we actually had the same experience with early versions of concrete cms. Everything was on the page and it was a hard experience. We then pulled things more into overlays and it made a lot more sense for people, and was easier/more consistent to develop with.
Generally the promise of in-context editing is you can fix a typo from the same place you see it. I think trying to make it a pixel perfect "edit looks EXACTLY the same as view" deal is too literal.
http://concrete5.org is doing quite well with the overlay approach, and no one says our software isn't intuitive enough because the editor is in a window.
Comments
we actually had the same experience with early versions of concrete cms. Everything was on the page and it was a hard experience. We then pulled things more into overlays and it made a lot more sense for people, and was easier/more consistent to develop with.
Generally the promise of in-context editing is you can fix a typo from the same place you see it. I think trying to make it a pixel perfect "edit looks EXACTLY the same as view" deal is too literal.
http://concrete5.org is doing quite well with the overlay approach, and no one says our software isn't intuitive enough because the editor is in a window.