Popovers vs modals vs docked tools

When conceiving a CMS and a wysiwyg, I'm not sure of which options to choose to display editing tools. I'm more a dev than a designer, so I prefer avoiding as much as possible modals, because I'd like to make real-time changes, and it's more useful to see the changes, but there are cases where it's the best choice (an image manager/chooser).

When displaying the tools in popovers either below or above, it can be fine as long as the size of the content is not too big, and also having dropdowns in that popover feels really awkward.

Finally the last option is really tempting, really similarly to chrome/firefox devtools (quick ugly demo).

Do you think that solution is clear for users? That 'console' (looking for a better term) could trigger modals for images, etc.. . There would still be very light popovers for just buttons, or just a quick text input, eventually a 'dropdown text search input'. Google docs and https://www.froala.com/wysiwyg-editor are some inspirations.

examples scenario:

    1. user mousedown/hover table, 2. a few buttons are displayed for quick table edits (rows+/-,merge), and buttons that would trigger the console, 3. user edit things in console and see the changes, eventually revert.
    1. user mousedown a link, 2. small popover with browse to link, edit, delete, 3. edit menu triggering a new popover or the console...

I guess it's better to stay consistent, and try to have similar scenarios for elements

edit (in reply to comment):

  • It's a general CMS that contains basic site pages, and the idea is to have a blog section on them too
  • content will be text, images contained in 'components' that are reorganized with drag/drop
  • Mobile support isn't important for the moment