Page Editor and Universal Editor page-editor-universal-editor
The Page Editor remains supported by Adobe, but the Universal Editor brings exciting possibilities to your new projects.
Background background
Adobe introduced the Universal Editor in 2024 as a streamlined editor embracing a modern Javascript-based development approach. The Universal Editor is Adobe’s vision for a seamless and extensible visual content authoring experience.
Recognizing the Page Editor’s rich feature set and innumerable projects investing in it over the long history of AEM, Adobe continues to fully support the Page Editor, though innovation will be focused on the Universal Editor.
Recommendation recommendation
Though quickly narrowing, there remains a feature gap between the Universal Editor and Page Editor (a feature comparison can be found in the next section).
As a rule of thumb:
- New projects should default to leveraging the Universal Editor.
- Existing projects should continue to use the Page Editor and consider the Universal Editor when starting Edge Delivery or Headless efforts.
Which editor you choose should be driven entirely by your individual project’s needs.
Feature Comparison feature-comparison
Because the feature gap between the two editors is constantly shrinking, be sure to consult the release notes of the Universal Editor for the latest developments.
Delivery delivery
Persistence persistence
Capabilities capabilities
Adopting the Universal Editor adopt-ue
The Universal Editor offers many advantages, making it a great solution for new projects.
- Visual Editing: Like for the Page Editor, authors can edit content directly within the preview and instantly see how their changes affect the visitor experience.
- Future-Proofing: AEM’s roadmap prioritizes the Universal Editor as visual editor. Adopting it ensures access to the latest innovations and enhancements.
- Simpler Integration: No AEM-specific SDK is required to use the Universal Editor, reducing tech stack lock-in.
- Bring Your Own App: The Universal Editor supports any web framework or architecture, allowing adoption without requiring complex refactoring.
- Extensibility: The Universal Editor benefits from a robust extension framework, including integrations with GenAI, Workfront, and more.
Migrating to the Universal Editor migrate-ue
There is no direct migration path from the Page Editor to the Universal Editor. This is due to fundamental differences in the two technologies.
-
The Universal Editor does not reintroduce features like the Template Editor, Style System, or Responsive Grid.
- These use cases can now be handled more efficiently with lean frontend CSS and Javascript in Edge Delivery Services or headless projects.
-
Since the Universal Editor is an editor-as-a-service, it can not allow implementors to inject CSS or JS into the component dialogs.
- This prevents automatic conversion of component dialogs from the Page Editor.
- This affects many areas of the dialogs, like custom widgets, field validation, show/hide rules, and template-based customizations.
- While such capabilities are still possible, the Universal Editor solves them through configuration, instead of custom JavaScript deployed in dialogs.
While the Universal Editor can technically enable editing pages for traditional AEM projects (e.g. built with the Core Components), these sites typically rely on several Page Editor-specific features, such as the Style System, Responsive Grid, Editable Templates, and custom Javascript within dialogs.
Since the Universal Editor follows a more streamlined, modern approach that does not support these legacy features, migrating such sites would require significant refactoring. For this reason, migrating Page Editor sites to the Universal Editor is only recommended for projects transitioning to Edge Delivery Services.