[thelist] Opinions and Comments on Browser Embedded WYSIWYG Editors (WAS Aren't we forgetting a user group in our CSS? Idea:EditorStylesheet)

[Mark Howells]

> So people will be happy with the WYSIWYG editors that work in
> mozilla-based browsers and IE (which make up about 96-99% of my
> incoming web traffic)
> Will I be happy? Certainly not. But that's me and just me.

It's good that you recognize that and develop for your audience, rather 
than for yourself.

> I know that we cannot support every single browser on earth. But,
> imho, at least equal opportunuties should be given to all the browsers
> that fully support DOM.

True: I personally try and code for the DOM browsers and then build in 
workarounds - if strictly necessary - for the remaining browsers. That 
makes the development time much shorter and the work, in the main, a 
lot easier.

> Anyway, here is my first DOM TextEditor prototype:
> http://www.sarmal.com/sardalya/testcase/TextEditor_Test.html

Nice idea and the concept is good. Works OK for a development version 
in Safari on Mac, though there are bugs, and I like the idea of it 
working so well and easily for non-tech savvy users.  The only thing 
I'd question is how you define each block of content, and how do you 
select a block of text to be edited? For example, if I wanted to make 
the whole of the last paragraph bold, can I select the whole of the 
grey box and it's sub-elements, and apply the style in one click?  (An 
aside: you might want to use checkboxes instead of radio buttons, so 
that the selection for bold, italicized or normal text can be 
deselected again.)

Regards
Mark Howells
Photography and Multimedia
www.permanenttourist.ch

Sean Devereux Children's Fund
www.seandevereux.org.uk