New WYSIWYG Text Editor

Submitted by Jeff Schuler on Mon, 02/23/2009 - 14:16.

You may've notice that REALNEO's text editing panel has changed.

Drupal has for long had many different solutions to the problem of providing a WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get) solution to editing rich text within a text field. Lately some of those diverse solutions have been converging into a single WYSIWYG module. This module still allows for any particular editor within, (with support for 7 built-in,) but makes great strides at a consolidated approach to integrating their generic and common functionalities with Drupal.

We've just migrated from the TinyMCE editor to FCKEditor (within the WYSIWYG module.)

Please let me know your experience and any issues you might have.

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what you don't see is what you get

Submitted by Susan Miller on Sat, 02/28/2009 - 10:37.

I spent two hours this morning researching and preparing a post on the carbon footprint of maritime ports and NEO's carbon footprint - the upshot, what will container shipping bring to Cleveland's air quality.

I open the insert image dialogue box and inserted an image url as my last activity. lorem ipsum... was in a box and I seemed to be asked to edit this text. OK, so I selected Lorem ipsum, etc. a placeholder and his backspace to deleter that placeholder preparing in my mind how I would describe the image.

Whamo - entire post and two hours of work vanished.

For internet happy folks who can post in this that and the other method, google blogger, wordpress, drupal and god knows what else is possible, I'm sure rearranging things is an effort to make the world a better place. However, for someone like me (an ancient mariner in the www) it is simply frustrating to go to a once familiar place (things only become familiar with practice) only to find a different landscape.

A few things I do prefer:

Stability (for example, how to post an image is still "how to post an image")

Uniformity in formatting (now we have different colors and font options pasted in from word?)

Help files - in a prominent place where anyone can refer to a search help and find the answer to what ails their posting or commenting.

Someone needs "Stylesheet classes". I don't know you. If you are that person, please explain what they are, why they are helpful, etc. Please post directions for using the new text editor in realNEO's help files and plaease provide a link to those help files in reply to this post.

 

editor difficulties

Submitted by Jeff Schuler on Sat, 02/28/2009 - 11:31.

I'm very sorry you lost all of your work, and that this new editor is causing more issues.

The intention was the opposite. Trying to help the folks for whom the last editor was problematic (wouldn't let add links, wouldn't display properly,) and trying to combat some of the issues we have on the front page with post formatting breaking the page.

The "Paste from Word" I thought would be a useful inclusion, since it seems a lot of us use Word to initially format a post. I'm constantly cleaning out extra Word cruft that messes up posts or breaks front page layout. The point is to transform Word formatting to proper HTML.

The reason more formatting was being shown is that I had turned off HTML Filtering to help with Norm's issue the other day of not having indent/outdent appear -- the editor doesn't quite hook up with the behind-the-scenes input filters; the editor might allow some functionality, while the input filter removes it.

I've turned HTML Filtering back on, and removed coloring and font sizing from the buttons available in the editor. There's a tradeoff we have to figure out between what capabilities we want to provide, and what we can handle as far as modifying the look of the site and the layout of the front page.

For what it's worth, Undo/Redo work inside the text box, but I assume they didn't work in your case. I'll add those buttons to the toolbar, in hopes it might help to know those are there.

Furthermore, if you're going to spend an hour or two on a post, please don't do it inside REALNEO. Honestly, there aren't any web-field text editors I would trust that to, if it doesn't allow handle saving along the way.

I may have erred in thinking that this would solve more issues than it created, and I apologize for that. I know changing isn't easy. Please understand my intention is to keep things as straightforward as possible.

directions please

Submitted by Susan Miller on Sat, 02/28/2009 - 20:39.

Jeff - Thanks for the explanation of what your intent is/was. How about an explanation of what's new in the features now? Am I the only one who doesn't "get" this? Please provide some "help".

Should I compose complete with images in word and then simply paste the entire post in to the box? I never found word to be too intuitive. I was glad to end my administrative job where I had to use it everyday. I have been composing in realNEO for 4 years now. Today was the second time I lost a post.

Your browser security settings don't permit the editor to automatically execute cutting operations. Please use the keyboard for that (Ctrl+X).

Oh, fer chrissakes! Give me a break! I'd like to post, but many years and many paragraphs later, I don't know how.

text editor toolbar expanding

Submitted by Susan Miller on Sun, 06/14/2009 - 14:33.

My text editor toolbar just expanded. Did your's? I suppose there are even more options - not sure I'd use them though...

Which ones do you use and how do you use them?

There was mention somewhere up this page about undo/redo which my editor does not display.