WYSIWYG editor

[kate-nutri]

Valid or not. I would rather have my customer seeing bold text than this: !!<<strong>>!!text in bold!!<</strong>>!!

In my experience this is what causes confusion and bad html.

Most CMS allow to chose wether you want to use a WYSIWYG editor. How hard would it be to implement and make the best of both worlds? Any comments from the actual 'Actinic People'?

[jont]

I think the display of inline Actinic applied formatting could be cleaned - just as the <actinic> variables are compacted down so too could the !!<<strong>>!! to show just the emboldening or the colour for example.

Going the whole hog toward WYSIWYG is beyond the scope of Actinic and they do provide the DW integration.

[Steve G Griggs]

Hi.
I agree with Jont. Cleaning things up is the way forward. Full WISYWIG could become a nightmare.

[RuralWeb]

Using WYSIWYG editors leads to problems like this http://community.actinic.com/showthr...225#post265225

[Jarvis]

I think the point is being missed.
Here we have an end user, a cart owner, requesting what must to him be a simple request.
How do I add bullets?

Here we are, giving reasons for and against the use of WYSIWYG editors.

It's not his problem.

Sure I know how to do it.
But the hell I'm going to offer that as a solution to one of my cart owner clients.

If bullets were properly implemented into a WYSIWYG editor, then maybe, just maybe it would save some time for everybody.

[gabrielcrowe]

i'm afraid i'm erring on the side of a wys editor, logic?:

at the moment, its a html builder, and it sucks. big time.

why cant we have a html parser, and enclose all the content in the !!<>!!?

Actinic re-invented the wheel with its html escape. its a little dated and i think time for a update.

how about a 'simple' mode, where the user isnt plagued with daft escape tags, and an advanced mode, where they get to edit the field as html?

[Jarvis]

Now that's using brain!

[pandpdeveloper]

I'm with Gabriel.

As a relatively new user of Actinic my first few months were full of issues, frustration and confusion.

I know HTML, Javascript and CSS but even that knowledge was pretty useless when I had to get my head around Actinics variables, layouts and so on.

Initially all I wanted was a working shop with a layout that looked half decent and text I could edit/move easily. Actinic made this difficult and its only now 5 months on that I am getting a level of confidence with layouts - in that time someone less skilled would likely look at alternatives or give up on ecommerce.

This is not simply a 'gadget' - its a request for basic 'entry level' assistance for new users. It's OK for developers to call the shots but the new customer is the one that pays the next bill and their observations should be noted.

For me, basic HTML editing within the product layout would be a massive improvement - and having played a part in designing bespoke ecommerce solutions with such an editor inbuilt I know it isn't THAT difficult.

Confine the HTML produced to 'display' areas and offer basic colour, size, font and formatting options in a wizard - it would make Actinic much more user friendly and approachable.

2penneth duly passed on....

[gabrielcrowe]

ironically, Actinet has a full wys editor, for the product management part.

it parses the horrible tags out beautifully, and can even re-tag bad html.

after its done stripping the html, before it saves it back to the database, it encloses the whole snippet in an escape block.

sadly, that plugin was discontinued due to wierd caching issues and character encoding problems, in actinic catalog.

[Jarvis]

Look on the bright side.
Maybe we won't get what users have been begging for for years, but don't forget, with v9.04 you get a, "Third Man anti fraud service".

Listen to what Paul is saying Actinic, people will move on...

[Jarvis]

I've been thinking a bit about this.
We use a Tiny MCE module quite often for our 'Flat' or 'Brochure' websites.

The interface is 'Open Source' and there are modules that can be integrated into applications as well as websites.

Isn't this what we are talking about?

[pandpdeveloper]

Exactly the same kind of thing we used. Open Source, readily available and proven.

Could almost be a plugin

[gabrielcrowe]

denied:

tinymce is javascript, and due to the fact that its open source, it would mean that actinic would have to incoude its source alongside their project.

the editor in actinic is a desktop dialog. serious work would ahve to go into making a javascript widget fit in.

i used tinymce in actinet.