XF 2.2 Text editor and attachment manager improvements

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Central to the experience of interacting with forum software is the interface through which visitors will create their content. This is usually done through the text editor and attachment manager, so keeping these systems fresh and inspiring is very important to us.

From the outset, XenForo has employed a rich text editor (RTE) to allow visitors to compose their messages in a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) interface, so that bold text is shown emboldened, large text is appropriately large etc., rather than working directly with the underlying BB code in order to take the guesswork out of message editing. We've always built a custom implementation on top of what we consider to be the best-in-class tools, and through the life of the XenForo we have already made major switches to completely new libraries twice, moving from TinyMCE to Redactor and then to Froala.

With XenForo 2.2, we have made another major change to our implementation. We continue to build upon Froala, but we have improved every aspect of our system.

We'd love you to read what we've put down here, but if you're pushed for time...

tl;dr

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I'm not sure where to post it so I'll lob it here. In these HYS for XF 2.2 we are getting new Admin settings. I'd really like a feature maybe to click in the search button top right and type in "XF 2.2" and it would show me all locations that have new settings for 2.2 so I can visit each and configure as desired. I don't want to have to click in every area to review or remember where I need to go to take advantage of these new features or like this editor to configure it. Again it's "discoverability" - help admins find the new 2.2 features please.
 
I like the new preview feature.

But those gradients... they hurt my eyes. Why would someone introduce gradients to a 2020 design?
 
It would really mess with the fanboys' heads if XF put out an HYS say, on a Thursday. Or at breakfast time BST. So perhaps they suddenly appear on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday this week, at odd times.
 
Why would you worry when you'll be able to change it easily yourself?

Because plenty of sites will stick with whatever the default is without any further changes in mind, and usually I'm not an admin, but a user of said sites. Yes, the default is plenty customizable, but it also is what most sites will run without any, or with very minor modifications, so it still imposes a pretty big decision on many users.
 
Because plenty of sites will stick with whatever the default is without any further changes in mind, and usually I'm not an admin, but a user of said sites. Yes, the default is plenty customizable, but it also is what most sites will run without any, or with very minor modifications, so it still imposes a pretty big decision on many users.
I didn't realise there were many sites that ran on stock/vanilla. I mean, it's good to make things your own, right? Each to themselves I guess. I must admit, I do like the flat style on the current editor better, but to me it's just taste.
 
Unlikely. There is good reason we strip most formatting; but especially colour.

If we retained the colour information then it causes issues with sites that use multiple styles or copying and pasting from other sites with different colour schemes.

Very easy to get in a situation where you have near white text posted on a near white background because couloirs have been brought over via a copy paste.

Ultimately the copy/paste behaviour is the same.

Hi Chris,

Thanks for your reply. Could it be an option customizable on the admin CP maybe? The issue you mention could be annoying (indeed) but people that wants to copy and paste entire texts in a well formatted manner find themselves with a block of unformatted text. No lists, no colors, no format overall except, for some reason, bold and italics. Not to mention the issue of images not being carried over on the clipboard and flat out disappearing.
This discourages users from posting a lot of times, specially in forums of reviews, news, critique... those survive with people copying and pasting their content or part of it into different platforms and, if you are unlucky enough to not the be the original post as we have noticed, user interaction drops because sadly nowadays people is really lazy. Considering you are already improving the Froala editor on this update, it could be an interesting option to add with the bundle.

Thanks for the good work!,
Zentral
 
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I am not going to fuss about how the editor looks until I see it in my environment. I'll probably do beta testing in my dev once the betas come out so that's when I'll decide how I feel about the appearance, not based on a screenshot. If i think it needs tweaking, we'll look at tweaking it. Even then, I'd likely wait for an update to our parent style before doing anything.
 
Hi Chris,

Thanks for your reply. Could it be an option for admins maybe? The issue you mention could be annoying (indeed) but people that wants to copy and paste entire texts in a well formatted manner find themselves with a block of unformatted text. No lists, no colors, no format overall except, for some reason, bold and italics. Not to mention the issue of images not being carried over on the clipboard and flat out disappearing.
This discourages users from posting a lot of times, specially in forums of reviews, news, critique... those survive with people copying and pasting their content or part of it into different platforms and, if you are unlucky enough to not the be the original post as we have noticed, user interaction drops because sadly nowadays people is really lazy. Considering you are already improving the Froala editor on this update, it could be an interesting option to add with the bundle.

Thanks for the good work!,
Zentral


I'm not sure everything you mentioned there is accurate.

Lists should come across, if they don't then it might be more related to the source HTML than anything. Here's a screenshot copy/pasted from a list of motherboard specs:

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And here's a screenshot of the result of copy/pasting a news article into the editor that includes an image.

1592332575160.webp


To clarify the logic behind what you see when you copy and paste stuff, the HTML that contains actual HTML elements, this includes lists, images, links, bold/italic/underline/strike-through formatting, should copy/paste without issue.

The rest that ends up being stripped out is generally inline styling. This is things like colours and possibly certain alignment bits.

And for the avoidance of doubt this is how it behaves in both 2.1's existing editor and the 2.2 editor.

So if you're seeing different results, you might want to bring that up in a troubleshooting thread with some specific examples as it would appear it's not working as expected.
 
I'm not sure everything you mentioned there is accurate. [...]

Thank you for your response.

You are right, lists do copy themselves over which was my mistake. Images, however, don’t get copied but rather attached to the post and, when attachments are disabled (due to the nature of news sites this is pretty common), this causes images to disappear. Mike found a fix for this here, but it doesn’t really work for other parts of formatted text. I think, however, that I’m going a little bit offtopic here so, if you prefer, I can just open a suggestions thread about this instead of discussing it here.

Thanks for the amazing work!
Zentral
 
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