Turn Any <textarea> into a WYSIWYG editor
Interactivetools.com has released an alpha version of their free htmlArea product which is now Mozilla compatible.
If you're using Mozilla 1.3beta+, you can see a demo of it here.
You need Mozilla 1.3 Beta for this to work. It will not work in earlier mozilla version. It doesn't work in Phoenix either (even the latest nightlies). So I assume the script is actively checking for Moz 1.3b, since the latest builds of Phoenix should support it since they would also have the fix in for Bug 88049 - Support .selectionStart & friends for textareas.
Comments
This is a very nice feature indeed!
It's strange that it doesn't work with Pheonix yet. We've had a couple of people mention that it *should*. I'll see if the developer is actually detecting Mozilla 1.3, and not the underlying verson of Gecko.
It now works in Phoenix (at least with my 20030305 build)
Only when we see this kind of editors being *not* dependant on having *always the latest* version of Mozilla, we, web-developers can start thinking of incoprorating it into existing CMS-s.
Not before.
And, if it will not be incorporated back to 1.0.x tree, we'll proabably never use the thing. You can get people to use Mozilla but you can't make them use version X.Xb.
I'm sure people said that about things like CSS and Javascript before they were widely adopted. Early adopters in the Mozilla world will be able to use a WYSIWYG editor while those who don't see the same old textarea they always did. Perhaps in a few years, when the contentEditable functionality is more widely available, then every browser will work with it. I think there are a few Java-based WYSIWYG editors that work in both browsers, but then, they have their own complications too.
I wish the Mozilla development team would just implement contentEditable EXACTLY as defined by Microsoft and make it a standard part of the browser, not requiring Javascript or anything else to make it work. Can't someone knock some heads together here. Don't they realize that implementing this feature makes Mozilla a complete development environment - you could then build really great UI completely in HTML
Mind you, while knocking those heads together, can we have behaviors as well. I think both these features are great ideas, not Microsoft-specific, totally consistent with standards and, for goodness sake, why can't we have them in Mozilla?.
- and I wish that we everybody would just forget about Microsofts ill-concieved notion of markup and focus on the potential of not following their lead. The content-editable applications I've seen so far are essentially ports of the MS Word interface: You can do <b>old, <i>talic and. This is OK, although I'd prefer <strong> and <em>. You can <u>underline text, but I prefer to keep my underlining on links. You could switch to inline styles, but I would never want that. You can apply a background color to a sentence, but I would defenitely never need that and I consider it a dangerous tool in the hands of a client. In fact, here's what I want:
<p class="links">
Simple - but not supported by any execCommand. So why should we copy this interface? Why not rather do this:
<punchline>
Make an <buzz>eXtensible</buzz>
execCommand!
</punchline>
My client would get all the features he needed to maintain a site exactly the way it was designed - and I would get the exact markup i prefer for my XSLT or whatever DOM parsing I can concieve. The contentEditable interface is sooo early nineties and very un-Mozilla in my eyes.
Did you say behaviors in Mozilla?
eeh sorry about all those tags, I wasn't thinking straight.
Dunno if anyone saw this: http://www.mozilla.org/editor/midasdemo/, and the spec for it here: http://www.mozilla.org/editor/midas-spec.html, but the mozilla developers have it written up and a demo.
You will not get a WYSIWYG editor to work on previous browsers, like Mozilla versions earlier than 1.3, because they simply do not support the designMode or contentEditable tags.
I am having a heap of trouble trying to reimplement my IE WYSIWYG editor onto a Mac because IE 5 on a Mac is no where near IE 5 on a PC and Mozilla 1.3 seems the only option, although it won't run on OS 9.x.
I however do not recommend that everyone just copy what microsoft does because it may be useful, as there are W3 standards out there that can cope with a WYSIWYG editor (designMode), and would rather see it implemented as a standard on each browser rather than following a company that blantantly goes against them.
With regards to remarks regarding contentEditable applications and the use of the execCommand.
With some creative lateral thinking, it's possible to put almost any feature currently available in wysiwyg Editors such as
Macomedia Dreamweaver, MS Font Page (of course) or other popular editors onto a "contentEditable" page, with or without using the execCommand. Just use javascript (supported on both platforms) I'm now in the process of porting all my Microsoft enabled wysiwyg applications onto Mozilla. So far it's been brialliant allowing customers to either manage all content or parts of content including dynamically generated tables and cells, hyperlinks, images, forms and form elements (textboxes, textareas etc). I've got nothing but good things to say about Mozzila moving more into this area as it makes life easier for (my) customers requiring such a facility. However, it all still depends on ones preferences as usual.
Link to my cross-browser rich text editor -- http://www.kevinroth.com/rte/demo.htm
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