First Impression of Cascade

The Cascade editor gets the job done, but it is limited and not intuitive. Every task requires filling out forms. Use form to add a title. Use form to upload an image. To update text, use the WYSIWYG editor, which can also change styles, fonts, font sizes, colors, and background colors to the body text with inline CSS. Editing a page in Cascade is not intuitive because the pop-up editor covers up the page. I had to close the pop-up editor several times to see which part of the homepage I was editing. That’s pretty much all you can edit in Cascade. You can’t add any dynamic contents. If you need new features or new design layouts, you will have to edit or create new templates. Cascade doesn’t offer the flexibility that MODX offers.

There’s a misconception that you need to know HTML or you have to be technical savvy to make edits in MODX. You can use the WYSIWYG editor in MODX to make changes without knowing any HTML at all. In this regard, MODX is very similar to Cascade, but MODX offers users beyond the WYSIWYG editor. If you know HTML, you can switch to HTML view to keep your page clean and free of messy markups. Furthermore, you have more flexibility to create different layouts without having to add additional templates. In addition, if you know the MODX scripting language, you can create much more complex pages with dynamic contents such as the directories, working papers, and course catalogs.

Cascade has a straightforward templating system. You can create an HTML page and add in Cascade’s snippets for parts that need to be updated. Unlike WordPress’s modern templating system, Cascade takes a traditional approach. Whereas WordPress is moving toward giving users more control of the full-site editing, Cascade is still relying heavily on templates to lock down the editing capabilities. If our goal is to limit users from doing too much editing to our website then Cascade is good for that.