Dive into Adobe's Universal Editor: A Detailed Overview of Benefits & Components

Over the last several years, Adobe has introduced various types of Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) implementations, including:

• Traditional  headful implementation
• Headless, single-page-application (SPA) approaches
• A browser plugin that transforms Word documents into website content – known as Edge Delivery Service

The culmination of these efforts is Adobe’s Universal Editor, a solution that enables omnichannel content delivery and omnisourced content authoring.

What is the Universal Editor?

Universal Editor is an implementation-agnostic editing tool that seamlessly integrates into any website or application. It liberates content editing from the underlying delivery system, enabling direct edits within the context of the live experience. Universal Editor enables what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) editing of any headless and headful experience.

What are the Benefits of Universal Editor?

• Full Flexibility
  The Universal Editor enables you to edit anything, anywhere, on any platform. Whether editing websites, remote SPAs or progressive web apps, the Universal Editor adapts with ease to provide you with a seamless editing experience.
• Contextual Empowerment
  With Universal Editor, you can edit content in real time and see exactly how changes will impact the live experience. You no longer have to switch between multiple interfaces to preview content updates.
• Streamlined Workflows
  Universal Editor eliminates context switching and fragmented editing processes, enabling you to get things done faster, more efficiently and more accurately.
• Developer Freedom
  Universal Editor empowers you to build custom editing experiences with your preferred technologies. It is also open and extensible, enabling you to innovate as needed.

How Does It Work?

The Universal Editor operates through a network of interconnected components, including:

• Instrumented Content
  Universal Editor can only edit and modify applications if they are correctly instrumented and include proper metadata. To ensure you can modify content, Universal Editor prepares websites and applications with specific markup and metadata to identify editable elements and their properties.
• Universal Editor Service
  Thanks to Universal Editor Service – Universal Editor’s central hub that runs on Adobe I/O Runtime – the editing tool can process editing requests, interact with backend systems and ensure synchronization through a number of plugins available in the Extension Registry, such as AEM, Adobe Commerce, GitHub and Word.
• Edge Delivery Service
  This component serves as the infrastructure of the Universal Editor, enabling the tool to offer content flexibility and seamless editing experiences across platforms. Edge Delivery Service operates on top of a content delivery network (CDN) and serverless infrastructure to assemble pages in the most efficient way.
• Editor User Interface (UI)
  Universal Editor features a tailored UI that’s designed to fit the context and content you are editing. With this UI, you can easily edit, add, delete or reorder components on the page and toggle to an in-context preview when you are ready to see how it looks in the context of other pages.

What are the Main Use Cases for Universal Editor?

The key use cases for Universal Editor are:

• In-context editing of headless or remotely hosted SPAs
• Content editing for websites that combine content sourced by AEM with document-based authoring

Universal Editor can also support a wide variety of additional authoring use cases. You can easily configure it to:

• Disable publishing for specific users, giving you control over who is authorized to publish content changes
• Filter specific components, enabling you to restrict the allowed components per container
• Use a conditional display that hides components from the properties rail

Looking Ahead

While still in its infancy, the Universal Editor shows immense promise. Adobe is actively collaborating with developers and content creators to refine the tool and broaden its scope. As Universal Editor grows, it will further empower editors and developers to create content. 

Explore more on our Adobe partner page.