Visual Editing Helper extension

Last update: January 22, 2025

The Adobe Experience Cloud Visual Editing Helper browser extension for Google Chrome lets you load websites reliably within the Adobe Target Visual Experience Composer (VEC) to rapidly author and QA web experiences.

IMPORTANT
  • This new extension replaces the previous Target VEC Helper browser extension. See the Important note at the top of that article. Because of security enhancements in Manifest v3, Adobe requires downloading this new extension to continue to visually author your websites in Target.

Reasons why some websites might not open reliably in the VEC

  • The website has strict security policies.
  • The website is in an iframe.
  • The customer’s QA or stage site is not available to the outside world (the site is internal).

The Adobe Experience Cloud Visual Editing Helper browser extension for solves site-loading issues for which customers now rely on the Target Enhanced Experience Composer or third-party extensions, such as Requestly.

Benefits of using the Visual Editing Helper extension

  • All iframe-busting headers, such as X-Frame-Options and Content-Security-Policy, are implicitly removed from the website. There is no need to create complicated Requestly rules.

  • If a webpage does not yet contain the Target at.js library, you can use the extension to inject the library so you can author experiences for the website. You can then create activities and QA them using preview links.

    Using the Enhanced Experience Composer, the extension does not inject at.js, but the SameSite Cookie functionality is still present. To inject at.js on the webpage, turn off the EEC.

  • Mobile viewports are supported even without the Enhanced Experience Composer (EEC).

  • Customers new to Target can use the extension to experiment with Target even if their IT developers have not yet implemented Target on their websites.

  • Partners servicing multiple customers’ websites and Target accounts now have one simple mechanism to support VEC loading, instead of managing multiple rules in third-party tools.

Obtain and install the Visual Editing Helper browser extension

  1. Navigate to the Adobe Experience Cloud Visual Editing Helper browser extension in the Chrome Web Store.

  2. Click Add to Chrome > Add Extension.

  3. Open the VEC in Target.

  4. To use the extension, click the Visual Editing Helper browser extension icon ( Visual Editing Extension icon ) in your Chrome browser’s toolbar while in the VEC or QA Mode.

    The Visual Editing Helper is automatically enabled when a website is opened in the Target VEC to power authoring. The extension doesn’t have any conditional settings. The extension handles all the settings automatically, including SameSite cookies settings.

    For more information on the SameSite=None attribute browser fix, see “How do the recently announced Google Chrome SameSite cookie enforcement policies impact the VEC and EEC?” in Troubleshooting Issues Related to the Visual Experience Composer and Enhanced Experience Composer.

Notes

  • For Target, the extension loads the latest version of at.js that is available from the Target UI in Administration > Implementation and at.js downloads the authoring libraries.

  • When using the extension to inject at.js while in QA Mode, you must have another Chrome tab open. This Chrome tab must be authenticated to the same Adobe Experience Cloud organization in which you created the activity.

  • The following messages help keep you informed:

    • If you attempt to load a website using the VEC that fails to load, a message displays suggesting that you install the Visual Editing Helper browser extension.
    • If at.js or alloy.js is not yet implemented on the website, a message displays in the VEC suggesting that you install the extension.

  • If you try using the new extension and then go back to the old extension and Target fails to load your website, clear all browser data and disable the new extension.