Support Thread for CKEditor Plugin

[Feznizzle]

Wow, it must be a cold day in heck! Because I think––for the first time ever––I kind of disagree with DrByte.

When it comes to websites, I am almost always for trimming fat. The leaner, the better. But I draw a line at user experience, both front end and back.

After a ZC is up, template added, mods installed, and site configured, then comes the part that matters most: content (prod pages, ez pages, etc, etc, etc).

Having a solid wysiwyg with a strong selections of features is extremely helpful. Many of those (probably most) adding content are NOT programmers. Or, at least not strong enough to code a page from scratch. And really... why should anybody do that (talk about a waste of time!)? Having a wysiwyg built in to the admin area (CKEditor) makes life SO MUCH EASIER!

It's not just convenient, but I think it's actually critical. Yes, I could force my clients to go out buy a copy of Dreamweaver or some other such. But that's a pretty silly overkill if all they need is a wysiwyg editor. Unfortunately, I can't hand a site back to a client without providing a wysiwyg solution I can train them to use. And that solution needs to have any basic feature that the client may require.

Let me point two things out (to see if it sways your opinion any, DrB):
--
First, in years past, I'm pretty sure the ZC CKEditor mod did include Full package (it's possible I'm thinking of another editor like TinyMCE or something, but I don't think so). When you have the Full CK, there is a button on the menu bar that allows you to configure what appears on that bar. In other words, you can pick and choose which options are enabled for use in the editor. This means that a user can easily reduce the "extreme feature-bloat" with a few clicks of the mouse.

I understand that some of the features offered by the Full CK may introduce code or css or other issues that conflicts with ZC. If certain features are known to cause problems, they could easily be pointed out in install instructions. And after installing, the user could simply use their mouse to disable any dangerous features.

--
Second, I think this statement is massively oversimplified: "anyone can grab the latest "full" and upload it to their site in a few minutes".

This may be true for programmers or mensa members (DrB is probably both!), but probably not the rest. I'm not a programmer, but I've been using ZC for years now and I consider my understanding to be relatively advanced. Yet I ended up losing at least half a day of productivity trying to figure out how to add the "Justify" button to CKEditor.

I'm not an idiot, I swear. I've installed CK before and never had a problem. When I noticed "Justify" was missing, I initially thought I screwed up the install. I wasted a ton of time retracing my steps, then combing through forums before I gave up and posted the question here. Even after I finally figured out that the current iteration of CKEditor available on ZC simply changed the feature set to Standard, I still had to go back and forth between forums to figure out how to resolve the issue.

Yes, the solution I posted is easy. But figuring that out required a lot of time, effort, and some trial and error. The whole episode was an unnecessary waste of time for me, so I made sure to post the solution in here in order to help the next guy not waste his time as well.

If someone could post a "How-To" for installing the full version, in a very simple, step-by-step way as I did, then this could become true (if they happen to find it): "anyone can grab the latest "full" and upload it to their site in a few minutes"

But I think a better, more user-friendly option would simply be what swguy suggests: leaving up the CKEditor mod as it is with just a Standard set of features, but also having "a second version of the plugin offering the Full CKEditor package".

Leave it up to the people to decide if they want feature bloat or barebones.

POWER TO DA PEEPLZ!!!! :)

[swguy]

If someone could post a "How-To" for installing the full version, in a very simple, step-by-step way as I did, then this could become true (if they happen to find it): "anyone can grab the latest "full" and upload it to their site in a few minutes"

This is probably what I will do.

[Feznizzle]

This is probably what I will do.

Awesome! I'll try it out as soon as I see it.

Hey, if you decide to post it somewhere else (not in this thread), can you leave a breadcrumb here?

Thanks!

[DrByte]

If someone could post a "How-To" for installing the full version, in a very simple, step-by-step way as I did, then this could become true (if they happen to find it): "anyone can grab the latest "full" and upload it to their site in a few minutes"

I did. It's in the readme.

POWER TO DA PEEPLZ!!!! :)

I'm not advocating taking away anyone's power. I am however all for making the button bar not be 3/4 of the viewport so that the editor is actually not useful because there's no screen space left due to features most will never use. (and arguably the majority of storeowners should never use because they're screwing up their site's SEO rankings and bloating their page sizes so customers' experience is slowed down needlessly, etc etc).
That's why I put the instructions in the readme for installing the full thing yourself ... for those few who legitimately need more power.

[Feznizzle]

I was just goofin with the "power to the ppl" bit!

