HTML Area 3.0 announcement by Dave

Angel · 2005-02-16 17:40:25

Hi,

Here below I post what Dave has announced at his forums..

Looks like they are dumping the current code and start from scratch :-O

------------------------

Hey Guys,

I didn't delete your posts I just hid the thread about Ross managing htmlarea because that wasn't working out and he isn't going to be doing that anymore.

The fact is, we've been reviewing the code these last couple weeks and trying to decide how we want to move ahead. We've found that what irobotst said is true for us as well:

>I have made a lot of bugfixes for the HTMLArea but I think
>I could better write an new editor for myself than fixing
>bugs in an unstable and unnecessarily complicated code.

htmlarea is really cool program and has lots of great features. But it's grown into a massive program and it's much much more than we need. That being the case, we're going to build something more lightweight from scratch for ourselves and not continue development on the 3.0 branch.

If someone else (or multiple people) want to take over htmlarea (under a new name) they're free to do so. The latest code is in CVS. What we're thinking we're going to do with the htmlarea.com site is create a directory of wysiwyg editors from all over the web. So if you want us to link to your wysiwyg editor site we'd be happy to do so.

Regarding sleemanj, the short version is that we really did want to get him involved but he never even responded to any of our messages, didn't respect our wishes to not fracture the user community, didn't want to offer his fixes to the main htmlarea codebase, and basically ended up burning his bridges here.

We tried to be reasonable, but that only goes so far. We don't support his actions or activities and as such will remove any posts about him.

In any case, we're going to revamp the site in the coming days to list wysiwyg editors from all over the web (including htmlarea derivatives) and create some new forums where people can discuss them.

And htmlarea will go on, just under different names managed by other people.

Please feel to post your comments below. But try to keep it positive please.

Dave Edis - Senior Developer
interactivetools.com

gogo · 2005-02-16 19:26:32

Thanks for posting that Angel,

Angel wrote:

Regarding sleemanj, the short version is that we really did want to get him involved but he never even responded to any of our messages, didn't respect our wishes to not fracture the user community, didn't want to offer his fixes to the main htmlarea codebase, and basically ended up burning his bridges here.
We tried to be reasonable, but that only goes so far. We don't support his actions or activities and as such will remove any posts about him.

if I might comment on that (I'm sleemanj for those who don't know).

Simply that's untrue, to set the record straight, I contacted Interactive Tools enquiring thier actions, saying I would take over development if they wished, contribute patches etc otherwise I would fork it. They fluffed around for a bit, and then after a while started doing stuff on htmlarea.com, namely they asked for applications for developers.

They did not ask me to be a developer, let alone lead developer, even though I had obviously done considerable work and knew htmlarea probably better than most other regulars on htmlarea.com.

In addition they sent me a personal message and asked that I stop any posts regarding my at the time unofficial fork, and asked me to submit patches, which (I received the impression, as I'm banned now I can't get to that message) they might consider when they have time.

I was a little offended by the message, but duly complied with the first request and edited my fork thread so it was unobvious and posted a farewell message in that same unobvious thead.

Interactive Tools however wasn't happy with that and deleted the thread, and other threads too I guess. Now it seems they have banned my account, and by the sounds of it, others who have mentioned association with me?

Essentially Interactive Tools wanted volunteer developers, not to do any of the work themselves, but retain full control over the project. A day or two later, after some criticisim from others regarding thier stance, Interactive Tools decided that they would be the developers themselves.

I repeatedly publically said that Interactive Tools was welcome to take my code, it was at all times available, Interactive Tools never saw fit to do that. Instead they took some old htmlarea code, stuffed up the CVS a bit, changed the build system, added in a few one liner fixes, and plastered the website with advertising for competitors to htmlarea.

After watching thier comedy of errors (and people who didn't know better still trying to get thier "Release Candidates" working, mostly without success) it was plain that with Interactive Tools in charge things were not going to work out, and so, Xinha happened.

Interactive Tools doesn't know jack when it comes to htmlarea. It's my fervent belief that they simply didn't want to put any work into htmlarea, perhaps they thought they could spend a few hours on it, get it to 3.0 release and then call it done. For them to say that I did not respond to them, respect them, or offer my code to them, is simply rubbish.

gogo · 2005-02-16 19:39:44

Now to respond on the other point here...

