Thread

I know there have been loads of threads already on the topic of WYSIWYGs, TinyMCE, etc. I just want to think out loud here for a minute and see if anyone else has thoughts on it.

I use Wordpress when it comes to blogging. I love Expression Engine, and I realize that it started as a blogging tool, but I really just think Wordpress is a better software package for both the intense blogger and the newbie. Over the years, they’ve honed in on some things in development, and I think its current state is exceptional. The WYSIWYG editor (still TinyMCE, non?) behaves just as you’d expect, allowing me to see what I’m doing and how it will basically look before I post it. The software auto-pings any links I’ve included in my post (still not clear on if EE can do this). Their WYSIWYG-integrated asset manager is probably the best recent improvement; it couldn’t be easier to add images, videos, music, or other media. The Wordpress Control Panel is fairly intuitive, and it doesn’t take long for a person to be able to grasp it.

Now, I understand that it’s a much more streamlined, specific-purpose piece of software, which is why things like asset management can be more integrated and easy to manipulate. Trying to get a forum to work with Wordpress is a nightmare. The sheer flexibility of EE (one reason I love it!) poses a problem for anyone trying to design a universal interface that can handle media in multiple contexts. I have seen the file manager preview for 2.0, and I’m hoping this kind of interface will be available to the end user in the context of adding an image or video to a weblog entry (in the same manner as Wordpress). If this is the case, it’ll simply blow Wordpress’s media manager out of the water.

I do have some problems with TinyMCE in ExpressionEngine. About half the time, on either Firefox 3 or Safari 3, a normal textarea box comes up instead of the TinyMCE editor. Sometimes I just have to reload the page to get it to work, other times it requires me to navigate to another page and then again to the publish/edit page. When it does work, I can’t highlight a line and change it to another format like h2. Instead, it keeps the first letter of the line the same and changes the rest of the line PLUS the next line to h2. Here’s the HTML ends up looking like this:

<h2><span>1</span>. Elected Officers:
</h2>
<h2>President: Doug Turner
</h2>
<p>Vice-President: Jason Chapman<br />
Treasurer: Stephanie Lutz-Crawford<br />
Secretary: Jan Johnson<br />
Co-Secretary/Social Chair: Amber Tuley

Have I done something wrong here? I’m using LG TinyMCE (v.1.2.1) and TinyMCE v.3.0.8. I should mention that this behavior is consistent with all the EE sites I’ve done. TinyMCE just doesn’t feel as stable and robust in EE as it does in Wordpress. Being comfortable in HTML, I can fix these problems by hand. But I’m concerned about my clients getting frustrated and giving up on it. It will reflect poorly on my company, as it will look like we’ve put together a shoddy product. (No offense to EllisLab, it’s not a haphazard product at all! And this really concerns a third-party solution anyway…) Second to asset management, I guess that’s my biggest issue. Is anyone else experience this stuff?

So far we avoided deploying any WYSIWYG-solution to customers whereever possible. Even if the price is more training.

While I’d be more than happy to have a slim, stable, cross-platform editor I still haven’t found one I’m happy with (including the Wordpress implementation).

All that I’ve tried so far fail to cope with pre-formatted text (and the accompanying meta data) copied and pasted from MS Word and the like.

And even if I’m repeatedly begging our customers on my knees to not do it, when there’s WYSIWYG they will. Over and over again.

So far we avoided deploying any WYSIWYG-solution to customers whereever possible. Even if the price is more training.

That’s been my experience in using EE for almost five years.

WYSIWYG editors have all kinds of issues, even those in WordPress, Joomla, et al. Users still have to be trained, and I’ve found that too many options often cause more problems than not enough options.

What I’ve done is customize the HTML buttons in EE for specific clients, and train accordingly.

While I’d be more than happy to have a slim, stable, cross-platform editor I still haven’t found one I’m happy with (including the Wordpress implementation).

Same here, though the WP/Joomla editors seem to work well, it’s hard to understand why one doesn’t work as reliably in EE.

All that I’ve tried so far fail to cope with pre-formatted text (and the accompanying meta data) copied and pasted from MS Word and the like.

What a mess. I usually ask which platform the client uses (Mac or WIndows) then tell them to use a specific editor to avoid Word, Pages, and the rest of the processor crowd.

And even if I’m repeatedly begging our customers on my knees to not do it, when there’s WYSIWYG they will. Over and over again.

The problem, of course, is that clients want what they think they want. So, I provide a price for EE HTML buttons and training, and a different price for installing a WYSIWYG editor and training. I profit either way.

😊

What I’ve done is customize the HTML buttons in EE for specific clients, and train accordingly.

Hmm, that could work nicely as well. I wonder why I haven’t thought of that yet! Too obvious, I suppose. But it would still be nice to have one that’s at least as stable as it is in Wordpress. I understand a client’s reasonable expectation that if Wordpress (which is free) can do it, then the software they’re paying $250 for should be able to do it just as well if not better.

[ But it would still be nice to have one that’s at least as stable as it is in Wordpress. I understand a client’s reasonable expectation that if Wordpress (which is free) can do it, then the software they’re paying $250 for should be able to do it just as well if not better.

Well said. What are the reasons why EE cannot have a WYSIWYG editor that works as well as the one in WP?

Indeed. And I understand the argument against making it a default in EE since not everybody will want it, but since EE has different field types, why can’t one of them be a customized version of TinyMCE?

I understand that most of usabillity is not needed in EE, but picture, flash and whole media managing while writing text is not there, so that is a big problem. Now I am for some time building few projects in EE and still cannot figure out some problems. But WYSWYG editor would really be nice. At least some functions ...

What about Markitup?

Seems nice, could be even integrated somehow in EE. Is there some variant of that so we don’t see code? To edit it like in WYSIWYG? And to have code colouring? 😊 maybe to much to ask ...

The HTML buttons, in conjunction with an EE version of the live preview widget I’ve seen on other platforms—perhaps an extension—to show the content in a separate space rather than the input window itself, could be worth considering. The main downsides are it would still be subject to the CSS for the Publish page or SAEF rather than for the template it’s being published into, and that cut-and-paste content from MS-Word would still almost certainly get kludged.

Yes, but is there a way to move the HTML buttons to just above the particular field in question? Because if not, it begins to get ridiculous to ask a client to scroll all the way back up to the top of a long page to click a button so that text will be bold.

I’ve tried MarkItUp, which would seem to solve the issue, but I couldn’t get the extension to work at all, and I followed the directions to a T 3 times.

(McGehee, your signature is awesome.)

(McGehee, your signature is awesome.)

:coolgrin: