WysiwygPro is a WYSIWYG textarea replacement that claims to be XHTML 1.0 compliant and cross-browser. Might be a good basis for a definitive plugin or feature in WordPress. I hear Typepad based theirs off HTMLArea which I guess works but I’m not comfortable with the code that produces.
Hi, Matt, do you know WYSIWYG Plugin from Moises Kirsch? I use it and seems to me very interesting.
Dealbreaker: WysiwygPro is not open source.
The not-open-source thing would only be a problem if it was going to be integrated into the base WP distribution. As long as it’s being distributed as a hack or plugin, it only needs to be freely available.
Unfortunately, unless I’m mis-reading something, it doesn’t look like WysiwygPro is free, either.
WysiwygPro is a great WYSIWYG textarea replacement – but it is not free. I’ve used it as part of a CMS for a small college and it got rave reviews from the users. It produces nice valid XHTML. The cross browser claims are a little tricky though. It doesn’t support IE on Mac, or any other browser on Mac except for Gecko based ones. It ties into APIs that are already built into IE and Gecko (Mozilla/Firefox/et al), and therefore is dependent on the browser’s implementation. There are some differences between the IE and Gecko implementations, and occasionally they became annoyances for the users. It would work great if your entire user base used one or the other, but when you have a mixed user base the little differences in the way the two platforms do things can become a headache.
Yep, the licensing is a dealbreaker. Too bad, they could get incredible exposure if it was part of WP.
You could look at TinyMCE
I get WysiwygPro from my Web host, under CPanel. I tried it once or twice, but I can’t see how it’s of relevance to WP.
WysiwygPro is indeed excellent, but, as noted, is neither free nor open source. TinyMCE is very good also, but doesn’t work right in Firefox yet. (For instance.) FCKEditor is also nice, but also has some strange Firefox bugs. I’ve been thinking for a while now about rolling my own Java applet for this, but I keep thinking projects like TinyMCE have to get it right soon. Knock wood.
As many have said the problem is the product being a commercial product.
The editor used by the Wysiwig plugin claims to be XHTML 1.0 compatible and its cross browser, so there is really no need for this.
http://www.fckeditor.net/ is the url for the editor the plugin uses.
yeah, that editor is… well the code it produces is valid, but its also not that great (as far as I think anyhow)…
The funny thing is that its actually not that hard to do… just takes time. If I wasn’t snowed under at work I might make one… we’ll see if there’s a need in the new year I guess…
Editize
I’ve never used it in a production environment, but I have played around with it. Since its Java based, its totally browser independent.
And once again, not a free product.
I’m thinking the best bet might be for someone to fork one of the good open source ones into an XHTML compliant and “pretty code producing” version.
I wrote a simple standards compliant WYSIWYG Javascript editor (well as standards compliant as you can get with current browser tech without getting too complex) a month ago when I couldn’t find a simple Javascript editor that could be easily dropped into an existing HTML form.
It could make a good base for someone to build a more feature rich editor (and it’s BSD licensed).
Hey Matt… When I was creating the WYSIWYG Plugin I tried 3 different area replacements.
1. htmlArea which is open source but it was to buggy and the code that it generated wasn’t that good.
2. TyniMCE I found it a little funny to use (I’m used to have the toolbar at the top and I didn’t feel like hacking their code.
3. FCKeditor which I choose to use, mainly because it kind of supports XHTML and it felt less buggy than htmlArea.
I also added the php Image Manager wich completes the whole package into a great replacement.
I still find some bugs in FCKeditor but mainly I can live with them… hopefully they fill fix them in another release.
I just remember… there is another replacement wich is java based… the code that it produces is great but it isn’t opensource or free…
It is made by the guys of sitepoint.com and it is call editize.
Yeah; WYISIWYGPro may not be free, but a plugin that’s designed like it and licensed under the GPL would be. 😉
Or of course we could create our own homegrown text area editor.
Oh, and by the way, if the creators of WYSIWYGPro would like to save some money by using alternatives to charging money for every version, perhaps they should use LAMP to power their website instead of Windows/IIS/ASP
Matt,
I just made a new version of my plugin…. this one is based on htmlArea so hopefully must of the errors will be gone.
http://wiki.wordpress.org/WYSIWYGII
There are some features still missing but the basics are in there.