Universal Editor with Classic AEM Components

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Universal Editor with Classic AEM Components

by @daniel-strmecki

Introduction

The Universal Editor is Adobe's new, modern content editing interface for AEM. It provides a seamless editing experience across sites, experience, and content fragments. While it’s tailored for headless and edge delivery, as the name suggests, it is designed to be universal. Therefore, it can be used for editing any website, regardless of the framework or technology used to deliver it. This includes classic AEM delivery that uses components built with HTL and Sling.

In this post, we'll walk through the steps required to make classic AEM components work with the Universal Editor. We'll demonstrate the feasibility of this approach, while also discussing whether and when it makes sense to migrate and what alternatives we should consider first.

Key points

Adobe 's Universal Editor is definitely the future of AEM authoring. It is modern, headless, editor-friendly, and designed to work with any frontend technology. But what if your site still relies on classic AEM components built with HTL? 

In this post, we'll walk through:
- How to make classic AEM components editable in Universal Editor
- Key configuration steps (headers, cookies, and component mapping)
- Instrumenting components for Properties Rail, and inline editing
- When and why you should consider migrating vs. sticking with Page Editor
- Alternatives like EDS and Next.js that align better with Adobe’s roadmap

Please note that while it is possible to integrate the Universal Editor with classic AEM components, Adobe’s own guidance suggests that this is not its ideal use case. The Universal Editor is purposefully limited in terms of customization to ensure a consistent, metadata-driven authoring experience. It truly shines when paired with modern frontend setups, such as Edge Delivery Services (EDS) or frameworks like Next.js, where its architecture and tooling align with headless and decoupled content delivery.

Full Article

Read the full article on https://meticulous.digital/blog/f/universal-editor-with-classic-aem-components to find out more.

Q&A

Please use this thread to ask questions relating to this article.