I remember some time ago someone was talking about doing an extension to integrate it, but i don’t think anything ever happened.
PHP gurus? Anyone? It would be a HUGE help for several client sites if i could have this ... it generates WAY better code than FCKEditor, TinyMCE, or any of those others, and it’s very minimalist so clients can’t screw up the design of the site. :)
I would recommend using Markdown or Textile over the widgeditor. All the widgeditor provides is bold, italic, link, lists and images, all of which are easily obtainable through either of the aforementioned text parsers, and produce even cleaner code, plus are editable from everywhere. I use Safari and the widgeditor didn’t work for me when I just went to it.
If you are determined to use a visual editor, you can probably just use any of the existing ones and just turn off the buttons you don’t need. i’ve worked with fckeditor before and it’s pretty straightforward.
Problem is, even if you strip the toolbar on either MCE or fckEditor, it still produces LOUSY html. ESPECIALLY if you copy and paste in text from somewhere else—another web page, a Word document—which a lot of people do. I regularly have people manage to end up with about three times the amount of <span>s that are strictly necessary, as well as fer-chrissake FONT TAGS.
Widgeditor is a nice, basic, standards-compliant by default tool.
And re: Safari—while i insist, to the point of craziness and obsession, that everything i make that’s actually going to be a public page is completely cross-browser/cross-platform, i’m not so strict on control panels. And none of my clients is going to care about the Safari thing, because all of them are on PCs. It’s more important for them to have a tool, even if it’s limited by browser (and really, everything-but-Safari is pretty decent, you gotta admit), that will allow them to NOT SCREW THINGS UP.
And while *i*, personally, **heart** Markdown and use it exclusively, i have a lot of clients who are IDIOTS. Or rather, i have one client whose clients are, so far as i can tell, ALL idiots. (I subcontract for them.) Expecting them to grasp anything more complicated than “i click the B and suddenly my text turns bold” is, sadly, pretty hopeless. For the same reason, the nice EE custom buttons won’t work—they get confused about why the extra characters suddenly appeared in their textarea.
And while *i*, personally, **heart** Markdown and use it exclusively, i have a lot of clients who are IDIOTS. Or rather, i have one client whose clients are, so far as i can tell, ALL idiots. (I subcontract for them.) Expecting them to grasp anything more complicated than “i click the B and suddenly my text turns bold” is, sadly, pretty hopeless. For the same reason, the nice EE custom buttons won’t work—they get confused about why the extra characters suddenly appeared in their textarea.
LOL, nice to hear I’m not the only one. Markdown is so easy to learn but I’ve seen even intelligent people’s brains just melt when faced with the prospect of adding a few * to their text
But I agree, an extension for Widg would be nice, although you can configure Xinha and FCK to just display the barebones bold, italic etc…
Even then the code it ouputs isn’t particularly impressive, especially if the client pasts it in from Word… sigh
I agree that people can be very resistant to Markdown (or Textile for that matter), however in every case that I’ve pushed for Markdown I’ve come out with a better product. I explain that there’s less chance of error with markdown because you actually *see* the code, you’ll know right away if there’s an error, or you’re missing a *. That means they don’t have to call me (and pay me) to troubleshoot a simple error. Further I explain that Markdown is a universal solution, it works in all browsers (even PDA’s and Mobile Phones) unlike finicky rich text editors. I also explain that it produces cleaner code, which doesn’t matter too much to the until I explain the errors that can happen from bad code, the file size increases and the accessibility problems.
I guess I’m saying that yeah people turn to mush until you force it down their throats and explain: “see how easy it is to create a list? look no mouse! Just type an asterisk. That’s it.”
Fair enough, and appreciate the advice. I do do a lot of client education, frankly. I’m something of a standards-and-best-practices nazi, and i DO try to force good practices and clean code down my clients’ throats. This is made more difficult, however, by the fact that my biggest client is actually someone for whom i *subcontract* and have no direct client contact in 95% of cases. So mostly i have to hide it, sneak it in, and issue dire warnings about bad code to the SALES GUYS—who, being sales guys, and nontechnical ones at that, don’t always listen, especially when it makes things more “difficult” for the actual client. *sigh*
My small clients, the ones i have direct contact with? Mostly use Markdown. *wry grin*
EEEEKKK. i completely understand where you’re coming from with the ‘sales guys’ point of view. i’m thinking about creating a ‘flash’ text editor because at least that way it’s cross-platform. right now it’s really nothing more than thoughts, but hopefully i can get something going soon.
Seems like Widgeditor or something similar OUGHT to be able to work in Safari—i know there are some weirdnesses with javascript in Webkit as compared to other browsers, but i also know people do manage to get crossplatform scripting working. But OTOH, Flash *does* sound like a good solution. Really, most people do have Flash. People without can probably manage with plaintext.
