Problem/Motivation
The following is based on the context of an agency working for a client, so in this story there are 2 distinct layers of responsibility. The client, who manages the content and needs a certain amount of freedom; The agency that provides said freedom within the "project constraints" provided by the functional analysis, design, custom usability optimizations etc, while maintaining a dev/acc/prod logic, security updates and continuous improvements rolling smoothly.
As a developer I can grant a client access to the layout builder on a per entity/content based way, which is great. However in doing so I have to let go of all constraints. Most of which I was able to preconfigure very quickly earlier via a combination of templating/display settings. E.g:
- formatters (they are hardly ever all relevant or allowed)
- fields that might always have to be in the same place, such as an intro and an image on top of an article
- extra flexibility in the templating layer to match the design
Having to add contrib modules to work around all these causes a module usage bloat which tends to snowball update and maintenance time/costs especially regarding the longer running projects (most of them last 6+ years already) and with the rolling updates since drupal 8 -> 9 and onwards this is very likely to become even longer.
This feels like it might have enough merit for most agency style workflows to be added as a part of the core module.
Proposed resolution
Allow the option in the "manage display" to still opt out for given fields (retaining the current drupal core functionality for those fields in the templates).
Remaining tasks
- Make items accessible again and provide the option to mark them as part of the layout builder or preconfigured.
- Provide a readable explanation to the end user configuring these fields
- Make all items part of the layout builder by default.
User interface changes
Field info in the "configure display" is still available when the layout builder is active, and allows opting out of the layout builder for certain fields