Dave wrote:

The fact is, we've been reviewing the code these last couple weeks and trying to decide how we want to move ahead. We've found that what irobotst said is true for us as well:
>I have made a lot of bugfixes for the HTMLArea but I think
>I could better write an new editor for myself than fixing
>bugs in an unstable and unnecessarily complicated code.
htmlarea is really cool program and has lots of great features. But it's grown into a massive program and it's much much more than we need. That being the case, we're going to build something more lightweight from scratch for ourselves and not continue development on the 3.0 branch.

I personally feel that the legacy code is quite ameniable to being refactored, and that is something on the cards for Xinha. I'd like to have the Gecko & IE specific code split off into "compatability libraries" which are only loaded under the correct browser. I'd like to split up some of the core so that bits that are not required all the time are only loaded the first time they are called (using dummy methods and XMLHttpRequest to load up code as required).

The code itself (in Xinha, not necessarily in htmlArea) is quite good. It needs a good cleanup, and a good dose of comments in certain places wouldn't go amiss. But in general, it's good enough to work with.

I suspect that Interactive Tools will continue to use htmlArea 2.0. I think they've done thier dash with open source development, and I thank them for facilitating Mihai's initial development of htmlArea 3.0. I didn't intend for Xinha to "kill off" htmlArea, and honestly, I don't think it did, even in the absense of Xinha, htmlArea was on borrowed time the minute that Interactive Tools took over the development of it from Mihai.

So if you want us to link to your wysiwyg editor site we'd be happy to do so.

Now taking bets on wether Xinha will be included

Angel · 2005-02-16 20:17:42

Dave's post was simply stupid. They have used you as an excuse to step out ot the project.

Maybe somebody could do some investigations about that competidor that they are advertising at htmlarea.com and find out that the owner is interactivetools.com? :-)

I wonder how many desperate people has already gone to that competidor to buy something that actually works... maybe that was their objective with all that scenification they have been doing during the last weeks...

niko · 2005-02-17 03:49:26

Now taking bets on wether Xinha will be included

Sure... they will include it..
IF you pay for every click! (like the "Sponsored WYSIWYG Editor")

i will try posting the url to xinha.... perhaps they won't delete it?

Mirical Bernd · 2005-02-17 06:05:09

I am pretty sad about this decission of interactivetools. I already posted a comment on their board.

I surely will use Xinha in my projects, as soon as it can replace htmlarea - which is not that bad. You do have my moral and testing support. Yet I am not such a great Javascript-coder, I am more a PHP one If I could I would participate in coding. If it would be of some help, I could be sponsoring the providing, as I am running my own servers.

The other editor mentioned by interactivetools is just an editor for windows. I was looking for alternatives of htmlarea, when there was no new version after RC 1. But - and that was important for me - there was none which worked with Mozilla or Firefox.

So, please keep on the development, if you will become the successor of htmlarea it would be great. I think it is important that someone takes the lead role.

gogo · 2005-02-17 06:11:16

Welcome aboard Mirical,

Mirical Bernd wrote:

I surely will use Xinha in my projects, as soon as it can replace htmlarea - which is not that bad.

Xinha should more or less be a drop-in replacement for htmlarea as it stands now. You might have to fiddle with your toolbars (newlines are not inserted automatically, you must use 'linebreak' items in your toolbar) but other than that Xinha should work OK pretty much now.

Mirical Bernd · 2005-02-17 06:26:40

problem is that I made a transition to the latest RC some days ago and I want to give my editors on my largest project www.splashpages.de (a multimedia site, which is run privatly and where I coded an own CMS) some time to make this transition.

But: I will include it soon into another project

What is the most important thing for me is that the Extended File Manager works on Xinha. Did you test this?

What would be great is to have a package which is available for download. SVN is really nice, but might be tricky for some people

gogo · 2005-02-17 08:38:41

Mirical Bernd wrote:

What is the most important thing for me is that the Extended File Manager works on Xinha. Did you test this?

No I havn't, but it should work fine, give it a try and let us know how it goes There are a number of "new" plugins for htmlarea (on the htmlarea.com forums) which I would like to distribute with Xinha or make available here as a separate download, but we really need to ask each plugin author if they are ok with that.

