#experience editor

Ever wondered how to handle complex field types such as the Treelist in the Experience Editor? By default, Sitecore will show the Content Editor in a frame for editing of these fields, which isn't ideal. A better way of doing this is to utilise custom buttons on an EditFrame.

1) Go to the Core database and create a folder under /sitecore/content/Applications/WebEdit e.g. "Tree Control Buttons"

2) Next you need a custom button for your frame to edit the Tree list. Create a new item under this folder using this template: /sitecore/templates/System/WebEdit/Field Editor Button

3) On this item edit the "Fields" field to add the name of the Tree List field e.g "Specific File" field. Use a pipe character to specify multiple field names i.e. if there are multiple fields across your solution that will use this editor.

4) Wrap your ascx control with a Sitecore edit Frame, specifying your custom editor buttons: 

<sc:EditFrame ID="docListEditor" runat="server" Title="Document List Control" Buttons="/sitecore/content/Applications/WebEdit/Tree Control Buttons">

The user will see a popup editor for the Tree List field that looks like this:

There is a bug in Sitecore 8 (8.0 update 6 - 8.1 update 1) where if a content editor adds a percentage (i.e. %) character in the rich text editor of the experience editor the page will fail to save.

Using a unicode character instead (i.e. & #37;) also causes the problem as it is always changed to a % character by the editor.

The fix is to edit the following file:

/Sitecore/shell/Client/Sitecore/ExperienceEditor/Sitecore.ExperienceEditor.js

Replace this line of code:

data: decodeURIComponent(decodeURIComponent(JSON.stringify(commandContext)))

with this: