Forums / Developer / mozilla inline editor

mozilla inline editor

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Paul Forsyth

Thursday 29 May 2003 10:33:17 am

this tool seems to have potential as an inline editor for x-platform users of mozilla:

http://mozile.mozdev.org/

ez, could you adapt this for use in ezp?

paul

Harry Fuecks

Thursday 29 May 2003 7:58:42 pm

Great idea! Along those lines an XUL version of the admin interface could rapidly improve the speed it can be used.

One other question - is there any likelihood of an eZ publish template editor? Know that sounds like a tall order but recently been playing with Pythons Boa Constructor (http://boa-constructor.sourceforge.net/) which is an IDE for creating wxWindows cross platform apps. From what I've seen (Python skills are work in progress) creating an editor in general would be very easy - there's even an in built widget wxHTML which basically makes it a breeze to write a web browser (to preview templates). IBM did a nice article about it: http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-wxpython/?dwzone=linux

Tony Wood

Thursday 29 May 2003 11:23:56 pm

I think a specific IDE for eZ is a tough one as most people will use an IDE they are confortable with on the platform and GUI they like.

Now a plugin for IDEs like Eclipse etc would be very nice.

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Paul Forsyth

Friday 30 May 2003 1:53:26 am

I should add a contribute doc for good development environments to use.

Eclipse(www.eclipse.org) is the tool we use at VisionWT and a simple plugin for it could easily add syntax colouring, function insertions and proper tabs, which are common to most good editing programs these days. Taking this further would just be a matter of planning.

Harry Fuecks

Friday 30 May 2003 3:22:04 am

Eclipse is good but I'm not really talking about a text editor - rather a drag and drop designer for templates. Sounds like a tall order I know but theoretically it should be possible and someone who knows they way around Python / wxWindows should be able to put it together fairly quickly. Using SOAP you might even be able to query the eZ publish database for building templates for specific content classes.

This month's edition of php-magazin (German edition) reviewed eZ publish ( "http://www.entwickler.com/itr/online_artikel/psecom,id,360,nodeid,62.html" ) - some good criticism both for and against. They argue that the template system, as is, won't be "friendly" for designers and I have to agree. A WYSIWYG editor would be a big plus and probably something people would be very willing to pay for.

One other thing; it might be worth checking out what Alan Knowles is doing with PEAR::HTML_Template_Flexy (http://pear.php.net/package-info.php?pacid=111) - a very promising template system IMO. He's using the PHP tokenizer extension and has basically written a lexer for HTML. Apart from being very fast, the advantage of this system, IMO, is it can be used in a way that doesn't require learning of a complex template syntax (even though it supports { } type markup), as HTML elements in a template can be assigned special attributes to make HTML_Template_Flexy "bind" them to a PHP class. One example that suggests this is: http://devel.akbkhome.com/peardoc2/package.html.html-template-flexy.attribute.select.html. What this means is developing a WYSIWYG template editor is alot easier, as you really only need to support HTML markup. Flexy could also be used to parse ASP.NET templates eventually - that may not sound interesting but Web Matrix (http://www.asp.net/webmatrix/default.aspx?tabIndex=4&tabId=46) is a great tool for designers.

Anyway - just ideas.

Gabriel Ambuehl

Friday 30 May 2003 4:45:22 am

It is very simple to get WYSIWIG editing that supports Mozilla. (I in fact DO HAVE a hack that makes it work on my HD somewhere, but it didnt support images as of now though I don't think it would be particularly hard to get it to support htem). eZ seems a bit relunctant on that issue.

I offered them to implement WYSIWIG editing in exchange for a professional licence (IMHO a good deal for them as I don't plan on buying one anytime soon yet I get something for my work) but they weren't interested. I'm not going to release the editor as I think its fair that eZ get some money for stuff like that.

Now if anyone desparetely wants that feature: I will not release it under the GPL (so not to compete with eZ with a free and better product) but if someone feels like getting me a pro license so I can place it under a license that is better suited to not interfering with eZ, I will obviously hand out the code to them.

I'm afraid but without a pro license, I can't license it not to be redistributable.

Then again if many of you want that thingy bad enough, I might be willing to fork out the cash for the pro version myself and start selling the editor (after paying for the pro license, I don't have any moral issues with selling my addon).

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Niklas Gunnäs

Saturday 31 May 2003 6:54:15 am

The online editor function is great but to charge for it?

I dont think thats a good idea. If users can find cms platforms that offers this functions for free they will not even try ez publish. And that woulde be a shame because ez platforms strength is more or less directly proportional to the size of its user community.

I think it woulde be better to charge for addons that are focused on business users. Business users will pay for addons if they can see how it will help them to profit. Exemple of business addons are extended handling of products and CRM functions.

Bård Farstad

Saturday 31 May 2003 9:55:07 am

Why charge for OE?
Our philosophy here is simple. If an addon is vendor specific we will charge for it. Our efforts in developing eZ publish is fucused on developing free solutions based on open standards. The online editor is based on microsofts DHTML component, which does not fit into the eZ publish base product. Examples of other commercial addons are: Oracle support and payment gateway plugins.

--bård

Documentation: http://ez.no/doc