Thread

What are you guys currently using to handle content generation for your non-technical users. I’ve looked around and have yet to find a great WYSIWYG editor for EE. Most are very clunky and output poorly formatted code. To me this is a big problem since I don’t want to rely on the user to have to use markdown or straight HTML to format their content. I’m not a big fan of Wordpress but their WYSIWYG editor is one of the better ones I’ve seen. I like how you can easily integrate photos. Thoughts?

Most are very clunky and output poorly formatted code.

That is, unfortunately, the state of affairs. Don’t be too quick to discount markdown, I’ve tried it with several clients and once they get over that initial hurdle about 80% stick with it.
Having said that the big players are:
Tiny MCE
FCK editor
XStandard
Xinha
Widgeditor

Do a search on the forums for these and you’ll find numerous threads. I’ve installed Tiny for several clients but, like you said, the code it outputs is far from clean (especially prone to
tags and   between paragraphs). I usually keep the feature set very minimal as well, the more options you give to the end user the more they seem to abuse them 😊

I’m not a big fan of Wordpress

This might be an obvious question on this forum. but what is it that separates EE from WP, C? Also, could you share your experience if you are trialing the suggested WYSIWYG modules?

I have TinyMCE running with Ibrowser and in 90% of the cases it works fine. It’s the remaining 10% that gives me a headache. It’s just so complicated that it is almost impossible to track bugs. And for supporty you’re on your own. Not nice if a client is banging at your door…

Look here for tinymce and here for I browser.

Meanwhile I’m working with a in between solution: I make a field for the images and disable most image upload functions through hacking the Publish file. I should make an extension for that but couldn’t find the time to make it.

So now clients can upload images, but they can’t place it anywhere as they like, but at least it’s reliable and understandable.

The moblog module could also be a solution, with that people can place entries through e-mail, but I didn’t try this myself yet.

I have been working with WP. It’s fantastic. I really think that, but working with you’re own design is so much more easier in EE and also support here is superb.

Hi Henk,

I like your image upload strategy and it would be great if you could write it into a plugin:-) THE WYSIWYG remains unacceptable for client’s usage in my opinion.

Wim :cheese:

I have TinyMCE running with Ibrowser and in 90% of the cases it works fine. It’s the remaining 10% that gives me a headache. It’s just so complicated that it is almost impossible to track bugs. And for supporty you’re on your own. Not nice if a client is banging at your door…

Look here for tinymce and here for I browser.

Meanwhile I’m working with a in between solution: I make a field for the images and disable most image upload functions through hacking the Publish file. I should make an extension for that but couldn’t find the time to make it.

So now clients can upload images, but they can’t place it anywhere as they like, but at least it’s reliable and understandable.

The moblog module could also be a solution, with that people can place entries through e-mail, but I didn’t try this myself yet.

I have been working with WP. It’s fantastic. I really think that, but working with you’re own design is so much more easier in EE and also support here is superb.

I use the same thing you do. However, since my site is xhtml strict, my init code is heavily edited and only valid XHTML code is allowed. Everything else is stripped by TinyMCE before putting the post in the db. That creates a problem with ibrowser because the first align option is gives is align=left or right. Whereas they need to use the ‘float:left’ or right instead.

But this is a great combination and my contributors immediately started adding images to almost all posts. Which I really like.

Good stuff

J.T, do you think it possible to write an extension/plugin for Tiny, which would enable us to configure Tiny through an EE-GUI?

There’s already one out there. it’s an extension. I did mine manually, then I saw this and used it.

http://expressionengine.com/wiki/TinyMCE/

It’s nice for quick use because you don’t have to dig through files to remember where you put the init code. it’s in the settings for the extension.

Here’s the other part. integrated uploads and ibrowser (upload management) with TinyMCE

http://expressionengine.com/wiki/Installation_of_iBrowser/

Have fun!

See this thread for a better file/image management option for tinyMCE.

Wow John, looks promising! However…

What remains is that sites on EE hosting load the timyMCE UI, but sites that are on my local hoster don’t, even though it’s a pretty reliable hoster. And there are more bugs, like sometimes you can’t delete characters. And not to mention the amount of html crap that it produces.

And that’s what’s giving me the headache…(or the amount of beating my avatar had to take in the past maybe)

Just to save others some time…

Integrated xinha 0.931 (stable)with EE 1.6.0 ..got it working with no problem BUT it strips out heaps of code and truncates the rest.

In short unless you have hours to spare rewriting source, don’t consider this an an option for a WYSIWYG editor.

Not sure if you’ve seen this yet but Yahoo has a really promising editor out. I’m sure EllisLab will develop their own custom editor when it comes time to put one in EE, but this might be a great place to get inspiration. From my understanding it even works in Safari 2 (I have Safari 3 beta installed and it works great.)

Yahoo YUI Editor

Great post. I am intrigued about that. it looks nice.