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The new InstantForum.NET 4.2 WYSIWYG Editor

Created:13th July 2009 Created By: Ryan Healey Article has been viewed 108,367 times.
Hope your all well. I just wanted to keep you all updated with regard to our forthcoming InstantForum.NET 4.2 update.

It's been clear from feedback recently that there a re a number of issues with the current InstantForum.NET 4.1.4 WYSIWYG editor. The current WYSIWYG editor provides only limited support for FireFox & other Mozilla based browsers & we are aware of a couple of issues with the recent IE8 update. 

We wanted to quickly address these issues and several weeks back we started working on a new WYSIWYG editor for InstantForum.NET 4.2. We opted to develop our own editor to ensure we had complete control over the mark-up & to allow us to address any future issues or feature requests.

I'm pleased to say this is very near complete now and i wanted to post a few screen grabs to highlight some of the changes. You can also play with the new editor within our online 4.2 preview at http://demos.instantasp.co.uk/InstantForum42/

General Editor



Add EmotIcons

We have now moved to the EmotIcons to a menu button. This removes the need for a modal pop-up to browse all emoticons and makes it much easier to add emots You can also easily extend the list of available EmotIcons by modifying the EmotIcons.xml file provided with each InstantForum.NET skin.



Font Options

We've made some improvement here to show a preview of the font, size & heading style.



Insert Image

Again we've removed the need for a pop-up window to insert and image and moved this to a menu option. This allows you todo everything from the one page and also ensures the options are not blocked by any pop-up blockers. You can link to images or upload images from your local harddrive.



Color Picker

The color picker is now available in all editors. No need to enter hex values manually in Mozilla browsers any longer. The list of default colors can easily be modified & it's very easy to add or remove colors from this list. We will be making further improvements in future versions to extend these option further.



Add Attachments

You can now add attachments directly within the editor. Current attachments will appear below your message within the editor. Again we have moved away from a modal pop-up  dialog for attachments to improve response times & ensure no issues with pop-up blockers.



Spell Checker

As you would expect the editor is provides complete spell checking support.



Add YouTube Videos

We've now made it easier to add YouTube videos to posts within InstantForum.NET 4.2.



Add IF Code

You can now use IFCode directly from the menu. As the editor now supports all major browsers the need for IF Code is reduced however it it still helpful if you wish to define custom code blocks or quick tags for adding 3rd party content. We've made improvements on how IF Code is added via a menu option now and removed the modal pop-up.



Resizable Editor

You can easily resize the height of the editor by simply dragging the bar highlighted below. This allows you to expand the height of the editor depending on your message size.



Edit HTML

You can enable the ability to edit the HTML of message via permission sets.



That's Great, but when can i download 4.2?

We are working to make a public beta download available and currently we are aiming to have something for download late August possibly early September. You can be assured we'll be working to make something available ASAP however we do also want to ensure the first public beta is robust enough for customers to implement.

As always i'll continue to keep this blog updated with developments. In the meantime please don't forget to check out the new editor within our online demo at http://demos.instantasp.co.uk/InstantForum42/ - whilst it;s not 100% complete it will hopefully wet your appetite for 4.2. I would of course welcome any feedback on ryan@instantasp.co.uk or via a comment here.

I look forward to posting further updates :)


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No Member Photo
by Eddy posted 9th August 2009
Are you adding thumbnails for attachments or the ability to limit the size of attachments?
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by cloi from http://www.wow-gold-tip.com posted 1st August 2009
It's   funny~@!!!!
Marked helpful 1 time based on 1 vote
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by Nils posted 23rd July 2009
Hi!

I've tried to find some information about auto tagging urls. In almost every forums (except this one) an url automatically will be linkable in posts.
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