Slashdot Mirror

Why aren't they ported to HTML5?

Uh, because they are? Hell, DHTML Lemmings is 11 years old. I don't know what you're worried about. Just play some Tappy Chicken or World's Biggest Pac-man or Pirates Love Daisies or HexGL or any of the many WebGL games out there.

Flash is in its Autumn. Mourn it not. Look at the pretty lights.

http://oos.moxiecode.com/js_webgl/forest/index.html

Well if it's just plain text they could open the file in an editor, highlight the text, and use copy/paste to drop it in a textarea field in an HTML form.

So let's make the problem harder. How would I have enabled uploading of a binary object in 2001? I'd do the same thing I do today; use "forms-based file uploading."

RFC 1867 defining "forms-based file uploads" appeared in 1995, some months before Berners-Lee and company released RFC 1945 proposing HTTP 1.0. HTML 3.2 (1997) defined the "file" input type that Web applications use for file uploads. That element is usually displayed as a text box into which a file path can be entered, along with a "Browse" button that opens the local file browser.

Of course, there were many other ways to upload a file to a web server by 2001. I wrote a PHP-based application for a legal foundation that enabled subscribed attorneys to share documents in an online archive. Members could register a document online. They'd then receive a mail message to which they would reply after attaching the file. The message included a unique code that so the file could be matched to the registration entry in the database. This worked especially well with people on services like AOL whose interfaces at the time were not friendly to RFC-1867 uploads. (Nowadays I'd probably use either WEBDAV or dspace depending on how much structure I'd need.)

Sometimes I'd use Samba to export directories from a Linux application server to the Windows desktops. Then staff members could simply drop HTML files into pre-determined folders and have them appear within the context of the website. Nowadays, though, I handle pretty much all the content editing on the browser side with forms and TinyMCE. That way I get reasonably clean HTML code as opposed to what you get from someone copying and pasting from Word into a text box.

I wouldn't have thought uploading files was a key obstacle in the way of platform-independent development in 2001. Surely there must have been some bigger roadblocks.

If you're talking about an application that periodically collects files from a Windows workstation, in 2001 I'd have used an automated shell script running smbclient to connect to the workstation using SMB/Netbios and collect the file(s). What happens next depends on the application. I often run PHP scripts from the command line to process text files because I know it well, because of the enormous array of functions it offers, and, frankly, because I've always found Perl's syntax rather intimidating. grep, sed, and awk go a long way, too. Automatically manipulate a graphic image? ImageMagick.

He means those javascripted WYSIWYG editor widgets, like: http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/examples/full.php

Don't we already have that? Yes, yes we do, it's called TinyMCE and it is licensed under the LGPL and can be included on your form with just a couple of lines in your HTML code.
Oh wait, you want native rich text editing? Yeah, like you are really going to get a consistent experience across different browsers...

You know what I want from my web browser? I want it not to freeze when loading large (and/or lots of) images, and I want secure JavaScript, including killing off all JavaScript easily (none of this take over the browser with 50.000 alerts crap). Yeah, I know Opera has that last one, but I want a [i]free[/i] browser as well.

Anything else? Security sounds nice. I personally don't have much of a use for vector graphics as a developer, but I can see how they would be useful for everyone else.

Ummm... Maybe I'm just not very imaginative, but I tend to find that stability and security top my list of what I want nearly every time.

(Though I have to admit, the new address bar in Firefox 3 is nicer then the Firefox 2 bar.)

• blog.craigslist.org - name says it
• hackd.wordpress.com - Thrivesmart has some nice tinymce work
• googlegeodevelopers.blogspot.com - the people who do google maps, and google earth
• vancouver.en.craigslist.ca/cpg - craigslist job posting in vancouver that might fit me
• findability.org name says it
• stephansmap.org/home_entry Track changes to the front page
• tinymce.moxiecode.com/forum_news_rss.php - track tinymce updates (tinymce is a javascript rich-text editor)
• weblog.jamisbuck.org - rails stuff / capistrano
• locationaware.org - name says it

Stephan

I've been using TinyMCE for about a year now and haven't found anything better. For anyone looking to integrate a WYSIWYG editor in to their site, it is the route I recommend; Certainly over this product.

My main complaint about the whole issue is that I only found out because it was posted here. I don't have time to go checking for updates and exploits for all my different drivers and software, that's why yum runs from cron every night. It would have been nice if somebody (nVidia) had posted that a new version was available that fixed potential security holes, or even had a version checker built in to notify me of an update.

Agreed, an API would be great. In the mean time, tinyMCE might be a nice alternative. http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/

TinyMCE?

It would also be great to be able to edit a document even when you're in a remote terminal, and prevent that remote document from being stored in an untrusted computer.

Nice.

If you want to create a browser based document editing system, then why not use your own servers and TinyMCE ? At least then you can make it private (using SSL for example).

i'd recommend tinyMCE: http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/. a true XHTML editor, works with mozilla 1.3+ (FF1+) and IE5.5+ and probably opera soon. it slim, cleanly programmed, modular and standards compliant. i have done a lot of research about html wysiwyg editors running in browsers and most of them are just a mess (code wise).

with regards to safari support, i believe it's because safari doesnt properly support all the features needed to have wysiwyg editable content. This is why support for in-browser wysiwyg in safari is a bit hit or miss at the moment.

http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/tinymce/docs/compatib lity_chart.html

http://www.fckeditor.net/safari.html

The rich-text editor for posting requires features that Opera and Safari haven't implemented yet. People using those browsers will have to write their posts using the regular plain-text editor. (IMO, given the code that the rich editor generates, that's not a huge loss...)

