire page or individual rows/columns.

For my use cases, an implicit draft mode for the entire page would suffice. Granularity is probably ideal but a lot more complicated to implement and maybe more confusing for the admin user.

Thank you,
Adrian

I also remembered the same approached can be used for Split Testing or Personalization. Essentially a full copy of the page instead of granularly on the paragraph.

I mean, paragraphs could potentially be linked somehow and/or using the concept of a global paragraphs, so that the paragraphs that don't need to be personalized/split-test/drafted all point to the original source