IPS 4.0: Editor - Part 1: Content

Introduction

 

The post editor is undoubtably one of the most frequently used features of the IPS Social Suite as it's the way users submit content to your community and functionality has evolved dramatically from the early days of forum software which consisted of a plain textbox in which users would type BBCode into the feature-rich WYSIWG (What You See Is What You Get) editors prevalent on the web today.

 

For the IPS Social Suite 4.0 we really wanted to focus on making the editor as good as it can be: feature-rich, intuitive to users and highly customisable.

 

Over the next 4 blog entries I'm going to cover the functionality of the editor and related features (attachments, emoticons, etc.) and the customisation options that will be available in 4.0. The theme of each blog entry will be:

• Content
• Uploads
• Customisation and BBCode
• Special features

Here's a screenshot of what it looks like (by default, on a desktop, more on that later):

 

 

Quotes

 

A feature added to IP.Board in the 3.x series was "visual quotes" - when adding a quote the box shows directly in the editor as it will show in the post, rather than as just normal text with a quote BBCode wrapped around.

 

In 4.0 we've rewritten how this works to use a CSS3 based solution rather than JavaScript to keep the citation header attached to the quote, which makes the feature much more reliable and easy to use when splitting quote boxes, moving the cursor before or after the quote box or dealing with embedded quotes.

 

Code

 

We've also rewritten how code can be inserted into the editor to be more reliable.

 

Adding code now initially brings up an editor which supports syntax highlighting:

 

And after inserting, you'll see the code exactly how it will be displayed after posting and you can interact with it exactly how you'd expect:

 

Spoilers

 

Spoilers are now also visual (though of course they're not true WYSIWYG as you need to be able to see what you're typing) and a built-in feature enabled by default.

 

When you click the spoiler button you'll be given a darkened box in which to type the content:

 

The spoilers display in the post as the same coloured box with a "click to view" message. When clicked, the dark box fades away revealing the content underneath.

 

Emotions

 

We've completely overhauled emoticon management in 4.0. You can now create multiple "groups", drag and drop to reorder and (using the same uploader as shown above) quickly upload loads of emoticons at once.

Video Demonstration

 

When you click the emoticon button in the editor, you'll see a popup with an overview of all the groups. If your community only uses the default emoticons, this is big enough to show all the emoticons, however, if you like to install lots of emoticons, you can select any group from the dropdown menu to show all emoticons in that group, or use the search bar to find a particular emoticon.

 

In addition, your most recently used emoticons will show right at the top.

 

Video Demonstration

 

 

Embedded Media

 

In 3.0 we introduced a media BBCode tag. By wrapping a URL to media such as YouTube or Vimeo videos in media BBCode tags, the correct embed code would automatically be worked out and embedded into the post. In later versions, we added automatic embedding support, so just pasting the URL into the post would cause the video to be embedded.

 

This still works exactly the same in 4.0 with a couple improvements:

 

Previews

 

If you type the URL to a supported media in the "Link" dialog, a preview will be shown in the dialog - you can choose to insert the embedded media or just a regular link. If you insert the embedded media, it will show directly in the editor.

 

Video Demonstration

 

 

oEmbed

 

Currently URLs which gets picked up for media embedding and the output they produce are managed in the Admin CP. The idea was that this would allow admins to add support for additional services, however, it has caused some problems when for example, YouTube has added new URL formats or changed their embed code and they don't work on most communities until we release an update to change the default record for YouTube.

 

oEmbed is an API which allows you to make a call to the provider giving them the URL and they respond with the best embed code to use, if that URL can be embedded. In 4.0, if a URL for YouTube, Flickr, Vimeo, College Humor or Hulu is inserted, we make a call to their oEmbed provider to obtain the embed code, so it's always up to date.

 

 

Conclusion

 

This is just the first in our series of blog entries on the editor in IPS4. Please do let us know what you think in the comments, but remember there's much more to come!

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