Opera 9 preview 1 is able to use the rich editor. I'm not sure what Safari is missing, so I don't know how far away Safari support is. The rich editor WordPress uses is TinyMCE, so you can check out their compatibility chart. Safari 2.0 and Opera 9p1 are both listed as "partially working," though there's no further detail.

The rich-text editor for posting requires features that Opera and Safari haven't implemented yet. People using those browsers will have to write their posts using the regular plain-text editor. (IMO, given the code that the rich editor generates, that's not a huge loss...)

Opera 9 preview 1 is able to use the rich editor. I'm not sure what Safari is missing, so I don't know how far away Safari support is. The rich editor WordPress uses is TinyMCE, so you can check out their compatibility chart. Safari 2.0 and Opera 9p1 are both listed as "partially working," though there's no further detail.

WP 2.0 works just fine with Safari ... WordPress detects that you're using Safari and serves up the old-style editing interface instead of TinyMCE, its WYSIWYG editor. Read more about TinyMCE's Safari incompatibilities (or from their perspective, Safari's TinyMCE incompatibilities) here.

http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/
http://dynarch.com/projects/htmlarea/
http://fckeditor.net/
http://bnl.gov/itd/htmleditor/

Sorry, if this has already been mentoined (didn't find TinyMCE though).

I recently found out about TinyMCE (no, I don't work for them). It's a WYSIWYG edtior that adds text-processing features to HTML textareas. This one's especially cool, because it produces clean XHTML code, can be completley modified and is free.

So, I would strip the functionality of TinyMCE down (it's really easy) to a format dropdown box (p, h1, h2, h3 ...) numeric and bullet lists, bold and italic. Then I'd copy the whole word document into the textarea removing all of word's formatting. An then I'd apply all the markup via TinyMCE ... clean, fast and consitent with your existing design.

Take a look at the examples (remember, you can remove all the stuff you don't want).

Sorry, if this has already been mentoined (didn't find TinyMCE though).

I recently found out about TinyMCE (no, I don't work for them). It's a WYSIWYG edtior that adds text-processing features to HTML textareas. This one's especially cool, because it produces clean XHTML code, can be completley modified and is free.

So, I would strip the functionality of TinyMCE down (it's really easy) to a format dropdown box (p, h1, h2, h3 ...) numeric and bullet lists, bold and italic. Then I'd copy the whole word document into the textarea removing all of word's formatting. An then I'd apply all the markup via TinyMCE ... clean, fast and consitent with your existing design.

Take a look at the examples (remember, you can remove all the stuff you don't want).

For anyone out there who use Gmail you might have noticed the the JavaScript based editor for emails.

It will actually give you the ability to paste in code from other editors ( including MS Word ).

The app is called TinyMCE. TinyMCE is a platform independent web based Javascript HTML WYSIWYG editor control released as Open Source under LGPL by Moxiecode Systems AB.

It may not make perfect XHTML compliant code, but you can try the input and test the output results here.

I've found it to be a pretty useful tool and it should clean up the HTML pretty well. All in all it's going to depend on the basic page layout you have to decide if this is the right fit for you.

For anyone out there who use Gmail you might have noticed the the JavaScript based editor for emails.

It will actually give you the ability to paste in code from other editors ( including MS Word ).

The app is called TinyMCE. TinyMCE is a platform independent web based Javascript HTML WYSIWYG editor control released as Open Source under LGPL by Moxiecode Systems AB.

It may not make perfect XHTML compliant code, but you can try the input and test the output results here.

I've found it to be a pretty useful tool and it should clean up the HTML pretty well. All in all it's going to depend on the basic page layout you have to decide if this is the right fit for you.

For anyone out there who use Gmail you might have noticed the the JavaScript based editor for emails.

It will actually give you the ability to paste in code from other editors ( including MS Word ).

The app is called TinyMCE. TinyMCE is a platform independent web based Javascript HTML WYSIWYG editor control released as Open Source under LGPL by Moxiecode Systems AB.

It may not make perfect XHTML compliant code, but you can try the input and test the output results here.

I've found it to be a pretty useful tool and it should clean up the HTML pretty well. All in all it's going to depend on the basic page layout you have to decide if this is the right fit for you.

I noticed a nice feature in tinyMCE (javascript wysiwyg editor) that allows you to copy-paste stuff from word to tinyMCE.

If this would really do any cleaning up I don't know, and sometimes tinyMCE has problems of it's own just keeping track of font styles (it keeps flooding me with <font> tags (eww!)).

It's not a complete solution, and others in here have better suggestions, but this feature is certainly interesting (and relevant?)

We have made experiments with Safari on Mac OSX Tiger (thanks to the generous contributors of our Mac Mini). We have found that the implementation of the Midas Specification is incomplete and this some features is simple not possible to get working with Safari as it is now. We are in contact with Apple Developers and they seem to devote some attention to the issues, we will see in future versions.

If you still wish to donate the page is still up, and you can always donate directly through sourceforge.