This is a brief overview of the Sitecore Experience Editor. Sitecore Experience Editor is WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor that allows user to easily make changes to items directly that are available on the page.
The Experience Editor can be accessed in three different ways-
1. Sitecore Launchpad (Sitecore Experience Platform)
2. Sitecore Launchpad/Desktop/Experience Editor
3. Sitecore Launchpad/Content Editor/Experience Editor
Ribbon in Experience Editor
Ribbon is located at the top of Experience Editor and it consists of different tabs which have different categories under each. Each category have different functionalities. The ribbon can be customized by Sitecore Admin for different users. User can see different tabs on the basis of rights admin has provided. Hence it is possible that you will see different tabs from other user.
Sometimes the ribbon is minimized so you can can expand it 
to see the different category for editing page.
On top of ribbon, you will find 3 buttons and 6 tabs on the basis of role you are assigned:
- Save button - It is used for saving all the changes that are made on the page.
- Search button - It is used to search for items that are stored in Content tree.
- New component button - It is used for adding more components to page.
Home Tab
- Edit - It is used to edit your current page components.
- Preview - It is used to view how your page will look as end users without publishing.
- Explore - It is used to let you test the marketing functionality on your page.
- Debug - It is used to debug the problems in the page.
- Component - It is used to add new component to your page.
- Insert page - It is used to insert a new sub page under the current page in Content tree
- Delete page - It is used to remove the current page. Only the Administrator can remove the page.
- Move page - It is used to change the location of current page in Content tree. Only the Administrator can move the page.
- Rename - It is used to rename the page.
- Display name - It is used to display language-specific name for page.
- Lock - It is used to lock and unlock the page. You can Lock the page so that other cannot modify it. If page is in Unlock mode then anyone can make changes to page.
- My Items - It is used to view all the pages locked by you. It show all the locked pages under the Content tree.
- Workbox - It is used to view all the pages in draft that are needed to be submit for review.
- Tag Item - It is used to tag an item or to update the tag of item.
- Publish - It is used to move all the changes made by you to web database.
- Settings - It is used to set up the publishing settings. Like setting up publishing date and time.
- Markup - It is used to check the markup of your webpage by sending all the HTML fields to a W3C HTML Validator.
- Validation - It is used to View the W3C Validator results.
- Close - It is used to Close the Ribbon.
Presentation Tab
- Presets - It is used to apply layout preset. Creating presets is part of Experience Marketing profiling strategy.
- Layout - It is used to select the layout which you want to edit. Shared Layout stores the renderings that are shared among all the language versions of an item. Final Layout stores the renderings that are specific to current language version.
- Details - It is used to view and edit the layout details for the current page.
- Reset - It is used to reset the layout of the page.
- Aliases - It is used to add or remove URL aliases for the page.
- Associated content - It is used to see all the associated items in the page.
Experience Tab
- Date - It is used to view content of the page as it appeared in past or will appear in the future. It is used to modify the current date and time of the page.
- Device - It is used to change the view to any supported device. (e.g. Mobile, Tablets, Desktop, etc.)
Version Tab
- Reset - It is used to reset the fields of this page to its standard values.
- Version - It is used to select the version of the page.
- Remove - It is used to remove the current version of the page.
- Add - It is used to add a new version of the current page.
- Compare - It is used to compare two versions of selected item or page.
- Language - It is used to change the current language of the page. English is set as default for each page.
Optimization Tab
- Status - It gives status of test that are currently being performed on the page.
- Test result - It is used for viewing the result of tests perform on current page.
- Optimization view - It is used for toggling optimization view.
- Personalization - It is used to check the results for personalization testing.
- Active tests - It is used to check pages that are currently being tested.
- Historical tests - It is used to view the history of tests for current page.
- Suggested tests - It is used to suggest pages that should be tested.
- Personalization suggestions - It is used for setting up suggestions for current page.
- Page test - It is used to perform testing of current page. A page test can be done on different versions of pages or it can be performed on completely different pages.
- Profile settings - It is used to set settings for page profile.
- Goals - It is used to select the goals that you want to associate with current page.
- Attributes - It is used to select campaigns, events or actions you want to associate with current page.
View Tab
- Editing - It is used to enable or disable editing of content.
- Field validation - It is used to enable or disable continuous field validation.
- Designing - It is used for enabling and disabling designing.
- Controls - It is used to show or hide control hints.
- Navigation bar - It is used to show or hide the navigation bar.
- Control bar - It is used to show or hide the control bar.
- Associated content - It is used to show or hide the associated contents. Associated content is content on current page that are originates from another page.
Component Editor in Experience Editor
Component Editor is visible only when in Ribbon/View/Editing checkbox is checked. It is used to edit the particular component of the page. When you click any component on the page then you can see a Component Edit box:
- Move Component - It is used to move the component from one location to other in the page.
- Create or edit personalization for this component - It is used for setting up personalization for the component.
- Test the component - It is used for start the test for the component.
- Remove component - It is used to remove the selected component from the page.
- Add or change the associated content for this page - It is used for adding an associated content or to edit the related items.
- Usage - It describes how many places the associated component in content tree is being used including the current page.
- Go to parent component - It is used to view the tree structure of the components on your page.
- More - It is used for editing the experience editor options or edit the component properties.