What would be great is to have a package which is available for download. SVN is really nice, but might be tricky for some people

The downloads page has what you seek - http://xinha.gogo.co.nz/DownloadsPage

The SVN is more up to date of course, but I'll be making regular packages of the SVN as enough changes are made. I might make an automatic nightly package also for those who want the bleeding edge without SVN.

Mirical Bernd · 2005-02-17 09:07:46

Tried it. Here we go:
http://www.splashpages.de/xinha-latest/ … tions.html
it works
Just don't ask me why the thumbnails won't generate. Everything is set like in our administration. Oh well...

stachrom · 2005-02-20 17:18:37

Mirical Bernd wrote:

Tried it. Here we go:
http://www.splashpages.de/xinha-latest/ … tions.html
it works
Just don't ask me why the thumbnails won't generate. Everything is set like in our administration. Oh well...

--> just go to the thumbnails and delete them all ... the script will rebuild them.

Mirical Bernd · 2005-02-20 18:13:04

There are now thumbnails...

anzenews · 2005-02-21 01:39:34

I personally feel that the legacy code is quite ameniable to being refactored, and that is something on the cards for Xinha. I'd like to have the Gecko & IE specific code split off into "compatability libraries" which are only loaded under the correct browser. I'd like to split up some of the core so that bits that are not required all the time are only loaded the first time they are called (using dummy methods and XMLHttpRequest to load up code as required).

If you do that, please don't check browser version (navigator.userAgent). Not many people know of (or at least use) this technique, but JavaScript allows the developer to check if some capability exists at runtime. This is both safer and browser-friendlier. If for instance Konqueror or Safari start supporting some functionality that is missing (and needed) then the scripts will work without changes as soon as this is added to the browser. On the other hand if you check browser versions then the scripts will never work in alternative browsers.

Checking for function availability:
if (document.someFunction) {
document.someFunction(param1, param2);
}

Or, if you want to have a browser-compliance check in one place:
if ( (document.someFunction) &&
(window.someOtherFunction) &&
...
)
browserSupported=true;
else
browserSupported=false;

I use this technique whenever I need some special JS and it has proven to be both reliable and very easy to use. The scripts that didn't work in some browsers just start working as the new versions of browsers come along - without my intervention of any kind.

My point is this: the scripts shouldn't care about the browser version - they should only care about supported functionality.

About the dispute with IT:
I hope this project stays alive - it looks promising. I am only starting to explore the code, but who knows - I might help out some day. I never contributed to InteractiveTools (though I have made some fixes for myself) simply because the patches that the other made almost never made it to the main branch. I hope this project takes a true open source way - if this is the case I would be more than happy to contribute. That would save me the time to apply my fixes whenever I upgrade htmlarea version plus I get some karma points.

Nevertheless, kudos to InteractiveTools for making such an awesome product. It has served me well for years - thank you!

gogo · 2005-02-21 05:53:40

anzenews wrote:

If you do that, please don't check browser version (navigator.userAgent). Not many people know of (or at least use) this technique, but JavaScript allows the developer to check if some capability exists at runtime. This is both safer and browser-friendlier

The problem is that the API we use is not a standard at all it was something MS came up with and Moz *almost* copied a few years back, between IE and Gecko however it's somewhat different (contentEditable vs designMode for one) and buggy. Theres no way of knowing what, if any, API KHTML, or Opera (or any other browser) will come up with to allow for HTML editing before time, it's just not a standard and thus an't be predicted.

We also must know the browser version in order to fix broken functionality, or even to know what functionality to expect, or what variables with the same names actually represent (IE and Gecko sometimes use the same name but different values). Additionally, particularly in IE, some functionality is exposed but it either doesn't work or doesn't work all the time (I'm specifically thinking of set/getAttribute DOM methods here).

I agree for DOM standard stuff, checking for functionality (or better inserting missing functionality into prototypes ourself (where possible, IE is not complete in that regard)) is better than sniffing, but in some cases it is still necessary to sniff.

stachrom · 2005-02-21 08:21:46

Mirical Bernd wrote:

There are now thumbnails...

hmm i installed the the latest xinha editor and enable the imagemanager

tadaaaa its working like a charm.

its a bit unstable with over 150 pictures in a directory...

