Linking 'Page sections' to a Page

During the Design API course one of the participants came with an idea. I've worked this out a bit, and I think it's a good 2.0 version of what we have now. I would like to share it to see how you think of it, response is very welcome on it.

At this moment:
- Page Sections are in a tree
- Page Sections have a label (or multiple).
- This label can be shown on a page by adding/including it via PageParts.
- On a page, one can select what page sections should be shown.

Due to the current setup it's:
- not possible to move the placement of a `page section` from one 'label' to another (without moving it on all pages or copying it)
- possible to add page sections that have labels that can not be shown as they are not available in that that page-presentation.

The new idea is the following:
- Do not assign labels to page sections anymore, nor show them in a tree. You have a search-able 'repository' of Page Sections (just like the media repository).
- In a panel on a page, show what `page section areas` (new name for labels) are available for that page.
- You can freely drag and drop a 'page section' into a 'page section area'

This has the advantage that:
1. You can only add `page sections` on places where they can be really shown. For backwards compatibility you might have to allow (old) page sections to be on 'non-visible/off-page page section areas'.
2. Drag and drop them easily between these area's
3. More intuitive interface on both the `assign page sections to page` panel and the `page sections` canvas area.

Hi William

Those are some very useful suggestions, thank you. Last year we drafted a similar proposal to improve the use of page sections and we might combine it with your proposal and put it on the roadmap for 2010

thx
Martin

I agree that the usage of page sections could be improved. I mean, another problem is that you have to assign a page section to each page that has a set of page sections not inherited from another page (if that sentence makes any sense).

I'd like to see it made possible to assign page sections to a number of pages at once. Invert the process, basically.

Page section -> Assign to pages, tick boxes, complete.