Layout overrides
We’ve been over page layouts, page configurations (handles), and layout instructions (blocks, containers, and so on) and how they are processed to render a page. It might seem a little “limited” that this process is always done via “XML merging” and then the rendering process. AC core developers call this process “layout extending” in the official documentation and it might seem a little limited.
Preparing a customized wireframe might seem like a huge challenge. Moving and setting up containers and blocks, as well as removing unwanted elements from certain pages or all pages, seems like a lot of time that should be saved as customizations should be done much easier, right?
AC core developers are aware of this and that is why they created a way to override (or simply tell the code to skip some steps) the core layout files and limit the XML merging process only to the bare minimum. This is the way highly customized...