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information about development of Web CMS
Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 7:55 pm
by avi.swin
I am working on a project on creating a Website Builder/CMS, and as the sponsor is not looking to spend big on it until the concept works for his intended market, we are trying to develop something basic using open source technologies.
Has anyone had any experience with this and know any good/configurable WYSIWYG editors?
Any other tips/advice appreciated.
Re: information about development of Web CMS
Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 9:07 pm
by Christopher
FCKeditor or TinyMCE
Re: information about development of Web CMS
Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 10:05 pm
by alex.barylski
Unrelated to WYSIWYG but applicable to CMS.
With the buggy/boggy/bloated state of most WYSIWYG editors...I would almost prefer a CMS that stayed away from traditional WYSIWYG and focused on strict W3C compliance. There is a lot more to a enterprise CMS than a powerful WYSIWYG editor.

Re: information about development of Web CMS
Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2009 1:10 pm
by kaisellgren
PCSpectra wrote:and focused on strict W3C compliance.
Curious, does this mean no WYSIWYG or that the author has to make his own WYSIWYG?
Re: information about development of Web CMS
Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2009 2:08 pm
by php_east
avi.swin wrote:Has anyone had any experience with this and know any good/configurable WYSIWYG editors?
i would recommend, for peace of mind and full compliance,
http://www.xhtmlsuite.com/.
but it isn't free but isn't expensive either. ( i think they also have a free much trimmed down version ).
some codes are encrypted. not open source.
but the best i have seen and used.
Re: information about development of Web CMS
Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2009 5:35 pm
by VirtuosiMedia
PCSpectra wrote:Unrelated to WYSIWYG but applicable to CMS.
With the buggy/boggy/bloated state of most WYSIWYG editors...I would almost prefer a CMS that stayed away from traditional WYSIWYG and focused on strict W3C compliance. There is a lot more to a enterprise CMS than a powerful WYSIWYG editor.

While I agree with you about the state of WYSIWYG editors, I'd argue that having one is one of the most important parts of an enterprise (or any) CMS. I'm a firm believer in standards, but from a layman's perspective, ease of use and greater functionality is going to win out over less features and compliance every time, especially if non-compliance doesn't break anything visually. That said, I'd like to have my cake and eat it too.

Re: information about development of Web CMS
Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2009 6:55 pm
by alex.barylski
Curious, does this mean no WYSIWYG or that the author has to make his own WYSIWYG?
Neither...there are a few WYSIWYG which try and write compliant XHTML...problem is those editors inherently output garbage...Firefox isn't to bad but still...there is a lot of cleaning that goes on in the background before saving...eventually those WYSIWYG editors are bound to fail at least once.
Use textarea the error is explicitly in the authors hands, which is why I usually disable WYSIWYG editors in CMS if I can.
Re: information about development of Web CMS
Posted: Fri Apr 03, 2009 5:38 am
by kaisellgren
PCSpectra wrote:Curious, does this mean no WYSIWYG or that the author has to make his own WYSIWYG?
Neither...there are a few WYSIWYG which try and write compliant XHTML...problem is those editors inherently output garbage...Firefox isn't to bad but still...there is a lot of cleaning that goes on in the background before saving...eventually those WYSIWYG editors are bound to fail at least once.
Use textarea the error is explicitly in the authors hands, which is why I usually disable WYSIWYG editors in CMS if I can.
Wouldn't a simple WYSIWYG still be OK? Like one, which allows you to type, let's say, <strong> tag around your selected text?
Re: information about development of Web CMS
Posted: Fri Apr 03, 2009 7:53 am
by alex.barylski
Wouldn't a simple WYSIWYG still be OK? Like one, which allows you to type, let's say, <strong> tag around your selected text?
Certainly. The only issue I have, is that even the ssimplest of WYSIWYG editors are still based on the complex WYSIWYG editors provided to us by the browser itself.
If I were to trust any WYSIWYG it would probably be XStandard as it's a complete re-write intended to produce XHTML. The browsers were first designed as layout engines and later hacked into edit mode.
Each browser has tons of caveats when it comes to what it produces. Firefox and Opera do alright but there are still bugs that need to be compensated for via JavaScript. Each time you need to hack on a hack to fix a hack, my stomach churns.
I like clean, simple software, written/designed for a single intended purpose, like CLI tools, simple software rarely breaks.
Cheers,
Alex
Re: information about development of Web CMS
Posted: Fri Apr 03, 2009 7:58 am
by kaisellgren
http://demos.telerik.com/aspnet/Editor/ ... ultVB.aspx
That looks pretty good, although it is missing plenty of features like adding images.
Re: information about development of Web CMS
Posted: Fri Apr 03, 2009 1:04 pm
by alex.barylski
Commercial editors are probably the worst. I was a developer at a leading PHP application development company and they offered their own WYSIWYG editor that everyone thought was the cats meow. I can tell you from experience in developing/hacking the thing...it was far from as good as it actually looked.
They stated in their sales material that it was standards compliant...great...ask against whose standards? The code that WYSIWYG produced never validated once the whole time I worked on the application.
Re: information about development of Web CMS
Posted: Fri Apr 03, 2009 1:10 pm
by kaisellgren
Yea, I would stay away from commerial ware myself, but the WYSIWYG itself seemed OK. It produced valid W3 XHTML.
Re: information about development of Web CMS
Posted: Fri Apr 03, 2009 2:41 pm
by VirtuosiMedia
A resource you might find handy for editors is Genii Software's
WYSIWYG list.
Re: information about development of Web CMS
Posted: Fri Apr 03, 2009 2:54 pm
by alex.barylski
It produced valid W3 XHTML.
Nothing wrong with commercial-ware just be cautious about the sales material.
WYSIWYG editors are incredibly complex and JS as a language and environment is not exactly the best tool for the job -- unfortunately it's the only tool for the job (exclusing VBScript) for client side programming.
There are a few ways in which editors can attempt ot produce W3C XHTML:
1. They import the code into a DOM and generate the XHTML by traversing the DOM tree. This is OK but in some browsers (ie: IE) you get extraneous tags which are not usually wanted (ie: tbody).
2. You accept the output and perform advanced tokenizing and search and replace of extraneous tags.
The former is by far the easier to implement and more rock solid in design -- the later almost always has tons of bugs and hacks to address certain browser caveats. Not to mention it's probably faster in performance.
lastly you could dump the XHTML content to a PHP script and use HTML_Purifier -- which probably wouldn't be to bad of an idea but now you've introduced a dependency on PHP scripting in a client side component.
The only time I would personally use a WYSIWYG is if the HTML that I fed it stayed untouched (formatting, etc) -- XStandard comes the closest.
Re: information about development of Web CMS
Posted: Fri Apr 03, 2009 3:17 pm
by kaisellgren
I am not using WYSIWYGs either except for really simplistic scenarios like pressing an enter will work as a breakline or a paragraph. This is useful when writing blog posts, for instance. When I wrote a blog post last time I wrote it all "myself", except that the editor made the paragraphs. If you create a CMS, then WYSIWYG is a must. I've seen soooooo many polls about WYSIWYGs in CMS'es and usually 80-90% of CMS users require at least a sufficient WYSIWYG or they will look at other options. When you talk to people who use a CMS, you will notice how much they need one. For sure, having a standard compliant WYSIWYG while having all the greatest features, is not very realistic. Most CMS users will not care whether the WYSIWYG produces valid standard code.
So, the best way is to let the user to decide what editor to use.
By the way, I do have seen a Flash WYSIWYG. Maybe one like that could do it?
Time to Google!