As an editor, how does this make me feel?
I was positively surprised at the launch of Umbraco 7 because it was obvious and clear how much more attention had been given to the editor. While Umbraco 8 is clearly following the path set out by its predecessor, it is also obvious that there is less of a leap in progress for editors compared to Umbraco 7.
Infinite editing
I do really look forward to the infinite editing functionality. Nothing annoys me more than ‘getting lost’ in my own CMS. I’m also really happy with the separate save button, making a simple save that much easier.
Tab structure
Admittedly, I do have my doubts about the removal of the current tab structure, especially if a page has many properties. The ability as an editor to quickly see that I forgot to enter a meta title and description (for example) is nice, but that does mean these properties need to be above ‘the fold’. I have my doubts on whether or not this will actually be possible on every page type because a page will have a lot more options and settings to manage.
Besides, in my opinion an editor doesn’t needeveryproperty all the time. Content that an editor will manage and change on either a daily or weekly basis needs to be readily accessible. Use one tab for content the editor is likely to change the most and another for content that is more static, such as the header. Settings could also use their own tab. These would be properties that you set once during the launch of the site and would only rarely, if ever, need to be changed such as the Google Analytics code or whether or not the page should be set to use no-follow and no-index settings. The new Umbraco 8 method no longer supports this more user friendly way. The editor will always seeallavailable options on the node.