Field Layout Designer Side-by-Side Comparison

Craft 5.6 made a sig­nif­i­cant change in the field lay­out design­er: instead of a sta­t­ic list of fields and UI ele­ments on the right side of the builder inter­face, the fields et al. are only acces­si­ble via a HUD UI element.

When I first saw the new HUD ver­sion of the field lay­out design­er, I thought it was going to be a slow­er, more cum­ber­some way to build field lay­outs. So, I decid­ed to do a com­par­i­son to find out what it was like for me.

This video is that side-by-side com­par­i­son build­ing the field lay­out for an entry type in Craft 5.5 and Craft 5.6.

For the video, I tried to make the process of build­ing the field lay­outs in the two ver­sion of Craft as syn­chro­nized as pos­si­ble. It’s not per­fect because the UI is dif­fer­ent, and I made a few typos or hes­i­ta­tions. How­ev­er, I hope it will demon­strate the dif­fer­ences between the two.

The video is not meant to be an exper­i­ment of which ver­sion is faster or eas­i­er or any quan­tifi­able out­come. I just want­ed to see how they both look side-by-side and make my own conclusion. 

What was my con­clu­sion? Oh, you have to watch the video to find out.