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Better Browsers for Text & Form Handling?

Posted by Cliff on from the text-editor+browser==emacs-minus-kitchen-sink dept.

Dan Warne asks: "I work as a web content administrator for one of the big newspapers in Australia. The front end of our content manager is browser-form based. Yet browsers all have horrible text editing features; neither Mozilla nor IE support search-and-replace, something desperately needed for anyone who works with a lot of form content. Aside from using a standalone text editor, what software out there provides a better browser-based solution for people who work with text in web forms a lot?"

8 of 65 comments (clear)

  1. Pick Up a Book... by B1LL_GAT3Z · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Pick up a book on Javascript, and write your own! The 'Search and Replace' feature that you mentioned would take an experienced programmer only minutes to write - and if you're just beginning, you could probably have something working before the day is over. My guess is that you'll probably save a bunch of money, and support costs, over using some proprietary third-party utility.

    --
    -- Kleptotherapy: Helping those who help themselves.
    1. Re:Pick Up a Book... by br0ck · · Score: 2, Interesting

      He's a content manager, not a developer. He just wants a browser with a more usable text area, which seems like a reasonable request. Perhaps his development team could make things much easier by adding a web-based WYSIWYG editor. Many of them are IE only, but the beta of this free one works in Mozilla and looks easy to implement.

  2. lynx! by redelm · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Alright, so I'm a reactionary dinosaur!

    Right now, I'm writing this with `vim`, having hit ^Xe in the textbox that `lynx` opened up. I have all the unimaginable power of vim at my disposal. :)

    1. Re:lynx! by You're+All+Wrong · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Ditto my w3m happily calling jed. I could configure it to call xemacs instead, of course (and lynx could likewise).

      Wait a second - we're supposed to be the crippled text-mode guys, how come we're the ones who are laughing?

      YAW.

      --
      Your head of state is a corrupt weasel, I hope you're happy.
  3. w3m / vimpart by cjpez · · Score: 2, Interesting
    w3m drops me into vim whenever I do input on a text box. I'm sure other textmode browsers let you do similar things.

    I also have high hopes for someday being able to use vimpart as a textarea editor in Konqueror - that alone would get me to switch over from Moz.

    --
    Al Qaeda has ninjas!
  4. Applets by HawkingMattress · · Score: 2, Interesting

    For CCMs using editor applets in place of the standard textarea can be a solution. There are lots of them, and they also support html ~wysiwyg formatting...

  5. FCKeditor by Ruis · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Here's a nice one that generates html that can be submitted via a form. It can paste from MS Word and is very easy to use. It has built in image uploading capabilities. It's really a full on wysiwyg html editor that is web based. It currently only works under IE, however.
    FCKeditor

  6. OmniWeb by RalphBNumbers · · Score: 2, Interesting

    OmniWeb has find&replace, as well as a bunch of other handy text handling features for forum input (inline spell checking, extensible functions with the services menu, etc).

    It's MacOSX only though, of course, if you're working in the print industry getting a mac to run it on shouldn't be too hard.

    --
    "The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge