"Marla" Release Preview

The Marla release is in final testing and nearly ready for production. There will be no disruption of service when it goes live, and we will post detailed release notes to this website and our Microsoft Teams channels at that time.

Marla focuses on usability enhancements to the administrative interface, as identified through early user research interviews. The biggest changes to the editing experience are previewed for you below.

Administrative Title displays on collapsed content blocks

When adding content blocks to a Page or Story, only the text entered in the "Administrative Title" field will display in the list of collapsed content blocks. If this field is empty, no preview text will display beneath the content block type. This improves usability and readability for content editors.

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Adding content blocks

The blue "Add Content Block" button at the bottom of a Page or Story will be replaced by a white "+ Add" button that appears inline in the content block editing area. This makes it easier to add a new content block in the desired order.

Clicking this "+ Add" button leads to an improved experience for browsing and selecting the desired content block. The list of available content blocks is organized into categories, with the most-used categories listed first. You can browse the list or use the handy search box to find the block you need.

• Row Layouts: Two- & Three-Column Rows
• Basic Editor: Content Box
• Layouts with Optional Images: Callout, Icon Row, Image Card Row, Image & Text
• Style Elements: Accordion, Button, Pull Quote, Spacer, Special Text
• Media: Media, Slideshow
• Content Lists (previously called Teaser Lists): Blog Post List, Event List, FAQs List, News List, Page List, People List, Story List
• Embeds: Content Reference, IFrame, Social Media Embed

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Editing content from the Preview pane

When viewing a content item in the Preview pane on the content/admin site, it is possible to navigate to preview other content. For example, when you are viewing the Homepage in Preview, you can click on the main menu to display other pages' content instead (e.g., the About or Contact pages). However, if you want to edit those About or Contact pages, you cannot use the Edit button above the Preview pane – since it is associated with editing the Homepage. This can be confusing to users.

Instead, we are adding a magenta bar beneath the main menu in Preview, with an "Edit this page" button. Clicking that button will take you directly to the edit screen for the page currently displaying in Preview. In the image below, clicking "Edit this page" will allow you to edit the "test" page and not the Homepage.

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