replacing TinyMCE with YUI, realistic? Yes/No?

Let's just recap since we did get a bit sidetracked with the discussion about a custom editor. Custom editor won't happen. Moving on.

The editor is an important part of the posting user's experience. Users who post create the success of a forum.
The current editor, TinyMCE, has a number of issues which frustrate posting users to varying degrees.

Fixing TinyMCE issues is largely unrealistic given time and resources.
Based on what Mike said earlier in this thread replacing TinyMCE also seems to be unrealistic.

Unless any of the above is incorrect we just have to suck it up, deal with it, and ask our users to do the same.
 
Sounds like this shouldn't be a situation that a company that was able to start from scratch and has only been in development for a few years should be in. Shouldn't the editor have been decided so it wasn't tightly integrated with the software aka module? Changing the editor to a different one (that's not radically different) should involve little more than changing the interface (I dont mean the UI) which could take up a lot of time, I'm not sure about that. As long as the new editor had the same feature set and you don't care about supporting new features of the new editor, I don't see what could be a massive problem thats unrealistic to accomplish.

There are a few bugs that are annoying with TinyMCE but I'm fine with it, I'm not saying the team should focus on the editor now as I don't think it would give the greatest gains for the software, just try not to become further entangled with TinyMCE.
 
Interesting read.. Did amuse me though that some have stated the one used in IPB is very stable. Its actually a nightmare at times and one reason I was glad to stop using it.
 
Digital Doctor said:
Xenforo can't afford to waste any time.
Editors are complicated and the current one is pretty darn good 99% of the time.

I think Xenforo should "outsource" as much as possible. (ie. Addons).
Click to expand...

I don't agree I guess with the word outsource (just sounds bad to me lol) but agree completely with the gist of your idea...all I need from xf is a solid core product with as much versatility as possible. I will figure out how to change the editor shall I need to (LOL I won't). Time-wise the developers are better off utilizing their skills somewhere else in xf so in principle I agree completely with you.
 
TheComputerGuy said:
What's wrong with TinyMCE exactly? It works pretty awesome for me
Click to expand...

Nothing really...it has it's quirks just like any other piece of software that is a constant work in progress which is pretty much all software for the web and probably will be that way until the standards for html css and php reach a stalemate ( I don't think that will ever happen ). I agree it works just fine and if one were to gain some skill ( I am talking about myself here) the TinyMCE platform is pretty wide open to modify to your personal needs.
 
TheComputerGuy said:
What's wrong with TinyMCE exactly? It works pretty awesome for me
Click to expand...
Guess you didn't read the first post in this thread? More detail on the slow overlay load can also be found here:

so what's the deal with the delay before the link overlay loads? then there is the issue that you often can't copy and paste a link and type some text afterwards without that text becoming part of the link without any ability to unlink it until you hit enter to create a new line

right now I can't unbold the above even though I try and try, it's easy to keep going to point out stuff that doesn't work right with TinyMCE.

If all you do is type something into the editor box it works "pretty awesome", but as soon as you start to copy & paste, insert links/embed, apply formatting or try to remove formatting you may need medication to keep your blood pressure down.

The biggest issue for me is that none of these things were problems in vB.

re: add-ons
It's all fine and dandy to have add-ons for functionality that isn't universally used by all boards out there. Arguably the editor is a core requirement hence the add-on discussion is essentially irrelevant to this topic especially considering that TinyMCE and XF appear to be joined at the hip without a straight forward way to separate the two to drop in a different editor.
 
Guess you didn't read the first post in this thread?
Click to expand...
No. I just skipped to the good parts.

The biggest issue for me is that none of these things were problems in vB.
Click to expand...
This isn't vBulletin, this is xenForo.

I wonder how hard it would be to change it up and put a CKeditor in here for those that are having severe problems.
 
TheComputerGuy said:
This isn't vBulletin, this is xenForo.
Click to expand...
My guess is that if you were to read over what you wrote it wouldn't even make sense to you even though you wrote it, unless of course your argument is that it is OK for XF to provide a worse user experience than vB did, but in that case your argument doesn't make sense. Either way, that reply makes no sense at all.

TheComputerGuy said:
I wonder how hard it would be to change it up and put a CKeditor in here for those that are having severe problems.
Click to expand...
Could have answered that question had you bothered to read the thread, specifically the reply where Mike wrote that "I suspect it'd be a major nightmare to replace the editor with the YUI one."
It stands to reason that Mike's reply was only specific to YUI because the original question was about YUI and that it is in fact difficult (time consuming) to separate XF from TinyMCE.
 
User said:
My guess is that if you were to read over what you wrote it wouldn't even make sense to you even though you wrote it, unless of course your argument is that it is OK for XF to provide a worse user experience than vB did, but in that case your argument doesn't make sense. Either way, that reply makes no sense at all.

Could have answered that question had you bothered to read the thread, specifically the reply where Mike wrote that "I suspect it'd be a major nightmare to replace the editor with the YUI one."
It stands to reason that Mike's reply was only specific to YUI because the original question was about YUI and that it is in fact difficult (time consuming) to separate XF from TinyMCE.
Click to expand...
So basically what you're saying is this thread has run its course and really serves no point any longer, right?
 
Let's take a step back from the vitriol and look again at what has been said.

The YUI editor: I see nothing to recommend the use of the YUI editor in XenForo. For a start, we build on a jQuery platform, and including the YUI editor would require including YUI, which would add very significant extra weight to pages that contain the editor - which include thread_view - the most commonly-loaded of all pages.

Custom editor: I've said before, and I think convincing arguments have been reiterated in this thread, that there is no appetite or viable reason to write a bespoke editor for XenForo. There are good solutions available under Open Source licenses, and it would be bordering on idiocy to think that a proprietary editor would be as robust in the rapidly-changing browser environment as the big projects our there already.

Ability to replace TinyMCE: Yes, of course TinyMCE is tightly integrated into XenForo - it would not work if it were not so. Replacing any editor with another represents a major challenge, and is not to be undertaken lightly. That does not mean it is inextricably tied into the software with no ability to change it, just that doing so is a lot if work, and must be prioritised against the rest of the huge queue of tasks facing XenForo development.

Why TinyMCE? When we started out, we evaluated a lot of editors for suitability. Of all that we tested, TinyMCE was the best fit. Yes, it has annoying bugs, but the others had more, and in some cases they were show-stoppers. Recently, CKEditor fixed a major bug that was a significant factor in it's rejection from our selection process, so in time we may revisit a TinyMCE / CKEditor swap, but that time is not yet.
 
I'm a little lost, why would we want to change the editor? What bugs have people experienced with TinyMCE? In all honesty, I do not like CKEditor at all. I do not like the look of it, and while that is a personal preference I am surely not alone. So unless some major changes happen with CKEditor in the near future I do not want to see it as part of XenForo.
 
I strongly believe that Rich Text Editor is such an essential input element/component for advanced web applications now a days that it should be available in the core browser. It would have been nice if HTML5 had included specifications related to this component, as it did with Slider and Date Picker etc. Such a component from native browsers will be more robust, powerful, fast and it can optimize the generated HTML more efficiently as well. There should be common controls available in the toolbar with capability to customize it.
 
LP-John said:
I do not like CKEditor at all. I do not like the look of it, and while that is a personal preference I am surely not alone.
Click to expand...
Both TinyMCE and CKEditor can be styled to look however you want them to look - don't allow their default appearance to be a factor in your evaluation.
 
Kier said:
Both TinyMCE and CKEditor can be styled to look however you want them to look - don't allow their default appearance to be a factor in your evaluation.
Click to expand...
They aren't the most user friendly to style to fit designs though :p.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom