Forum Moderators: not2easy
The site is very clean as is the CSS but the site's CSS file is changing the result of what a user enters into the editor.
The whole site include class or id selectors except for the Hn tags and a few others.
I'm pretty rough with CSS but it seems to me that if the ENTIRE site used class and id selectors except for the contents from the editor, then anything that a user creates via the editor should display as they entered it.
Am I wrong? Or maybe are there standard ways of handling issues such as this? My users are very novice (me too :) ) and I can't expect them to do anything in code view. They have to have a dependable WYSIWYG result.
Thanks much.
e.g. If you have CSS
.class {color: red;}
p {color: green ; background-color:yellow;}
then a <p class="class">test</p> would be rendered as red on yellow. (the class having a higher priority in the specificity, but not overruling the yellow background since it didn't set it ...
The concept of novice users editing your CSS is very scary (how wold a novice user deal with bugs in the CSS implementation in the legacy IE versions, (asuming they would notice at all) ?
There are many text editors on the web that allow users to enter content, just like in many forums (I'm stating the obvious here just to clarify the question). With the editor, any user can format the content of what they enter however they want.
How are the pages written to assure the content that was entered by the user from affecting the page around it? And how do you keep the other CSS used on the page from affecting what the user enters.
Thanks again.
However, I was able to reduce the amount of pain, and now I have the 'paste text' and 'paste from Word' functions working and instruct the users to use them when pasting from their various documents. It cleans the bold/blue/pink centered/underlined bits hehe.. then I got into configuring the editor itself with a minimal profile for everyday users.. this strips all tags except for a few choice ones <h3> and <h4> (don't want h2 headings except for the titles), p, ul, blockquote etc.. I have removed underlines as I personally don't like to see them except on links, though novice users tend to like them for emphasis.. and have just left <b> & <i> , which convert on the fly to match <strong> and <em>
However in difference to what you suggest, the way I tackled is not a true Wysiwyg, because what they see is not always how it lands up, but I give them a practice area, where they can see how it will convert until they trust it.. e.g. their plain black bulleted lists become site themed/colored lists with image icons.
I think as long as you restrict the amount of codes that can slip through the editor to certain users, and don't allow it produce inline styles.. it shouldn't take too much specific CSS to overrule any very garish results.
The way I do it, on this specific site anyway, the users seem to like it as it looks very simple, text-like, to them, but "automagically" lands up styled.
Although the editor itself might not actually be showing WYSIWYG, once posted the content should land inside one of your ID/Classed divs so that means you can technically use your CSS to style the produced HTML code to suit your site, which is where keeping the allowed tags to a minimum is handy.. you could always go into the HTML mode and edit/embellish if required, and also I believe FCK can be set to use your site styles, but I never found it very reliable and decided to K.I.S
just some thoughts..
