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A
akhil_merupula
Level 4
May 27, 2026

Improve Authoring Experience for Tab/Accordion Components – Preserve Context After Edit

  • May 27, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 21 views

In AEM Authoring (especially AEMaaCS), when working with Tab or Accordion components, there is a noticeable UX issue where after editing a component in a non-default tab/accordion panel, the view resets back to the first tab upon closing the dialog.
 

This creates friction for authors when working across multiple tabs or deeply nested components, as they are required to manually navigate back to the previous context after each edit.
 

Current Impact:

  • Slows down authoring productivity
  • Causes confusion, especially for business users
  • Impacts usability for complex pages with multiple tabs/accordions
  • Requires repetitive navigation, which is inefficient at scale

Proposed Enhancement:

  • Preserve the active tab/accordion state after dialog close
  • Maintain scroll position and UI context during authoring
  • Optionally persist author state (session-based) for better editing continuity
     

Why this matters:
With increasing adoption of structured components (Tabs, Accordions, Containers) in AEM Cloud implementations, improving contextual editing would significantly enhance the overall authoring experience and reduce friction for content teams.
 

Additional Context:
This issue is more noticeable in enterprise implementations with complex layouts and repeated author interactions. Addressing this would align with AEM’s goal of improving author efficiency and usability.

1 reply

JenGentry
JenGentry
Level 1
May 27, 2026

Could the engineering allow an option for all tabs to be open?  You can expand all, make your edits, then change it back to collapse all on load?

Jennifer Gentry-Saulski - Content Queen
A
akhil_merupulaAuthor
Level 4
May 28, 2026

That’s a good point ​@JenGentry, having an “Expand All” option could definitely help reduce some of the navigation friction, especially for quick bulk edits.
 

One thing I’ve noticed in practice though is that in more complex pages (multiple tabs, nested containers, larger component trees), keeping everything expanded can become hard to manage and can impact usability/performance during authoring.
 

The main issue we’ve been running into is more around losing context after each edit, which forces authors to repeatedly navigate back to where they were working. Even with an “Expand All” approach, that context reset still happens.
 

Ideally, it would be great if AEM could preserve the active tab/accordion state automatically after dialog close, with something like “Expand All” as an additional optional enhancement for flexibility.
 

Curious if others have seen similar behavior in larger page structures.

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