How can the new script editor improve usability in online sales channels?

Technical Q&A
1

Hi @Shopify_77 ,

I know your teams are hard at work trying to improve all aspects of the shop, but please don’t release things that actually degrade usability or increase the click path.

  1. You have "hidden’ the online-store under a collapsed menu item “sales channels” At least for some stores I now have to first click on sales channel and then select the online sales channel, in my opinion this should always be visible.

  2. the “new” (90’s retro) script editor.. having the search input field at the bottom of the page is counter intuitive and incredibly irritating, NO script editor or modern program has the search bar appear at the bottom of the page! Furthermore CTRL+S no longer triggers a save of the script but the native browser save! Did Shopify lay off the entire UX team? Or dig this version of the editor out of the Archives?

I think maybe the Summer 22 edition should have been pushed to Fall 22 and a little more time spent on quality control…

Regards,

Gary

2

Hi @garyrgilbert ,

Thank you for your feedback! To better assist you, we’d like to understand what you’re seeing as we’re unable to replicate it. Would you mind sharing a few screenshots and/or video recordings?

Thank you!

3

Hi Andrew,

Gladly. Interestingly enough this “new” editor is only available on some of the newer shops.. And some of our customers who have multiple plus shops on one of the Plus shops they have this editor and others they have the other. I’ve been working with Shopify for 3 years now and never saw this editor until last Month.. and shortly thereafter I posted the above because I couldn’t quite grasp the reasoning of pushing this editor out the door it its current form.

Here is a link to the short video recording I made.

https://www.screenpresso.com/=ThD9f

Regards

Gary Gilbert

4

Hi Gary,

Thanks for sharing a screen recording! I have forwarded your feedback to the appropriate team so they can further review it.

Thank you!

5

Hi Andrew,

I’ve found a couple other things that don’t quite appear to be right.

Here is the recording of it.

https://www.screenpresso.com/=9Vr0f

6

I’d like to follow up with more issues that I don’t know if they are known to your team or not but make it nearly impossible to use.

  • If you have multiple large files open in tabs and you are trying to edit any of them typing lags, I will finish typing entire lines of code before they appear on screen. Its so slow I cannot use it anymore, when i have to make small changes on sites that I don’t have already setup with themekit on my system I just have to copy paste the code from the editor into a local editor and then paste it back in when im done making changes, it slows down my dev flow on what should be quick changes a significant amount.
  • If a section or snippet file has a script tag with too much code in it color formatting stops working after a certain point which makes generating json product libraries with a liquid loop a huge pain.
  • at least in chrome on mac you cannot use command+s to save any more and you cannot use command+y to redo anymore.
  • Shift tab will no longer correctly format tabbing of the selected, and just does a backtab which is a huge downgrade in my opinion
  • the auto fill for liquid end tags actually makes typing slower because I cant just hit enter at the end of a line, i have to hit the left key 3 times or go and click the screen, that combined with the lagging typing is beyond infuriating.
  • you can no longer rearrange the order of the tabs by dragging them around, they are only open in the order you opened them in, this is a small annoyance but is still just a general downgrade for no reason
  • you can no longer hover over a section or snippet call and open that file with the arrow that pops up, this means on large themes with lots of sections and snippets I have to spend time hunting down the section or snippet on the side bar or using the search bar that seems to only work sometimes to be honest. once again not a huge deal, but a downgrade for seemingly no reason
  • as others have mentioned when you refresh the editor it closes a bunch of your tabs
  • there is no longer a customize button in the top right, so now to customize the theme im working on I have to leave the editor, go back to the theme page and click customize from there.
  • theres no dark mode toggle anymore so im locked in light mode.

All of this combined makes it pretty much unusable compared to the old one. Is there any way to disable the new editor or opt out of it? Is there a query string or a setting I can use to revert back to the old one? because as of right now its just causing headaches and forcing me to use a slower dev flow.

7

My Chrome extension will restore dark mode theme and code search, but a lot of these issues can’t be fixed with extensions so I hope these bugs get fixed.

8

Please bump this x1000. This new editor is UNUSABLE. I am basically having to move everything to a 3rd party text editor, edit the code then move it back to the liquid editor. Ridiculous.

9

Yes, PLEASE Shopify look at this ASAP. The typing delay in the code editor is insane. I thought it might have been a Chrome issue, but tried in other browsers and it’s the same everywhere. Is it constantly trying to do an autocomplete lookup or something? Or just a JS memory leak? Whatever it is the editor has become unusable.