- How do I add htmlArea to my web page?
- It's easy, first you need to upload the htmlArea files to your website. Just follow these steps:
- Download the latest version from the htmlArea homepage.
- Unzip the files onto your local computer (making sure to maintain the directory structure contained in the zip).
- Create a new folder on your website called /htmlarea/ (make sure it's NOT inside the cgi-bin).
- Transfer all the htmlArea files from your local computer into the /htmlarea/ folder on your website.
- Open the example page /htmlarea/example.html with your browser to make sure everything works.
Once htmlArea is on your website all you need to do is add some JavaScript to any pages that you want to
add WYSIWYG editors to. Here's how to do that.
- Open the page you want to add a WYSIWYG editor to. Add the following to the top of
the page in the <head></head> of the HTML document.
<script language="Javascript1.2"><!-- // load htmlarea
_editor_url = ""; // URL to htmlarea files
var win_ie_ver = parseFloat(navigator.appVersion.split("MSIE")[1]);
if (navigator.userAgent.indexOf('Mac') >= 0) { win_ie_ver = 0; }
if (navigator.userAgent.indexOf('Windows CE') >= 0) { win_ie_ver = 0; }
if (navigator.userAgent.indexOf('Opera') >= 0) { win_ie_ver = 0; }
if (win_ie_ver >= 5.5) {
document.write('<scr' + 'ipt src="' +_editor_url+ 'editor.js"');
document.write(' language="Javascript1.2"></scr' + 'ipt>');
} else { document.write('<scr'+'ipt>function editor_generate() { return false; }</scr'+'ipt>'); }
// --></script>
If you've installed htmlArea anywhere other than /htmlarea/ then be sure to change _editor_url to point to
your htmlarea directory (ending with a forward slash "/").
- For each <textarea> that you want to change, add the following code to the page.
<script language="JavaScript1.2" defer>
editor_generate('fieldname');
</script>
Be sure to change "fieldname" to be the name (not id) of the textarea you want to change.
- And you're done, open your page in your browser and see if it worked. If you run into
any problems, keep trying and feel free to visit the
htmlArea forum.
- I want to change the editor settings, how do I do that?
- While it's true that all you need is one line of JavaScript to create an htmlArea WYSIWYG editor
you can also specify more config settings in the code to control how the editor works and looks. Here's an
example of some of the available settings:
<script language="JavaScript1.2" defer>
var config = new Object(); // create new config object
config.width = "90%";
config.height = "200px";
config.bodyStyle = 'background-color: white; font-family: "Verdana"; font-size: x-small;';
config.debug = 0;
// Add additional editor config settings here...
editor_generate('fieldname',config);
</script>
See below for even more configuration options that can be added. All of these settings will use
default values in editor.js if you don't specify them yourself.
| Width | specifies the width of the editor (in pixels or as a percentage). |
| Height | specifies the height of the editor (in pixels or as a percentage). |
| bodyStyle | specifies CSS style of the editor window including color, default font face, and size. Note, the default font information isn't saved, it just controls how text is displayed if no other font formatting has been applied. |
| debug | if set to 1, displays a debug field with the actual contents of the editor (in raw html) which is updated as your type. |
- How can I change what controls are displayed on the toolbar?
- You can add a config.toolbar config setting to control exactly what's shown on the toolbar.
Here's an example.
config.toolbar = [
['fontname'],
['fontsize'],
['fontstyle'],
['linebreak'],
['bold','italic','underline','separator'],
['strikethrough','subscript','superscript','separator'],
['justifyleft','justifycenter','justifyright','separator'],
['OrderedList','UnOrderedList','Outdent','Indent','separator'],
['forecolor','backcolor','separator'],
//['custom1','custom2','custom3','separator'],
['HorizontalRule','Createlink','InsertImage','htmlmode','separator'],
['about','help']
];
The square brackets control how the buttons are "grouped" together. You can either erase
or comment out (by adding // to the beginning of the line) buttons or button groups you don't
want displayed. Most of the buttons do pretty much just what you'd expect, but here's a few
odd ones for reference.
| linebreak | adds a linebreak to the toolbar, all buttons after this are on the next line. |
| separator | adds a vertical separator between buttons, helps to visually group buttons together |
| customN | these are custom buttons that can be defined by JavaScript programmers who want to extend htmlArea. |
- How can I change what fonts are in the font list?
