Sitecore Best Practice #7 - What's the big picture?

What is Sitecore best practice 7 about?

While author uses Page Edit mode they should be able to edit template fields of the current page even if they are not displayed directly on the page.

Why should I follow it?

We should not force authors to click through the site in order to find the places where some page properties can be edited. All template fields of the page should be editable within the page.

Demo scenario

Author starts page editor and creates a new event page. Despite the fact that some of the fields are not used on the event page directly (e.g. 'Start Date' or 'End Date'), author should be able to edit them on the event page.

How do I implement it?

The only thing we need to do is to create ascx control that will contain FieldRenderers for the properties that we want to edit and that will be hidden if it's not in page edit mode:

<table class="event-details>
    <tr>
        <td colspan="2" class="event-details-header>Event details</td>

    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td width="150>Start Date:</td>
        <td><sc:FieldRenderer runat="server" FieldName="StartDate" /></td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
        <td>End Date:</td>
        <td><sc:FieldRenderer runat="server" FieldName="EndDate" /></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>

        <td>Summary text:</td>
        <td><sc:FieldRenderer runat="server" FieldName="SummaryText" /></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>Short summary:</td>

        <td><sc:FieldRenderer runat="server" FieldName="ShortSummary" /></td>
    </tr>
</table>

And consequently, in the code behind the rendering:

protected override void OnInit(EventArgs e)
{
    if (!Sitecore.Context.PageMode.IsPageEditorEditing)
    {
        Visible = false;
        return;
    }
    base.OnInit(e);
}