What is Next Generation Authoring?

Next Generation Authoring improves the experience of both users and developers by making the content form easier to use, and providing developers with additional features to control form layout and customize fields.

This page gives an overview of Next Generation Authoring features, including the enhanced look and feel for the content authoring experience, and developer features for optimizing that experience.

Is Next Generation Authoring available to all users?

Yes, by default all users will now use Next Generation Authoring. See Switchover to Next Generation Authoring.

If you're not yet familiar with the benefits of Next Generation Authoring, you might want to take a look at our quick introduction:

The enhanced 'look and feel'

Our next generation authoring experience has an enhanced 'look and feel' that's ready to use without the need for changes by your developers.

Whether you're producing new content or updating old content, your authoring experience will include:

Prominent field labels

Larger, bolder field labels help you to quickly find the fields you need.

Compact cards

Compact media and content cards save space and make it easier to view more fields at the same time.

One click replace

Media and content can be replaced with one control by simply hovering over the image and selecting "Replace" to open the Asset browser.

Enhanced input fields

Selected input fields, such as date and time pickers, are enhanced to make them easier for you to use. An example of the new date/time picker is shown below.

Input fields can be customized...

Take a look at some example customized input fields to find ways to improve your authoring experience.

Arranging nested content

Add and reorder nested content with quick actions that are more convenient than dragging and dropping, especially for long lists.

Note that dragging and dropping nested content now has a tilted motion.

Improved validation header

The new validation header makes it easier to navigate to invalid fields compared to the original authoring experience. The new header clearly flags any issues, allowing you to fix the problems and save your content.

If some fields are not valid when you try to save a content item, then the fields are highlighted and a "Check highlighted fields" message is shown in the header, including the number of fields that are invalid.

Navigate to the first field that needs your attention by clicking the arrow in the right of the header. Once a field is valid, you can use the arrow in the header to go to the next field.

Example

In the example below, we have 3 fields that don't meet validation. The first field is configured to require an integer that is a multiple of 10, the second requires a list of at least two items, and the third field is a required date. Clicking in the header to go directly to the date field opens up the tab that it's displayed within.

With all the validation errors fixed, we can save the content.

Features for developers

Next Generation Authoring offers developers a range of features for optimizing the authoring experience.

Customizable components

To display input fields on the content form, Next Generation Authoring uses components. You can use these components as is, or you can customize the functionality by setting parameters.

Examples of when you could use customizable components are to:

• Use a slider as an input field and control the slider labels
• Set the maximum width for a component
• Customize the color picker with a company specific set of color swatches

How this feature helps content authors

Learn how this feature can help optimize your authoring experience by taking a look at our example customized input fields.

Control over layout with grids, tabs and dividers

New layout features allow developers to specify how fields are arranged on the content form.

• Fields can be organized into grids, so that related items are grouped together
• Tabs can be used to organize fields for easy navigation, putting advanced options under one tab, for example. Tabs can be horizontal or vertical
• Dividers visually separate sections of forms during content editing, without altering the final content

These layout features help you to make the form easier to navigate and provide a better experience for the content producer.

The image below shows a content form with fields organized in a grid.

A form with two vertical tabs is shown below.

This example shows a divider with a label, separating a set of fields from other content.

How this feature helps content authors

Find out how tabs, grids and dividers can help with workflow and organization.

Conditionals

There are several new schema features, including conditionals.

Conditionals allow you to use the value of one part of a schema to set the state of another. For example, you can enable or disable a field based on user input, change the validation of a field based on the value of a country selection dropdown, or hide and show fields based on whether a checkbox is selected.

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How this feature helps content authors

Learn how your authoring workflow can be simplified with the help of conditional input fields.

Content palettes

Content palettes are flexible lists that make it easier to create blogs, layouts and other combinations of different types of content items. An improved user interface makes it easy to choose the content you want and arrange it in the order you choose.

How this feature helps content authors

Find out how you can gain flexibility when authoring content with content palettes.

Dropdown menus with labels

You can now create dropdown menus with a list of labels and values, so that user friendly labels are used in the front end and the corresponding values are returned.

In the example shown below, "Low", "Medium" and "High" correspond to numbers defined by the developer.

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How this feature helps content authors

Make sure field values are easy to understand by using friendly field values.

Read only properties

Read only properties are now supported. You can combine this setting with conditionals so that properties can be enabled or disabled based on the state of another property.

Hidden properties

You can now include properties in a schema that are not displayed on the content form. You might choose to use hidden properties to add metadata to a schema that cannot be seen or edited by users, for example. These properties can be const values or properties that you update using the Content Management API. See hidden properties for more details.

Extension headers

A new withHeader setting in extension parameters allows you to choose to display header information for field level extensions. This includes the property's title and description, as well as the locale label for field level localized properties that use an extension.

The following schema snippet shows a localized property that uses the Generative rich text editor extension and specifies the withHeader setting in the extension properties.

"properties": {
        "blogSummary": {
            "allOf": [
                {
                    "$ref": "http://bigcontent.io/cms/schema/v1/core#/definitions/localized-value"
                }
            ],
            "properties": {
                "values": {
                    "items": {
                        "properties": {
                            "value": {
                                "format": "text",
                                "minLength": 5,
                                "maxLength": 256,
                                "ui:extension": {
                                    "withHeader": true,
                                    "url": "https://rich-text.extensions.content.amplience.net"
                                }
                            }
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    },

The locale labels and title are shown for each localized variant of the extension. If you're not using a localized property, then just the title and description will be shown.

Extension installation parameters

withHeader must be included in the extension settings in the content type schema, rather than the extension installation parameters.

Switchover to Next Gen Authoring

Next Generation Authoring is now available to all users by default. While you can still choose to switch it off and revert to the old authoring experience, we recommend keeping it enabled unless you encounter any issues.

If you do need to switch off Next Generation Authoring, you can do this from Dynamic Content choose Settings > Properties, and using the Next Generation Authoring settings. The example below shows that Next Generation Authoring is enabled:

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Use the settings to control which of the Dynamic Content tabs has Next Generation Authoring enabled:

• Content - Sets whether the content authoring experience uses Next Generation Authoring features
• Scheduling - Sets whether Next Generation Authoring 'look and feel' is used in the Scheduling tab. Currently, Next Generation Authoring features are not available in the Scheduling tab so you cannot enable this option.
• Development - Sets whether Next Generation Authoring features are available in the Developer tab. For example, whether the "Next gen authoring" schema examples are available when choosing a schema example. Note, you can only change this setting if you have access to the Development tab.

You will be asked to give a short explanation of why you're disabling Next Gen Authoring, to help us identify any potential issues.

If you do switch off Next Generation Authoring:

• The setting is local to you for the browser on your device, it doesn't impact other users
• If you're working incognito the authoring mode isn't saved
• If you swap to a different type of browser the authoring mode won't carry over

Switching off Next Generation Authoring applies to all content types in the current hub.

Send us your feedback...

Please send us your feedback about Next Generation Authoring, to help us continue to improve the authoring experience. Find out how to send feedback.

Related pages

For content authors

The enhanced 'look and feel'

Optimizing the authoring experience

For developers

Input field component reference

Layout components

Conditionals

Content palettes

Validation

Read only properties