The control panel editing experience creates an abstraction from the page quite deliberately. That abstraction is needed in order to be able to make use of the technology in the way that best serves the client. I don’t believe the direct-manipulation metaphor (i.e. on-page editing) can be maintained whilst still offering the labour-saving benefits of managed content.
The Lure of On-page Editing — Drew McLellan.
At a CMS level on-page editing is going to be problematic at best. You never know what sort of adjustments a theme or user has made to the user facing side. That level of uncertainty increases the developer work load quite a bit. Then there are the less tangible portions that need editing, which makes the experience even more confusing.
At a higher level though, there are situations where on-page editing is a big win. The P2 WordPress theme for instance supports on-page editing of posts and comments. Because the theme layer is further up the stack the effort to maintain consistency and good user experience is easier to manage.
If I were to attempt to generalize this into a guideline: on-page editing should be placed on a layer that is as close the user as possible.
3 replies on “On-page Editing, Pro or Con?”
That’s a great rule of thumb. I believe it corresponds to another rule of thumb in UX design: make interactions as direct as possible. For example: rotating something in Powerpoint requires fiddling with knobs and buttons in a separate window. On the iPad, you just touch the thing you want to manipulate.
Another fringe issue with on-page editing is that it puts more burden on theme developers, since they have to style both the client-facing site and the admin. It’s been interesting to see how the Drupal community copes with this (by default all of it’s admin panels are displayed in the context of the site). A whole host of modules have been developed with the aim of easily giving Drupal a stock admin interface.
There is definitely something positive to be said for having a consistent admin interface even when the public facing side of the site changes.
I continually find myself creating html pages that I embed into the on page editor. Call me old fashioned but the current on page editors of cms systems still has a long way to go