- There is a config.fontnames setting that lets you control this. See below.
config.fontnames = {
"Arial": "arial, helvetica, sans-serif",
"Courier New": "courier new, courier, mono",
"Georgia": "Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, Serif",
"Tahoma": "Tahoma, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif",
"Times New Roman": "times new roman, times, serif",
"Verdana": "Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif",
"impact": "impact",
"WingDings": "WingDings"
};
The name on the left is what is displayed to the user. The list of fonts on the right is what is
actually put into the font tag in the code.
- How can I change what sizes are in the font size?
- There is a config.fontsizes setting that lets you control this. See below.
config.fontsizes = {
"1 (8 pt)": "1",
"2 (10 pt)": "2",
"3 (12 pt)": "3",
"4 (14 pt)": "4",
"5 (18 pt)": "5",
"6 (24 pt)": "6",
"7 (36 pt)": "7"
};
The value on the right is what the user sees, the value on the left is the actual font size used.
- How can I change what styles are in the font style (CSS) list?
- As you can probably guess, there's a config.fontstyles setting for this. Now remember, the
styles defined here control how the text looks in the editor. These styles ALSO have to be defined
on any page where you display content created with the editor. htmlArea will save the class name
with the content but nothing else. It's up to you to define the class style in your pages.
config.fontstyles = [{
name: "headline",
className: "headline",
classStyle: "font-family: arial; font-size: 28px;"
},{
name: "red text",
className: "saletext2",
classStyle: ""
}];
The "name" is what's displayed to users, "className" is the name of the CSS class to use, and
classStyle defines the attributes of the style in the editor. If you leave classStyle blank
you have to be sure to also specify an external stylesheet with all the style information (and
matching classNames!). See the next question on how to do that.
- How can I specify an external stylesheet for my styles?
- You can specify a stylesheet to avoid entering the class style data for each class name.
You STILL have to specify which classNames you want to have available though, see the previous
question for information on that.
config.stylesheet = "/style.css";
- What are the project goals for htmlArea?
- When we originally started the htmlArea project we had some pretty specific
goals in mind for how it would work and what issues were important to us. Those
goals still lead the direction of development today and are listed below in order
of priority.
- Compatibility
- htmlArea has to always be backwards compatible with older and unsupported browsers. This
ensures that even if a user with an older and unsupported browser can't use htmlArea, they'll always be able to, at a minimum,
enter text in a plain textarea like they would have done before.
htmlArea should also be compatible with as many programming languages as possible by being
completely DHTML and JavaScript based.
- Ease of Use
- htmlArea needs to be easy for developers to
integrate into their applications and customize, easy for programmers to extend
and modify, and easy for end users to "use". That's why you only have to add a
single line of JavaScript for each textarea you want to convert, and why all the
code is stored in a single, easy to follow JavaScript file. That's why htmlArea
can be used with almost any programming language (ASP, PHP, Perl, Java, etc),
and that the toolbar is streamlined, customizable by developers, and follows the
conventions of common word processing programs.
- Lightweight
- htmlArea needs to be fast loading, allow the user to perform word processing functions at a
reasonable speed, and not put a lot of strain on a user's browser. To these ends we've
managed to keep the main editor program in a single file of only 40k and we've written the editor
in such a way that it has a minimal impact on the resources of the browser it is running in.
In addition, where we make use of popup windows to perform additional functions we try to put as
much code as possible in the popup window so it doesn't increase the size of the base editor.
- This editor is pretty neat, so how does it actually work?
- htmlArea is based on the MSHTML Editing Platform
in Internet Explorer 5.5+ on windows. Basically, Internet Explorer includes some functionality to make sections of a
webpage editable by defining a "contentEditable" attribute or "designMode" property. It also provides some built in
commands
for performing common web editing operations (bold, italic, center, insert image, etc).
htmlArea builds on the features provided by Internet Explorer and adds its own user definable toolbar,
an easy method to include a WYSIWYG editor in a web page (replacing textareas), an easy way to save user
changes, as well as a number of custom web editing commands of its own.
