MicroTiny

[lewishowles]

Not sure if this or the core forum is the best place for this.

We use a lot of HTML5 in our templates and sometimes in the content areas. TinyMCE, while awful, let you put in extra configuration to stop it messing with HTML5 tags.

MicroTiny doesn't have any of those options.

In the meantime, I've just had to remove it and install TinyMCE again, which adds a few steps to every new site we create - is there a better way of fixing this or are we at the mercy of the TinyMCE developer?

[Dr.CSS]

Sorry but microtiny is supposed to be light weight so it doesn't have as many features as the full tiny so you will need to install it for sites that need more functionality in a wysiwyg...

[lewishowles]

Yeah granted, but it's not really extra functionality, it's 'not being broken'.

I still don't understand why TinyMCE doesn't support HTML5 at all, or just one check box saying 'leave my code alone, for the love of God I know what I'm doing'.

[calguy1000]

Here it is:

A. TinyMCE is a wysiwyg editor. Designed for people to type stuff in, hit some buttons, and 'what they see is what they get'...it is not supposed to be a website designer tool.

B: MicroTiny is an extremely stripped down version of TinyMCE with few options, intended that your content editors (who don't know HTML) will type some text in there, and maybe insert an image or two (I still don't like this idea, but that's a religious debate). and have very few options to screw up all the effort you put into the design, and stylesheets etc. It still has all of the design flaws or bugs of TinyMCE... This is not the place to debate that.

C: Designers should know HTML, and therefore work in 'templates' (if they don't know HTML they should see a package called 'frontpage'). Content editors don't need to know HTML and all of its intricacies, and therefore need a wysiwyg editor of some sort. And never the two should mix. Design (such as large block level elements) should not be mixed with content. Developers should disable the wysiwyg and limit editor access to pages that are largely functionality based. i.e: pages that display product lists, etc. This is the paradigm that we worked on for CMSMS 1.10, Though our implementation may not be perfect yet.

If you don't agree with points B, and C, that is fine. You have options. You can install the full TinyMCE module with all of its configuration capabilities, or you can develop your own set of modules, and addons that make things work the way you want them to.

If there is a major flaw with this design and intent, although I have yet to see it... I would be happy to entertain a well described argument.

[lewishowles]

The simplest example is block level links. There are quite a few use cases where these would be great in a content area, but are impossible.

The example I've used today is a list of four services with titles and descriptions in block level links so the entire area is clickable without having to rewrite the link 2-3 times.

Its quite feasible to have a <time> element that should be user editable, and there's probably a number of examples for most of the new tags.

Unfortunately you can't have lots of little content areas for all the different pieces of text to entirely separate content from template as its quite common to have multiple 'incorrect' elements in a content area

You have to have an extremely simple site to never need HTML5 elements in content areas, or one that is too complex for the average end user to update themselves very simply.

Every piece of text that relates to a business on their own website should be editable by the business owner with zero knowledge. To have to put things in templates, as much as I'd like to, entirely defeats the point. TinyMCE helps with the no knowledge but as I say doesn't help in making it easy to edit everything, no matter what code has been used that the TinyMCE developer deems incorrect.

[carasmo]

I have TinyMCE installed on a new 1.0 install. I REALLY dislike MicroTiny, yet I can't get TinyMCE to work again, though I never uninstalled it or changed its configuration. I have my preferred editor selected in user preferences, just like I've done for the last many years. I hate wysiwyg editors, every one of them. Blogger has a pretty good one, but still, what I did like about TinyMCE is that I could strip it down myself, and that I did, I stripped out all the crap I didn't want, put in my own styles, removed fonts, etc., and turned it off on many pages for the customer and taught them basic html, people should learn another language after all. I also added drop downs for adding cgsmartimage, templates, other tags that echo stuff, and so forth. I'm weeping now.

Fortunately, I copied everythig, duped the db, and installed in a subdomain, so my old, perfectly working copy of the site before upgrade is untouched.

[Dr.CSS]

If tiny is eating stuff turn it off...

[carasmo]

Have you tried the listit2 module, it works with 1.10 and below (at least to the last two versions) and it allows for custom fields, so you can have a CV page, FAQ, testimonials, rotating quotes, etc., and the customer just types in text. You can copy the module (it's in the help) and create your own little stuff. Also, Advanced Content module, though I can't get it to work with 1.10, allows for drop downs and check boxes and you can wrap stuff in strip tags or whatever so the customer can enter crap and it will strip it of all html. Just some ideas. Also, though commercial, ExpressionEngine is badass for making a nice custom interface with how many fields you need.

[carasmo]

If tiny is eating stuff turn it off...

Turned it off/uninstalled and TinyMCE doesn't come back.

[calguy1000]

If you're on 1.10, you will have to upgrade TinyMCE to get it to work.... I know a new version of it was released within 48 hours prior to 1.10 being released.

[calguy1000]

Oh, BTW... I see the thing with the MicroTiny custom styles. I've fixed it in SVN... for the next release.

[lewishowles]

Ignoring other problems with MicroTiny that might be fixed by installing a bunch of extra modules (doesn't seem to be the most efficient solution but we can hope that it some day does support HTML5 like it supports 4 now), I've noticed something that might worth looking into - MicroTiny removes forward slashes at the beginning of URLs for links, images etc (as does TinyMCE by default). If you turn on URL re-writing, and have more than one page level (eg by using the news module), those links-that might be in a global content block-are going to break.

Am I missing a way to remedy that, that doesn't include not using URL rewriting or using TinyMCE instead ?

[calguy1000]

links you manually type in by clicking the 'html' button at the bottom, entering HTML into the text area, then un-checking it?

[lewishowles]

Yeah exactly. Even if you put absolute URL including domain it'll strip it out if it's the domain the website is on.

Or if you write it in the HTML view, then apply it, it'll work, but obviously next time you load it up to edit the page the WYSIWYG will remove it again.

The same occurs even if you use the link button in MicroTiny itself.

I think using {cms_selflink} is a solution for us as it prints the absolute URL and is a better method anyway, but clients obviously won't know how to do that and might want to link between their own pages.

[calguy1000]

I just tested MicroTiny, created a link to a test page.

The code generated was: <a href="{cms_selflink href='how-cmsms-works'}">installation</a>. I then hit 'save', and reloaded the same page. Same syntax was there.

Did the same thing with an absolute link to another site. Save, re-edit the page, and all was good.

We know TinyMCE edits HTML, re-formats it, cleans it up, etc. It's intended for people that don't know what they are doing. That's why we click buttons to insert links etc. Not much we can do about it... and actually, I don't think we would. If you expect your users to be able to enter HTML disable the wysiwyg. If you don't, then use the wysiwyg with its limited functionality so that they can't screw up too much.