I was just wondering if Cemetech should have an optional WYSIWYG editor. Of course, it's not too much of a hassle to use BBCode, but often I end up with open or broken tags. The preview button would solve this, but I can't seem to remember to use it, so I have to edit my post 3-5 times, spamming SAX/IRC.
A WYSIWYG editor would eliminate the need for the preview button (unless you still use the BBCode editor portion), and would eliminate broken code, which would make posting easier and more efficient. The only downside that I can see would be the time, effort, and inconvenience it would take to implement.

Ironically, to achieve the convenience of the WYSIWYG editor, an inconvenience must occur.
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I picked no.

No, becausewhile it definitely is too much of a hassle to implement a WYSIWYG editor.
I too often edit my posts, but especially if I use lots of nested BBCode, I always use the preview button. There is simply not enough reason for making such an editor only because people forget to preview their posts.

Not meant to sound harsh, this is just my opinion.

I dislike WYSIWYG (ugh, that acronym is so hard to type!) because you're left with some really ugly BBCode that you could have just done yourself. If I need to see how something turned out, I just use the preview button.

Many broken WYSIWYG editors do something like the following:

Code:

Apart from the complications of implementing one, there's no reason why any forum should not have a WYSIWYG editor. It's much more friendly for less experienced users. I would only request that there be a setting to disable it for your account if you're used to the manual editor and prefer it.

I haven't looked, but I am absolutely sure there is a ton of WYSIWYG editors on the web, which new users can use, if they are uncomfortable with BBCode by hand.

It would definitively be a nice addition for those who grew up with blogs rather than forums, but in my case I prefer BBCode.

Maybe a plugin for PhpBB2 is available? I know it's available in Invisionboard and SMF since years ago, but PhpBB2 is older.

We value user implementations. The color for the code tags was written by a user, in fact. I tried to find the topic but I can't find it.

You guys are welcome to create a WYIWYG editor for Cemetech. No promises that we'll do anything with it but it'll swing us towards implementing it!

What would be wrong with using an open-source implementation such as this one?


I feel like this is becoming more complicated than it needs to be... first off, the editor would be optional to enable, so if you don't like the way it turns out you could indeed do it yourself. Secondly, knowing the Cemetech admins, I don't think they would implement a broken or useless WYSIWYG editor into the site. it just wouldn't happen.

I'm probably biased, but I tend to prefer browser-native plain-text input forms largely because I've encountered so many cases of those fancy Javascript WYSIWYG editors being buggy and having missing/broken/poorly-implemented functionality that wastes more of my time than it saves (or worse, causes data loss). Besides, I personally don't feel the need to use a ton of formatting just to communicate, so the amount of markup I have to manually type is usually small enough not to be a problem (often faster, in fact, than having to click on toolbar buttons and such).

(I'm also an old-timer whose first forum experiences were plain-text message boards and mailing lists with no markup, so I'm probably showing my age and bias. )

As long as such an editor is only optional to use, though, and someone actually wants to implement it, then sure, go for it.

There is a real need on mobile to be honest. On PC I don't see a point, but accessing the special braces and the backslash and having the autocorrect really sucks (even on my blackberry with physical keyboard).