[Neos] feedback of 1 day working with a content editor

[Dominic Garms]

Hello Aske,

 >
 >> I would like to share my (frustrated) day with Neos. Beside the fact 
that for me as integrator / developer Neos feels very good in the 
beginning, content editors have very frustrating moments:
 >>
 >> 1. The backend is getting very slow, even with a 16mb internet line 
the backend is getting too slow to work with. After a while editing 
content the ajax spinners cycle that long, that a reload is necessary 
and very often the work is getting disturbed by a lot of random errors. 
The server is a managed server and has 8gb ram and lot of power, this 
should not be the issue.
 > I haven't really experienced this myself, would it be possible for 
you to help figuring out why this happens? Is it a specific browser or 
is footprint getting too big (client side memory leak)?
 >
I would not think that it happens inside of the browser. I run it on a 
server managed hosting with 8gb ram and good performance. I think there 
might be PHP variables which need to get tweaked, but as my server is 
user restricted I guess some more advanced settings are necessary. Maybe 
an info-section inside of the docs would be useful which server/PHP 
settings are recommended.

Another side info: as I live partly in Indonesia, the backend is almost 
unusable with a 1-3mb internet line...Hope there is a possibility to 
handle this, but for now we are stuck with content editing, the BE is 
loading too slow working with.

 >> 2. The content structure area is too tiny, we tried to insert 17 
topic panels and it was almost impossible to drag and drop anything 
inside. cut and paste seems to have some problems, we gave up on this 
one for now. The main problem is, that if I add a new element inside of 
a content collection, it is getting inserted as first one and not on the 
end of the collection. So it was hard to move it to the end of the 
collection, the "+" button on the very last content element was not 
working correctly or inserted into the wrong location and cut and paste 
was not working properly. And after the "+" selection of a content 
element, this new element must get preselected, otherwise the editor 
needs to search for it - with many content elements very time consuming.
 > We actually thought about making the node tree collapsible in order 
to make the context structure bigger for these cases, but we didn't 
manage to fit it in there in the first iteration, but it's good to know 
it's actually needed.
 >
That would be very useful +1
 > Regarding the insert/copy/paste problems, we are already aware that 
it's not a smooth experience yet. It's the first version so it will get 
better over time. Bear in mind that such a component takes hundred of 
hours to make, I could write a whole book chapter about the 
features/edge cases it has to handle.
 >
Great that it was not something in my installation or NodeTypes, this 
was my concern in the beginning.
 > Regarding the preselection, I think you're right. We actually had 
this before but we didn't want it for the node tree so we removed it. 
But for the context structure it does make sense for sure.
 >
+1

 > Added new tickets for two of them http://forge.typo3.org/issues/48071
 > Please feel free to add more for the actual issues you experienced.
 >
Seems a lot of tasks which are similar to my experience. Will be 
available for reviewing them
 >> 3. Restriction for new content collections: it should be possible to 
configure NodeTypes ContentCollection, that only specific child elements 
are available. Often it happens that a content elements find its way to 
the wrong position in the context - a lot of errors pop up and an editor 
can't read them. The drag'n drop should not be possible and the "+" 
adding should only show the possible options for the current collection. 
This would serve a lot of time and makes content creation faster. Often 
only one type is possible, so the "+" button would add automatically 
this and the selection panel would be redundant.
 > This is feature we're been wanting but still haven't gotten around 
to. I'm involved with a project which needs this so it will happen in a 
near future.
 >
this would be the most wanted feature for content editing, it would be a 
time safer and avoids errors
 >> 4. There is a moment, that nothing works anymore in the backend. I 
changed some yaml configurations now the backend does not load some 
pages, the frontend only shows a more/less empty page:
 >>
 >> Could not read page metadata from response. Please open the location 
http://spain-internships.com/information/frequently-askes-questions@user-admin 
outside the Neos backend
 >>
 >> PHP Fatal error:  Call to a member function getContext() on a 
non-object in 
/Data/Temporary/Development/Cache/Code/Flow_Object_Classes/TYPO3_Neos_ViewHelpers_ContentElement_EditableViewHelper.php 
on line 72
 >>
 >> I changed parts inside of the NodeTypes.yaml file, hoped that the 
changes are getting adjusted to all other elements. For example I 
removed a ContentCollection child of Page but still the element is 
visible. Is there something to reset to the actual yaml configuration? I 
tried flushing the cache but it doesn't work.
 >>
 >> It reminds me on configuration errors inside of flexforms, but there 
was always a way to hide/delete content elements through ListView to 
check which content element is making the trouble. Now I don't see a way 
to solve it, deleting all content till it happens again? Then a 
continuous integration wouldn't be possible - if some adjustments can 
break the whole backend beeing visible.
 > There were another topic about this in the mailing list before I got 
time to respond to this, which explains it in case you didn't see it 
already.
 >
 > Hope you'll still have encouragement so we together can make the next 
version even better.
 >
 > One side node is that more of team are actually planning projects 
with Neos which will allow more people to spend more than just their 
free time working on these things.
 >
Great to hear, for sure I'll try my best to contribute my part into this 
project.

Cheers,
Dominic