Hi Guys,
This is a great open source project no doubt... but i was wondering why is there different files for ie and gecko based browsers.. is this a hangover from vastly incompatible doms of a few years ago... is there any plans to rewrite portions of the editor so that the code is browser independent... I think if this happens it will be much easier for the developer community to follow th code and enhance an already wonderful project...
Cheers Leevi Graham
This is a great open source project no doubt... but i was wondering why is there different files for ie and gecko based browsers.. is this a hangover from vastly incompatible doms of a few years ago... is there any plans to rewrite portions of the editor so that the code is browser independent... I think if this happens it will be much easier for the developer community to follow th code and enhance an already wonderful project...
Cheers Leevi Graham
RE: why is there different files for IE and Gecko
And unfortunatly, we need to support some of the older browsers, but I'm sure this will fade as the new ones come out.
A good example, IE5.5. It just plain sucks.
And as far as I can tell, it's set up so it's 'browser independent', as far as it goes, _because_ of the ie/gecko files. Same functions, just executed in the 'special' way it needs to be for various browsers. I'm betting safari will be similar. But I'm a little glassy-eyed, so I dunno if I'm making sense.
Dig through the code a little maybe, see what's really going on. Always a good idea!
RE: why is there different files for IE and G
Ah Denny Boy,
Incompatible yes but there are better ways around this than writing two scripts...
http://www.quirksmode.org has a solution for 99% of cross browser differences.. So in my experience it is very possible to write code for all browsers based on basic object detection methods...
I have spent the last week writing a plugin for the editor (hopefully the first of many) and checking the source files for both types of browser is very frustrating and time consuming...
I agree this is a good editor but it can be much better with community suport...
RE: why is there different files for IE and G
However, FCKeditor has to deal with much more than the differences in rendering quirks. IE and Gecko implement completely different editable areas which are not part of the DOM standard at all as far as I know. If you look at the code you'll see the methods used for implementing editor tasks are often vastly different.
Perhaps these could have been catered for with loads of IF statements, but the method Fred has chosen results in far more optimised code for the target environment.
I'm guessing the same will happen when Safari support is added, unless they've opted for compatibility with the Gecko method.
RE: why is there different files for IE and G
Thanks for the clarification. I have done some quick study into the contentEditable attribute and yes you are right there is no standard yet... Hopefully this will come along soon..
Anyway back to my plugin building exercise...
Cheers Leevi