How htmlArea actually works is it replaces a textarea with an (user definable) toolbar, an iframe that
has the "contentEditable" attribute set to true, and a hidden field with the same name as your original
textarea that gets updated automatically when you modify content in the editor.
The user can enter or modify text as well as use keyboard shortcuts and toolbar buttons to perform operations
on the content. A lot of the editor commands are built into IE and called via
the execCommand
method, but htmlArea also includes other custom commands and functions written in JavaScript and stored in
the editor.js file or the popup windows (in the /popups/ folder).
- You don't happen to have one of these for (Netscape, Mozilla, Opera, Mac IE, etc) do you?
- No. None of these other browsers (including IE for Mac) support "contentEditable" or a way to make
existing content in the page editable. It might be possible to emulate this in JavaScript, but it would
be a lot of work. Other problems include displaying or emulating the flashing | bar cursor you see when
editing. The cross-platform Mozilla browser has some bug entries related to adding contentEditable
functionality, and perhaps in the future it may be possible to create something for that browser.
Although it's a long shot, you might want to send a friendly letter to Microsoft to encourage them to
make the "contentEditable" functionality work on IE for the Macintosh. Once they implement it, we can offer it.
- Why doesn't htmlArea output XHTML instead of regular HTML? Can you make it do that?
- The HTML output by htmlArea is generated by the built in functionality of Internet Explorer.
For that reason, there is no easy way to have it output XHTML. If we were going to do it, the way
to do so would be to parse the HTML after it's output by IE and convert it to XHTML. That's something
we hope to do at some point.
- I'd like to be able to upload images from my hard drive, can you add that feature?
- No. We want htmlArea to be compatible with as many programming languages as possible. Because it's
written in client side JavaScript, it should work with any programming language. If we start adding
language specific features htmlArea won't be as useful to as many people. That said, there's a lot of
free "file upload" scripts available, and htmlArea does include a function called editor_insertHTML()\
for inserting text or HTML tags. If you want to write your own program for doing this it should be
that hard. Alternatively, you might check in the forum to see if someone already has.
- I'd like to <insert idea here>, can you add that feature?
- Maybe, maybe not. If it's a good feature and it fits in with the goals of our project we'll
likely consider it. The best thing to do is post your suggestions to the
forum. At the very least
we'll try to give you some suggestions and point you in the right direction. At best you might
find somebody else has already implemented the feature you were hoping for.
- Can I change the toolbar/button colors?
- Yes, just search for "buttonface" and "buttonhighlight" in editor.js and change those to whatever colors
you like. If you haven't heard of those colors before, it's because they're special windows colors
that match whatever color scheme the user has selected for their desktop. For example, if someone
has changed their desktop color scheme to "lilac", the WYSIWYG editor toolbar and buttons will match that
theme. Try it, it's really neat.
- I love htmlArea, is there anything I can do to help the project?
- The number one thing you can do to help is also the easiest thing to do; give us a link on your website.
The more people who can find out about htmlArea the better it will be.
The next best thing you can do is participate in our
forum and post a message or two to
help other htmlArea users (or learn something new yourself).
Lastly, any code improvements you want to share would certainly be welcome as well.
- Why do the toolbar buttons take so long to load when I have multiple htmlArea editors on the same page?
- This is a bug/feature of Internet Explorer. htmlArea dynamically updates the content of your page to replace
a textarea with the WYSIWYG editor. In Internet Explorer, when you update the content of a page after it has loaded
and insert an image it will load the image from the server EVEN if has the image in it's cache. This means if you have 10
htmlareas on the same page the "bold" toolbar button will be loaded 10 times.
One workaround for this is to move all your editor_generate() scripts to the bottom of the page, combine them
into one script tag, and remove the "defer" attribute from that script tag. This will cause them all to run just
as the page is finishing loading and the cached images WILL be used. Meaning, the browser will only need to load each
image once.