I'm sorry to see you go, but just to address some of the reasons you're leaving, we hear you, and a lot of these are being tracked as feature requests as possible improvements.
I really miss a way to create nested structures (for example for a multi-level menu)
We really want to work on more intuitive way to implement multi level menus and are currently tracking this as a feature request.
I miss the option to create required fields
We have a thread here where you can follow or add to the discussion about this feature request:
I miss the option to add descriptions to fields
For the moment you can use the placeholders as a workaround option for this.
It takes to many actions to add a new slices to multiple content types via the slice machine editor
Can you explain more about this one? Would you like to be able to add the Slice to the Custom Types from the Slice window?
You have to click to many times to add a link to another document
This is necessary if you need to specify between links to media, links to docs or external links. What is the behaviour you would like to see?
You have to click to many times to publish a document
Again this is necessary for 'save states' and scheduling publishes. Do you have suggestions on how you like this to work?
I don't like that documents of all content types is the same overview
For this, you can filter by document type in the dashboard, as well as tags, authors and creating collections.
Thanks for your reply. You can find my answers to your questions below.
It takes to many actions to add a new slices to multiple content types via the slice machine editor - Can you explain more about this one? Would you like to be able to add the Slice to the Custom Types from the Slice window?
In order to add a new slice to multiple content types I need to do the following:
Click "Slices"
Create a new slice
Click "Save to filesystem"
Click "Custom types"
Click the Custom type where I want to add this slice
Click "Update slice zone"
Select the new slice
Scroll down and click save
Click "Save to filesystem"
Repeat last 6 steps for all other types where I want to add this type
Click "Changes"
Login to Prismic (which always results in an error message, but does log me in)
Click "Push changes"
To improve this you could:
Allow me to select "Custom types" from the slice edit screen
Remove the "Update slice zone" modal and allow me to select slices on the Custom type edit screen
Remove the "Save to filesystem" stel and directly publish changes to Prismic
Create an intuitive way to create slices and connect them to custom types via code
You have to click to many times to add a link to another document - This is necessary if you need to specify between links to media, links to docs or external links. What is the behaviour you would like to see?
In order to add a link to another document I have to:
Select a tekst
Click the "Hyperlink" icon
Click "What kind of link do you want to insert?"
Click "Link to document"
Search for the document i want to link to
Click the document
To improve this you could:
Remove the "What kind of link do you want to insert?" step and external link documents & media list right away. Maybe with media behind another tab.
Make the documents list more compact (without images and descriptions)
Auto focus on the document searchbox and show searchresults while typing in this box
Replace the document type filter with a select box with all existing document types
So something like this for example:
You have to click to many times to publish a document Again this is necessary for 'save states' and scheduling publishes. Do you have suggestions on how yo____u like this to work?
In order to publish a document I have to:
Click "Save"
Click "Publish"
Click "Publish" again
To improve this you could:
Replace the button with a "Save draft" and "Save & publish" button
Remove the second "Publish button" and move the "Publish it at a specific date and timeā¦" and "Publish it during a releaseā¦" options somewhere else.
I don't like that documents of all content types is the same overview For this, you can filter by document type in the dashboard, as well as tags, authors and creating collections.
These points are no huge dealbreakers, but they do slow me down during development. I think this could be much more intuitive and faster. I hope this helps you to improve Prismic in the future.
Thanks for your feedback I really appreciate your ideas.
For the suggestions to improve adding Slices to Custom Types:
Allow me to select "Custom types" from the slice edit screen
Remove the "Update slice zone" modal and allow me to select slices on the Custom type edit screen
I really like these ideas and have marked these as feature requests with the Slice Machine team.
Remove the "Save to filesystem" step and directly publish changes to Prismic.
This would remove versioning of your Custom Types along with your code and local testing. Maybe auto-saving could be a potential solution here.
Create an intuitive way to create slices and connect them to custom types via code
I'm not really clear on this step; could you elaborate?
For the 'adding links' UI, these are really interesting ideas, and I've passed these on to the Editor Team :)
Remove the "What kind of link do you want to insert?" step and external link documents & media list right away. Maybe with media behind another tab.
Make the documents list more compact (without images and descriptions)
Auto focus on the document searchbox and show searchresults while typing in this box
Replace the document type filter with a select box with all existing document types
So something like this for example:
For your ideas for publishing:
Replace the button with a "Save draft" and "Save & publish" button
Remove the second "Publish button" and move the "Publish it at a specific date and timeā¦" and "Publish it during a releaseā¦" options somewhere else.
Breaking up the function of the buttons is a really nice idea; the UI might become crowded, but it's interesting to explore, and I've also passed these suggestions to the editor team.
Thanks again for your input, and hopefully we'll be able to tempt you back some day
I think it could be faster to register custom types, slices, connections and fields via code instead of the Slicemachine editor. So some json files to define everything for example.
I know the Slicemachine editor also generates code that I could edit of write myself, but that code is very elaborate. I prefer something simpeler like the PHP API of the "Advanced custom fields" plugin for WordPress: ACF | Register fields via PHP.
This is an interesting idea and definitely a challenging one, as it moves in a very different direction from the visual editor. I've registered this as a feature request with the Slice Machine team.
If/when there's any movement on any of these ideas, we'll update you here.
