I forgot that I already blogged about the work that Jake Savin (and others?) had done earlier in the month to get Radio and Manilla hooked up to Gecko's content editable features.
Bob Stepno's "Firebird Browser Speeds OS-X Weblog Editing" post gives some demonstrations and also notes a few Mac bugs (I think we've got most of those fixed for the next Firebird release.)
Is WYSIWYG editing in Mozilla or Firebird the only WYSIWYG available for bloggers on Mac? Does MacIE not have the winIE editing control? What about Safari? Does it offer this feature?
Some comments, in no particular order:
It's probably a bad idea to call Gecko's editing capabilities content editable. It gives the impression that it's equivalent to IE's contenteditable attribute, and it's nowhere near as usable. I can hear the howls of protest now, but I spend a *lot* of time writing code for both implementations; IE's is vastly superior. It's about the only thing about that browser which is superior, but there you go.
MacIE never supported rich text editing AFAIK, and Safari doesn't either (although Hyatt has expressed interest in adding such support). So yes, it would appear Mozilla is the only option for Mac users.
Given the new situation of the Mozilla organization, is work still being done on Midas? It may work well enough for blogging, but for CMS usage (why most people actually wanted this capability) it falls short. It would be very helpful to me to know if this is as good as it'll get.
Right now I depend enough on rich text editing functionality that I've been looking into ways of fixing Midas myself (paying somebody to do it, bugging friends who are proficient in C++, whatever). On the off chance that someone is still working on it and is willing to listen (this has not been true up to this point, but you never know) I'd be happy to explain the shortcomings (both why I perceive them as such and what could be done to fix them).
Posted by: alan on August 29, 2003 06:43 PMFor a basic CMS it is sufficient and with some DHTML you van add your own tags, also in combination with a serverside lang. like php you can make a pretty good CMS.
There are several companies who offer great editing capabilities wich are only possible in Mozilla.
Xopus editor and bitflux for example.
http://xopus.com/
http://cvsdemo.bitfluxeditor.org/
It's all about how much control do you want to give the client about the lay-out of a site, wich imo shouldn't be possible.
They should be able to edit text, upload pictures include them in document, make hyperlinks etc. In this case Midas is enough.
Posted by: Shadow3333 on August 30, 2003 04:39 AMAlan, I would be VERY interested on what you think about Midas, and what it's short comings are.
Could you start a post on mozillazine's forums, or even here?
I'm sure many of us would be interestes on how Midas could be improved (and why ie's is better)
Thanks
Posted by: Jed on August 30, 2003 10:53 AMShadow:
I wrote a rudimentary rich text editing capability for Mozilla in pure Javascript before it hit 1.0, so I think I'm reasonably aware of what the possibilities are. Doing such a thing now would be much less painful as some serious bugs in the DOM have been fixed since then, but experience tells me that route will never work as well as a lower level implementation.
I'm well aware of both Xopus and Bitflux, and I know the position of exaltation they hold for some people. Let me just say this: I've actually put a client (who is a business person, not a CS major) in front of both of them and had her try to use them. Both non-starters. As technology demonstrations they're amazing, but as usable tools they leave a lot to be desired.
By way of comparison, I phoned that same client one day and told her I'd enabled my rich text editor for her site, and that she should treat it basically like a word processor. Three days later she had added nearly 30 pages of valid XHTML content to her site.
As far as what my clients should and shouldn't be able to do, well, that's kind of for me and them to decide, is it not?
Look, you don't have to listen to anything I say. If Midas does everything you need, more power to you. However, it does not do what I need. IE's contenteditable, while it certainly has problems of its own, does allow me to do what I need. It's as simple as that.
If Midas is going to improve, fantastic. I'd love some input into that process. If this is all it'll ever be because most people think it's good enough, well, what can I do? Life is full of disappointments.
Jed:
I've tried in the past to have a reasonable discussion about Midas' shortcomings. The responses basically fall into two groups: people who already know what I'm talking about, and those who insist that if Midas doesn't do something I need, I don't need to do it. Occasionally I'll be told I'm too stupid to know what I'm talking about. Hey, it takes all kinds, right?
I've basically given up and accepted the fact that Mozilla will never be able to measure up to IE in this regard. A bitter pill, especially as I don't even use Windows, but the situation is what it is. I'd hoped Asa might have some insight into or information about Midas' future, but it looks like not.
I'll keep doing what I can with Midas since, as Asa noted, it's about the only option for Mac users. I'm also wary about what MS is doing with IE; relying solely on it for this functionality makes me extremely nervous. However, the fact remains that right now, for my usage, it's the inferior solution.
Posted by: alan on August 30, 2003 12:33 PMMidas corresponds to designMode which was introduced in IE 5. ContentEditable was introduced in IE 5.5. The basic difference is that designMode works on the whole document, while with contentEditable it is possible to specify for specific elements if they should be editable. This makes a big difference for CMS'es.
Posted by: Olav Junker Kjær on September 4, 2003 12:20 AM