Last edited by stachrom (2006-03-31 07:47:53)

anzenews · 2005-02-21 16:42:44

The problem is that the API we use is not a standard at all it was something MS came up with and Moz *almost* copied a few years back, between IE and Gecko however it's somewhat different (contentEditable vs designMode for one) and buggy. Theres no way of knowing what, if any, API KHTML, or Opera (or any other browser) will come up with to allow for HTML editing before time, it's just not a standard and thus an't be predicted.

You have a point there - I haven't worked with DOM myself so I wouldn't know about it.

By the way, htmlarea forums seem to be closed down for the time being.

Anze

gogo · 2005-02-21 22:24:44

anzenews wrote:

By the way, htmlarea forums seem to be closed down for the time being.

I hope that IT doesn't go and delete the forums totally, I should have archived them off for reference.

Chris Allison · 2005-02-22 03:47:14

Yes archiving them might be a good idea. I needed to access them today for work for something that I was doing. I ended up using Google cache, which worked alright. However, I don't know of an automated way of archiving every thread via the Google cache.

anzenews · 2005-02-22 13:01:28

How about searching Google this way:

htmlarea site:htmlarea.com

Google finds 40700 hits. Some script could take the links for cached versions and save them for further processing. But it should be done fast (before G refreshes its links).

Even better:

htmlarea OR forums site:htmlarea.com

(it finds even more pages - you can always delete them in post-processing)

Just be careful not to overdo it - G might find this in violation of its rules (DOS attack?).

Anze

Foxx · 2005-02-22 14:46:28

you could program the script to only request pages at certain intervals, would be nice for reference, since there are also many many problems and solutions in those forums, that could be very helpful to everyone!

Mirical Bernd · 2005-02-26 05:03:23

I think that IT doesn't care a damn thing about having these solutions any longer online. They will delete everything I guess...

BTW: I am using Xinha in our production environment now and it seems to work like a charm

gogo · 2005-02-27 01:33:57

Mirical Bernd wrote:

BTW: I am using Xinha in our production environment now and it seems to work like a charm

Which version are you using Mirical, the nightly?

Mirical Bernd · 2005-02-27 03:44:08

nope, the Xinha latest. But I will test the nightly soon. What was a little difficult: I had to change the onload-Handler, which wasn't documented. It now is: onload="initEditor()" But the rest...

Xinha Discussion Forum

Announcement

#1 2005-02-16 17:40:25

HTML Area 3.0 announcement by Dave

#2 2005-02-16 19:26:32

Re: HTML Area 3.0 announcement by Dave

#3 2005-02-16 19:39:44

Re: HTML Area 3.0 announcement by Dave

#4 2005-02-16 20:17:42

Re: HTML Area 3.0 announcement by Dave

#5 2005-02-17 03:49:26

Re: HTML Area 3.0 announcement by Dave

#6 2005-02-17 06:05:09

Re: HTML Area 3.0 announcement by Dave

#7 2005-02-17 06:11:16

Re: HTML Area 3.0 announcement by Dave

#8 2005-02-17 06:26:40

Re: HTML Area 3.0 announcement by Dave

#9 2005-02-17 08:38:41

Re: HTML Area 3.0 announcement by Dave

#10 2005-02-17 09:07:46

Re: HTML Area 3.0 announcement by Dave

#11 2005-02-20 17:18:37

Re: HTML Area 3.0 announcement by Dave

#12 2005-02-20 18:13:04

Re: HTML Area 3.0 announcement by Dave

#13 2005-02-21 01:39:34

Re: HTML Area 3.0 announcement by Dave

#14 2005-02-21 05:53:40

Re: HTML Area 3.0 announcement by Dave

#15 2005-02-21 08:21:46

Re: HTML Area 3.0 announcement by Dave

#16 2005-02-21 16:42:44

Re: HTML Area 3.0 announcement by Dave

#17 2005-02-21 22:24:44

Re: HTML Area 3.0 announcement by Dave

#18 2005-02-22 03:47:14

Re: HTML Area 3.0 announcement by Dave

#19 2005-02-22 13:01:28

Re: HTML Area 3.0 announcement by Dave

#20 2005-02-22 14:46:28

Re: HTML Area 3.0 announcement by Dave

#21 2005-02-26 05:03:23

Re: HTML Area 3.0 announcement by Dave

#22 2005-02-27 01:33:57

Re: HTML Area 3.0 announcement by Dave

#23 2005-02-27 03:44:08

Re: HTML Area 3.0 announcement by Dave

Board footer