I need a FULL-FEATURED editor, not a dumbed-down one. - My Forums

Re: I need a FULL-FEATURED editor, not a dumbed-down one.

rainbowtiger — Jun 15, 2017, 03:02 AM

Quote from: markh at Jun 14, 2017, 03:44 PM

The goal of a rich text editor, in our opinion, is to make text editing easy for users. Not to perform layout functions (how the text looks should be dictated by your CSS, not inline attributes in like 99% of the cases) or to create widgets like image maps.

OK, but for WHAT users? All users are not the same. And, all websites are not the same. I know my clients really well, and I know their experience and skill level, and also whether they have any design sensibility. For most clients, a more basic editing setup works, and prevents things from going wrong. I take great care to automate as much as possible, and have created many unique setups in MODX that makes my clients' lives much easier in terms of website maintenance. I'm also a stickler for maintaining design standards and putting everything possible in the style sheets for users to easily select (hence my need for people to sometimes be able to attach more than one class to an element). But, for those who genuinely have ability, NOT having some advanced capabilities in the editor for the occasions when a special one-off treatment is needed makes it HARDER for them, not easier. There's no need to create a custom style for something that is going to be done once, if the client can do what they want on the fly while being aware of design guidelines. If a client has been trained and educated in best practices and design guidelines, and has a good grasp of the tools, why not give them more power?

Re: I need a FULL-FEATURED editor, not a dumbed-down one.

donshakespeare — Jun 15, 2017, 02:56 AM

What of the case when the client has paid you to make available their HTML? You gonna say: erm no, I ain't trusting your edumacated kindergarten skills ?

I have heard this over the phone before:

Yo! where's ma HTML, dude!

Re: I need a FULL-FEATURED editor, not a dumbed-down one.

stefany — Jun 15, 2017, 02:18 AM

Quote from: markh at Jun 14, 2017, 03:44 PM

The goal of a rich text editor, in our opinion, is to make text editing easy for users. Not to perform layout functions (how the text looks should be dictated by your CSS, not inline attributes in like 99% of the cases) or to create widgets like image maps.

Of course. I wouldn't want clients messing around with HTML no matter how much "they dig it" or "absolutely know it 'cause they coded HTML in kindergarten or whatever"

Re: I need a FULL-FEATURED editor, not a dumbed-down one.

rainbowtiger — Jun 15, 2017, 01:19 AM

Quote from: donshakespeare at Jun 14, 2017, 11:55 PM

You would be surprised how TinyMCE 4 has improved on all and not removed the features you speak about.

Well, I certainly couldn't figure out how to make that happen. And the TinyMCE website doesn't show any such thing in all their samples, including the "Full Featured" one. I don't see any mention of most of the features I listed (1, 2, 5, 6, 9). There is mention of a way to make version 3 plugins compatible, but I need to install a plugin (maybe TinyMCE Wrapper will let me do this) that lets me get to the config script to add stuff.

Re: I need a FULL-FEATURED editor, not a dumbed-down one.

donshakespeare — Jun 14, 2017, 11:55 PM

You would be surprised how TinyMCE 4 has improved on all and not removed the features you speak about.

And as for cursor the thingy, it is a thing that I have not had time to really MODXize. It is one feature that Imperavi's Redactor has (out of the box I believe)

Here is a CodeMirror plugin that implements that, out of the box
https://github.com/christiaan/tinymce-codemirror

When submitting CodeMirror code to TinyMCE, cursor position is retained. Note: this only works when the cursor is not inside .

Re: I need a FULL-FEATURED editor, not a dumbed-down one.

rainbowtiger — Jun 14, 2017, 10:08 PM

Quote from: BobRay at Jun 14, 2017, 09:49 PM

@RainbowTiger: I think PhpStorm (actually WebStorm), has a fairly powerful RTE, though I've never bothered to get it working, because the regular editor has some nice built-in HTML tools like automatically adding closing tags, indentation, and HTML error checking. You might find its "live templates" very useful. They're kind of a weird cross between templates and macros. They pull in a template you create (via hot keys) and allow you to jump through the editable parts of it with the Tab key. I assume that Sublime Text is also a good option, although I've spent very little time with it.

I used Sublime for quite a while, then switched to Atom and haven't looked back. It's perfect for my purposes. BUT, the RTE I need is not for me, but for my more advanced clients who are capable of doing some good editing on their website but aren't code warriors, so they need to edit everything in WYSIWYG inside MODX.

A few of my clients are even decent with HTML, but the problem is when you're working in the RTE and then want to go into the code to do something you can't do in the RTE, you have to go find where you were just working again, which on a page with a lot of content is kind of a pain. It would be great if someone could figure out a way to switch to code view and keep selected what you had selected in the RTE view (like Dreamweaver used to do in the olden days).

Re: I need a FULL-FEATURED editor, not a dumbed-down one.

BobRay — Jun 14, 2017, 10:03 PM

That's why I said: "and point out that the OP did not use it that way."

That said, if someone called one of my extras 'dumbed-down,' I would take umbrage.

Re: I need a FULL-FEATURED editor, not a dumbed-down one.

rainbowtiger — Jun 14, 2017, 10:01 PM

Quote from: donshakespeare at Jun 14, 2017, 07:38 PM

If the OP is not already established in his project, then for sure ContentBlocks (or yet another Extra) might work for him.

Content blocks is way too complicated for my purposes. When I said I need "templates", I'm talking about very small snippets of things, like a placeholder for a video with a title on top and caption on the bottom, wrapped in a div that gets floated right so content will wrap around it. I don't need big "blocks" for content. ContentBlocks makes sense for the type of one-page websites you see these days, but that is not the type of design I typically use for my clients.

Re: I need a FULL-FEATURED editor, not a dumbed-down one.

rainbowtiger — Jun 14, 2017, 09:56 PM

Quote from: markh at Jun 14, 2017, 03:44 PM

It's of course up to you how you call it, but we prefer calling it user friendly and minimalistic, rather than dumbed-down

Quote from: BobRay at Jun 14, 2017, 09:49 PM

I almost never act as a moderator here, but let me gently suggest that "dumbed-down" is not a good adjective to use here in describing another forum member's product (and point out that the OP did not use it that way).

Yes, I actually wasn't referring to Redactor at all. I was referring more to TinyMCE, which in version 4 has removed a bunch of the advanced features that were present in version 3, for no good reason that I can figure out.

Personally, I don't consider "dumbed down" to be terribly perjorative, and I certainly didn't mean it that way in my original post.

Re: I need a FULL-FEATURED editor, not a dumbed-down one.

donshakespeare — Jun 14, 2017, 09:55 PM

Of the two major players in the Market, TinyMCE and CKEditor, go look at the opened issues, almost a thousand a piece.

Stuff to tackle, one million possibilities that can go wrong because of anything, browser update etc.
No wonder there are few serious public Rich Text Editors.

Unless you are in a very very controlled and personal environment, DO NOT make ya own editor. LOL