Hello anybody (it seems I'm the only person here apart from MSNBot and GoogleCrawler).
I downloaded CKEditor 3.0 about a week ago, and it looks like a fantastic tool: my congratulations to everyone who has worked on it.
I'm a website designer first, developer second, although after working with Javascript for about ten years, I feel fairly comfortable with it. Now, I don't normally participate in developer forums - there are too many people whose automatic response to a newbie is 'read the FAQs / manual / documentation'. I've done as much of that as I can, and I'm sorry to say 90% of it is meaningless to me. There should be a simply written 'getting started' guide somewhere, but I can't find such a thing. (I'd be happy to write it, but then I would have to spend months becoming an expert on CKEditor, and I really don't have the time).
Anyway, I'm wittering a bit. The first thing I wanted to do was configure the toolbar. It only took me a couple of days to work out how to do that. (Post added below with a working example).
The next thing was to mess around with dialog boxes. Using the supplied example, I managed to whittle the Links box to just one field that my users can understand, by removing tabs and unwanted fields. I've not got it to do quite what I want: I'd like to change the values in the 'protocol' dropdown list, but can't find how to do that.
I'm now playing with the 'Image' dialogue. I've removed the advanced tab, but for the life of me cannot figure out how to remove the link tab (it would help If I knew what it was called - I've tried 'link', 'linkType' and 'linkTab' - all to no avail). Surely, somewhere, there is a list of what the standard dialogs, tabs and fields? My next challenge is to try to get a 'browse' button to appear and then link to my PHP upload script.
I don't know if the developers have any comprehension of how difficult it is for newbies to get to grips with CKEditor. But until these issues are addressed, I think designer/developers will be wary of using it.
I was actually thinking about building a simple config tool, but again, lack of time prevents this. In the meantime, anyone cares to post that list of dialog names, tabs and fields, I'd be very happy.
I downloaded CKEditor 3.0 about a week ago, and it looks like a fantastic tool: my congratulations to everyone who has worked on it.
I'm a website designer first, developer second, although after working with Javascript for about ten years, I feel fairly comfortable with it. Now, I don't normally participate in developer forums - there are too many people whose automatic response to a newbie is 'read the FAQs / manual / documentation'. I've done as much of that as I can, and I'm sorry to say 90% of it is meaningless to me. There should be a simply written 'getting started' guide somewhere, but I can't find such a thing. (I'd be happy to write it, but then I would have to spend months becoming an expert on CKEditor, and I really don't have the time).
Anyway, I'm wittering a bit. The first thing I wanted to do was configure the toolbar. It only took me a couple of days to work out how to do that. (Post added below with a working example).
The next thing was to mess around with dialog boxes. Using the supplied example, I managed to whittle the Links box to just one field that my users can understand, by removing tabs and unwanted fields. I've not got it to do quite what I want: I'd like to change the values in the 'protocol' dropdown list, but can't find how to do that.
I'm now playing with the 'Image' dialogue. I've removed the advanced tab, but for the life of me cannot figure out how to remove the link tab (it would help If I knew what it was called - I've tried 'link', 'linkType' and 'linkTab' - all to no avail). Surely, somewhere, there is a list of what the standard dialogs, tabs and fields? My next challenge is to try to get a 'browse' button to appear and then link to my PHP upload script.
I don't know if the developers have any comprehension of how difficult it is for newbies to get to grips with CKEditor. But until these issues are addressed, I think designer/developers will be wary of using it.
I was actually thinking about building a simple config tool, but again, lack of time prevents this. In the meantime, anyone cares to post that list of dialog names, tabs and fields, I'd be very happy.
Re: Confused Newbie: A Tale Of Woe
Hi,
Sorry I can't help you, we have the same problems : I wouldn't call myself a total newbie and I wish I could RTFM, but there's no "real FM". The wiki is almost empty, unorganized and non-editable by common users, there are some additional info in some "talk pages" (ie. hidden to most, since the wiki does not look like a wiki), and the whole thing seems dead since before the summer...
I know the project has been through drastic changes (I first used it around 18 months ago) and I wish I could fully love this new version, but no doc and orphan forum threads make me think twice... The basic editor is awesome and thanks to all, but the complexity of implementing|customizing it and the lack of info...
Anyway, I found this thread looking for "dialog boxes". I hope I can use them as a replacement to the prototype window class (http://prototype-window.xilinus.com/samples.html), but I'm still not sure... Just like you, I could not find an easy "getting started", like a link that would actually fire a "hello world" dialog... http://docs.cksource.com/FCKeditor_3.x/Design_and_Architecture/Dialog_System is so cryptic !
I'm sorry it took you "a few days" to customize the toolbar, I've had the same problem (18 months ago and recently when upgrading).
Hoping I'm not trolling, sincerely... I really wish all the best to CKEditor!
Re: Confused Newbie: A Tale Of Woe
What do you expect from opensource software ? Do you think CKEditor developper are working for you for free. He gives you CKEditor source for free (as beer) but he don't work FOR YOU until you pay for it. There's little doc, it's true. But this forum can give you many answers if not all. But you have to work ! Nothing is free as beer, you don't pay : so work ! Read the code (that's what i do) Ask questions (that's what i do) Answer questions when you can (that's what i hope to do).
I manage to have ckeditor running on my site in about 4h, not much ! The only thing i have to do : read the samples !
For me, i thank Frederico Knabben for CKEditor, it's a great piece of software.
Re: Confused Newbie: A Tale Of Woe
No offence but regardless of being open source the product has terrible documentation.. there are plenty of open source products out there that are run just as professionally as if they were a paid product. How? because open source is just a different type of investment.. you build a trust with users and somewhat of a 'name' vs building your wallet.
Re: Confused Newbie: A Tale Of Woe
This is exactly the kind of answer I expect from techie forums. You rant about me struggling with this thing (and what you percieve as my expectations), but offer no meaningful help.
Re: Confused Newbie: A Tale Of Woe
<script type="text/javascript"> CKEDITOR.config.toolbar_KW=[ ['Source','-','Preview','Templates','SpellChecker','Scayt','-','Find','Replace','-','NumberedList','BulletedList','-','Outdent','Indent','Blockquote','FontSize'], '/', ['Bold','Italic','Underline','Strike','Subscript','Superscript','-','Link','-','JustifyLeft','JustifyCenter','JustifyRight','JustifyBlock','-','Image','Table','HorizontalRule','SpecialChar','-','Maximize'], ]; CKEDITOR.replace( 'editor_v2', { toolbar:'KW', skin : 'v2' }); </script>The lines enclosed in [] appear as a row of buttons. The '-' is a separator between groups of buttons. CKEditor.replace - make sure you indicate the name of your textarea, and the name of your toolbar. The 'skin' parameter is optional.
Hope this helps somebody