Overview of Dialog v/s Design Dialog in AEM/ Adobe CQ5

A component is CQ is the smallest unit that can be dropped on a page and content author can fill in any content in it. Content can be of two types:

1. Page-specific (in this case component dialog is used)
2. Design/Global (in this case design_dialog is used)

The way a dialog or design_dialog is defined is exactly the same, there are only two differences:

1. The obvious difference is in their name i.e. “dialog” and “design_dialog”
2. The way properties (stored content/values) access:

• Retrieve values from dialog (widget) to jsp: String var= properties.get("","");

• Retrieve values from design_dialog to jsp: String var= currentStyle.get("","");

Content/values stored via getting stored at page level under the component’s node. On the other hand, content/value stored via a design dialog is a store at design path of your template (see cq:designPath property of root node of your application/page), usually this location is under /etc/design/