CMSMS 1.7 is being planned and microtiny introduced. Please read and vote

[geeves]

Hey guys.

After hearing about plans by the CMSMS devs to leave out a css class drop down in favour of allowing things to be set by inline styles within the new microtiny editor, I wanted to know if other people think this is as big a mistake as I think it is.

My argument is that allowing any content editor to set inline styles is a fundamental flaw and goes against web design and development best practices. It is imperative that there is a clear separation between the sematic and the aesthetic.

Users, please vote and have your say and it *may* hopefully change the dev teams mind.

Devs, please take heed of user requests. We appreciate the countless hours devs devote to making CMSMS the great product that it is, but as users, we'd like to see decisions being made which takes the CMS forward in terms of conformance to best practices and modern web standards.

To see more about separation of presentation from content, start here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation ... nd_content

[jmcgin51]

Sorry geeves - as much as I agree with you that inline styles should be avoided, I think the whole purpose of this "tinylite" project is to provide a no-frills end-user-friendly WYSIWYG, and I think the alignment tools do more to further that goal than the CSS class dropdown.  Most end-users are very familiar with the simple alignment tools from word processing software, etc, but are not familiar with classes.

For the "power users" that understand classes, the full Tiny module will still be available.

I really don't see why it would be such a big deal to add the class dropdown in addition to the inline styles.  Hopefully one of the dev team will respond to your request for a more detailed explanation.

[RonnyK]

One other remark, TinyMCE wont be gone, it just wont be the default editor on install.... You will be able to install the editor as any another module, it just wont be core anymore....

Ronny

[Fraserm]

I actually think there's a case for not offering any formatting options at all besides maybe italic/bold.

I've come across a few cases now where companies have people (sometimes even the receptionist) whose job it is to add and update news articles or some such content where the formatting never changes.

In those circumstances an editor with almost nothing other than the editor area itself would be ideal. The styles could be defined in the template and nobody has to worry about the person mucking it up or deviating from the corporate norm' in terms of styling.

Edit: Having said that, is there no way they could both be included? The vast majority of my sites will use TinyMCE, so it's another step to the setup that most people would have to do.

[ironblaze94]

Personally i would prefer if the css class drop down was left as it is.

[Pierre M.]

Personally i would prefer if the css class drop down was left as it is.

You can use the fullTiny with "the css class drop down left as it is". Microtiny is in the core and Tiny is still available as a module like current. (if I understand well)

Pierre M.

[geeves]

In response to the recent microtiny discussions, here's what I have decided to do with the full version of TinyMCE.

Here's the advanced backend profile settings for my ideal version of TinyMCE lite

In the TinyMCE module configuration screen:

1. Go to the 'Profiles' tab
2. Set the 'Advanced backend profile settings' to the following in 'Toolbar 1'
Option 1 (no ul or li buttons)
bold,italic, underline, separator, cut, copy, paste, pastetext, pasteword, separator, cmslinker, link, unlink, image, media formatselect, styleselect.
Option 2 (with ul and li)
bold, italic, underline, separator, cut, copy, paste, pastetext, pasteword, separator, bullist, numlist, separator, cmslinker, link, unlink, image, media, formatselect, styleselect
Click 'Save Profile' before going to the next screen
3. Under the plugins tab check the 'media' option and click 'Save plugins'
4. Advanced Tab
I like to have 'Load stylesheet for content' unchecked because I only want to show users specific style information, in this example, I only want to show classes for aligning images to the left and right.
I add two classes to my 'Additions to stylesheet' textarea (modify as you like):
.float_image_left { float:left;margin:0 10px 12px 0 }
.float_image_right { float:right;margin:0 0 12px 10px }

Then I also have these two classes in my master stylesheet. This way, when editing, content looks the same in the editor and in the frontend site.

Once you're done, click 'Save advanced settings'

Optional extra: check the 'Allow table operations' option in the 'Profiles' tab if you want to give users the ability to add/edit tables.

Thanks

[tyman00]

I know you are concerned about this, but creating a separate thread from an already existing discussion only creates more confusion for everyone. It is very likely that not all of the comments and concerns will be heard because now you are expecting the devs and other community members to keep up with two threads where one is just redundant of the other.

[Silmarillion]

I just want to say, as I'm maintaining both microtiny and fulltiny, that re-adding the class-dropdown is extremely easy to do... And I agree but was voted seriously down on whether to include it. I'd be happy to reinsert it, but MicroTiny really don't do it for me, so I'll just keep using, and maintaining, the full version.

sil.

[gocreative]

My view is that the solution needs to work for both the editor and the designer/developer. For that reason, I think both options should exist because some users need the flexibility and don't understand classes, while others just want a basic editor.

Therefore, to me, the real question is how easy it is to choose between the four options (classes, inline, both or none). The ability to turn them on or off should be made as simple as possible for the designer/developer by simply having a checkbox for each option within the TinyMCE configuration. I would also take that a step further by assigning these options per user/group.

Another option would be to be able to give each CSS class an alias. For example, 'float_left' may be a good class name for a designer, but if there was some way to provide an alias in plain English, such as 'Image appears on the left', that would make using the class drop-down much more understandable for the end user. I'm not sure how this would be achieved, but it's an idea.