XB week 22: UX refinements

Published on 31 January, 2025

After a 105-day hiatus — because I became a dad ☺️ — time to catch up! It’s the last day of January and I’m writing about week 22, while in week 34! I intend to catch up by the end of February and that of course happens to be week 42. 😜 🤓

Most of you will probably wonder why I’d even bother catching up. Well, many of you told me you’ve found these posts invaluable to have a sense of where Experience Builder (XB) is going, of the progress we’re making, and to know when we’re working on things where your expertise might be especially valuable. Plus, it’s helpful for me to have a complete overview as the XB tech lead of what everything is that happened (impossible to be fully caught up during paternity leave), and ensure loose ends are tied up. 1

The weeks further in the past I’ll make more summary-like with less detail. As I get closer to catching up to the present, I’ll bring back more detail, as I’ve done in the past. Here we go! 🚀


We all love a good Bálint “balintbrews” Kléri-made GIF, don’t we? 😁 See how he evolved the “add” menu in #3477372 based on the updated design:

Clicking the ‘add’ button now displays a popover listing available components. Much snazzier than 3 weeks prior!
Issue #3477372, image by Bálint.

But by far most importantly, Harumi “hooromoo” Jang, Bálint and Jesse Baker landed a massive usability improvement for the so-called “Layers” dragging components around: dragging into empty slots was impossible before, some affordances were missing, and while it worked, it was a bit jumpy. Not anymore:

Making changes to the overall structure (hierarchy) is now more capable and easier to use. Harumi followed up on their prior “layers” panel work —  note how while dragging-and-hoverin to pick a spot, the existing component instances don’t jump around anymore.
Issue #3470594, image by Harumi.

Not at all visual but nonetheless important:

Week 22 was October 7–October 13, 2024.

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    I was working at ~30% capacity for most of my paternity leave to not be fully out of the loop, and to make my paternity leave last longer. (Thanks, Acquia! 🙏😊) The intent was for me to keep up this blog post series during that time. But that didn’t work out: reviews required all of that time!