And I do agree with you that often users need to be saved from themselves. In addition to the dangers you mention, the ability to change fonts of text seems crazy to me. If you have a nice template, why muck it up? The whole point of a template is to provide a consistent experience for your end users. But even that ability has countless legitimate purposes. I'd probably advise against it, but if a client wanted it... well, what am I if not a cog?

One man's "bloat" is another man's "essential". The perfect example is that to me, having the ability to apply Center, Left, Right, & Justify to text and objects is extremely basic and essential. Not just for clients, but for myself.

Thanks for putting the instructions in the readme. I went back to it and found this:

Upgrading to future CKEditor versions

This package contains CKEditor unaltered from its original distribution as prepared by ckeditor.com. None of the files have been changed, although the "samples" folder has been removed, as it is for demonstration purposes and not needed for normal use.

You can easily update your CKEditor installation in the future by downloading the latest CKEditor files from ckeditor.com and uploading the resulting /ckeditor/ folder to your site's /editors/ckeditor/ folder, replacing what's there. There's no need to change the files in the /admin/ folders merely for CKEditor version upgrades.

(Advanced) You can use the supplied build-config.js file if you want to take the existing configuration and recreate it using the new version. Details are on the ckeditor.com download page.
If you do this, be sure to manually merge customizations of the config.js file.

It appears what you are saying is that you did not alter CKEditor package. So one could download a FULL package and simply his site's /editors/ckeditor/ folder with the FULL /ckeditor/ folder?

That seems super easy.

But the next step is where I would get in trouble, merging customizations into the config.js file.

[DrByte]

Correct. The only alteration is the improvements to the config.js file to help with making common relevant things available on the button bar, keep it to 2 rows instead of 4, and tweak settings to code doesn't get misinterpreted incorrectly. The default config.js has rarely ever been changed from release-to-release, so I doubt there'll be much effort needed to "merge" things in that file. That said, if you like the defaults, just throw away mine and live with what they give you.

[kwright]

Greetings All,

So, how does one go about matching the styles offered in CK editor bar to that of ones ZC template? At least the basic styles for headers <hx>, paragraphs <p> and links <a>...

Thanks!

[kwright]

Greetings All,

So, how does one go about matching the styles offered in CK editor bar to that of ones ZC template? At least the basic styles for headers <hx>, paragraphs <p> and links <a>...

Thanks!

OK, did a bit of searching on the ckeditor site / forum. This is what I found so as to help others with similar question!

If you have added the ckeditor plugin and want the ckeditor content area to reflect your template styles, add the following to the ckeditor.php file towards the bottom. NOTE: This replaces the default ckeditor contents.css file.

In ckeditor.php
FIND:

  });
});
//--></script>

CHANGE TO:

  });

  CKEDITOR.config.contentsCss = '/includes/templates/<?php echo $template_dir ?>/css/stylesheet.css';

});
//--></script>

If you want to include more than one stylesheet, add to the CKEDITOR.config.contentsCss using this format:

CKEDITOR.config.contentsCss = ['path_to_stylesheet_1', 'path_to_stylesheet_2', 'path_to_stylesheet_x'];

Now, if you really want to make the styles available within the styles drop-down tool bar, get and add the ckeditor stylesheetparser plugin from http://ckeditor.com/addon/stylesheetparser. Be sure to download the version that is compatible with the ckeditor version you are using. Unzip and add to the ckeditor plugins dir. Now, enable the plugin by adding the following to the editors/ckeditor/config.js file.

In config.js
FIND:

CKEDITOR.editorConfig = function( config ) {

CHANGE TO:
FIND:

CKEDITOR.editorConfig = function( config ) {
  config.extraPlugins = 'stylesheetparser';

Be sure to refresh your browser to see the changes. As a note, adding your template styles from CKEDITOR.config.contentsCss to the styles tool bar can get quite confusing and messy to someone who isn't familiar with your template specific css notation.

Hope this help!

[kwright]

  });

  CKEDITOR.config.contentsCss = '<?php echo HTTPS_SERVER ?>/includes/templates/<?php echo $template_dir ?>/css/stylesheet.css';

});
//--></script>

Note that you may want to add this: <?php echo HTTPS_SERVER ?> as in the above just in case you have your ZC in a subfolder / subdomain!

I just discovered this on a test install of ZC I have in a subdomain...

[ErwinSk8]

Hi everyone

I am in desperate need for assistance. I have installed the CKeditor but for whatever reason I cannot paste from word... it doesn't retain anything, Tables, Colours or anything like that. Is there something I am doing wrong as I was really hoping this would be the time saver I was waiting for. Is there anyone out there having the same or similar issue? Thank you so much for taking the time to read this and I am very greatful for any help I can get.

Regards

Erwin