Ideas for Arc XP

I was asked to create an entry here, in the ideas portal, to describe some of the PageBuilder plugin requirements that we have. We're trying to build plugins that will do the following:

1. Create a custom PageBuilder plugin and attach it to a chain. Whenever a feature inside that chain is re-ordered (via the drag and drop interface), loop through all of the features in the chain and change the value of one of their custom fields (the field will be hidden). This is necessary because our features need to be aware of their position within the chain (i.e. first, second, third, etc.) for styling reasons but also because we request differently-sized images for different scenarios, apply different markup, etc.

2. Create a custom PageBuilder plugin and attach it to a chain. Whenever the value of a specific custom field in a specific type of feature within that chain is changed, loop through all of the features of that type in the chain and update some of their custom fields to match (several custom fields must remain in sync across all of the features of that type within the chain). Other custom fields will be given numerical values based on their position within the loop. We want this because we need multiple features to perform identical queries and we don't want to burden our editorial team with having to manually track down every feature and reconfigure it every time they change the query. The queries will be identical, but our JSP will use a custom "offset" field to determine which item from the query to display.

3. Create a custom (global?) PageBuilder plugin. Whenever a specific type of chain is re-ordered within its layout section (via the drag and drop interface), loop through all of the chains of that type in the same layout section and update one of their custom fields (the field will be hidden). This is necessary because our chains need to be aware of their position within the layout section (i.e. first, second, third, etc.) for styling reasons but also because we request differently-sized images for different scenarios, apply different markup, etc.

4. Create a custom (global?) PageBuilder plugin. Whenever the value of a specific custom field in a specific type of chain is changed, loop through all of the chains of that type in the same layout section and update some of their custom fields to match (several custom fields must remain in sync across all of the chains of that type within the layout section). This is necessary because, from a UX perspective, these chains are meant to be packaged together as a single layout/design, and as such, must share the same configuration options. It would be ideal if we could add custom fields to layout sections or nest chains within chains, but since these things are not possible, this is the best alternative that we've come up with.