[thelist] MetaFilter JS

[James Aylard]

Aaron,

> When a member submits to MF, they can highlight text and press ctrl+B to
> bold, ctrl+I to italicize, etc.
...
> Can anyone on the list point to another site which has this type of
> functionality or possibly a tutorial that covers the subject?

    There was a related thread on thelist just a week or two ago. The
underlying technology for in-browser text-editing that you have seen is
IE-specific. IIRC, IE 4 and IE 5 implement this through the use of an
ActiveX control; IE 5.5 added native functionality that allows you to do
this simply with html, javascript, and the browser dom.
    Microsoft's MSDN is one of the best and one of the worst places to find
information about this capability (the best, because it probably has the
most info anywhere; the worst, because it is hard to find that information
and to separate the scripting-based functionality from programming-based
functionality [such as when using C++ or VB]).
    Some useful links:

<word-wrap>
http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/browser/editing/mshtmleditor.asp
http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/dhtml/reference/properties/content
editable.asp
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dnmshtml/html/createwp.asp
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dnmshtml/html/mshtmleditplatf.asp
http://www.aspalliance.com/Yusuf/Article10.asp
http://www.aspalliance.com/Yusuf/Article12.asp
</word-wrap>

hth,
James Aylard