Future of Joomla article editor. An idea for modules

[giudansky]

I'm reposting this from the forum, hoping for a feedback from developers.

I've been an early adopter of Joomla since the very first versions, and I'm still fond of it. As I've written a few times in the past, I see some crucial gaps in the current Joomla workflow, especially related to the article editor.
I think content editing is really stuck in the past, we never saw any improvement in this field since its beginnings. But I also see a lot of unused native potentials already under the hood.
NOTE: I hate all the heavy page builders plugins out there and I really hope for native development.

It is a fact that block editing is spreading across many CMS. In WordPress, gutenberg is an undeniable step forward in making life easier for editors. Joomla had block modules even before WordPress, and I think a few simple updates to the current workflow would greatly improve content editing.

Think about it: how difficult and frustrating is it to insert and align an image or a video inside the HTML article content? Not to mention when you have a bunch of images, videos, or worse div columns...
Actually, for me, the only way to optimize article content and achieve a real separation between different media types is by embedding modules, with the "loadmodule shortcode", inside Joomla articles. (A very underrated and almost hidden feature, its working for years but still looks a hack not a supported feature). This improves modularity and makes it possible to include multimedia, custom modules, galleries, or just reusable HTMLs.

This workflow could really be improved with some simple additions. In particular, I'm thinking about two missing features:

1. Article and module binding
I would like to assign modules to article content, not template positions. Maybe having a module filter per article not per menu item. Binding modules to specific articles would make it easier to manage the different parts of a page. I could compose a Joomla article with a chain of modules, in almost the same way it works now. Each article could be assembled from a series of modules instead of a single block of plain HTML in the text editor. At the moment I can do something similar, but the modules are spread in the module list with unassigned position with no real way to list them by article. This technique in a big website gets tons of modules without any real way to tie them together. A simple filter by article which shows the included modules would already be a big step forward. I think there should be 2 types of modules: A. standard modules (used into template positions) B. embedded modules (used as article sub parts).

2. Module creation inside the article editor
Right now, if I want to embed a module, I first have to create it, and then, inside the article, I can use the “insert module” function. Having a “create module” option directly in the article editor would make it much easier to create article blocks. In this case, the module would be automatically linked to the current article, as described in point (1).
This is already possible in the Menu Manager when you choose “create article” while creating a new menu item: a popup with the article editor opens, you save it, and it gets assigned to the menu item directly. I imagine something similar for modules: insert module → create new module → select module type → place it inside the article. And so on. In this way I could compose an entire page in a truly modular and linear way.

The future of it? Module previews inside the editor and inline edit module button, inline duplicate module button, move up/down button, etc.

Let me know what you think and spread this article if you really believe it could make Joomla better.
I do. I see such features as the starting point for a real block-based native way to build pages. And it's already almost there!
Thanks.

[universewrld]

"loadmodule shortcode", inside Joomla articles. (A very underrated and almost hidden feature, its working for years but still looks a hack not a supported feature). This improves modularity and makes it possible to include multimedia, custom modules, galleries, or just reusable HTMLs.

I recently suggested them to add a shortcode feature, but they closed my #44506 issue.

I've posted thousands of articles on my website built on Joomla and I understand your problem very well, but the people who create Joomla are doing everything to ensure that the share of CMS becomes smaller and smaller every year.

1. Article and module binding I would like to assign modules to article content, not template positions. Maybe having a module filter per article not per menu item. Binding modules to specific articles would make it easier to manage the different parts of a page.

This is a really great idea that I have also thought about very often because right now we cannot link one module to 10 or 20 articles on a website, we can only link one module to a menu item which greatly limits the functionality of the modules.

[giudansky]

Hey, are you aware the loadmodule shortcode already exist? Im talking about expanding this existing feature!
https://docs.joomla.org/How_do_you_put_a_module_inside_an_article%3F

A module can be actually assigned to all the pages and called with {loadmoduleid moduleId} insider the content article.

[universewrld]

Hey, are you aware the loadmodule shortcode already exist?

But I don't mean a shortcode for a module, I mean a custom shortcode for any HTML code with embedded content from third-party websites and services that I could use in articles, for example, for YouTube videos and similar things.

[giudansky]

The case wants me to have exactly developed what you are talking about. A plugin which convert any php template file inside /files folder in an embeddable shortcode to use inside the articles. I'm not sure about security issues, but it works perfectly.
At this point I'll probably put it in a public github project so anyone can take it.