Visual Rich editor - WYSIWYG - FCKEditor

[MagicStrategy]

I know one of the constant concerns is people wanting a WYSIWYG editor.

That includes me, by the way.  I've even suggested one in the past... and now I want to share a new discovery... FCKeditor.

I don't even own Front page. For "traditional" website I've used NetObjects, which creates too heavy code for email. So I've been getting along with htmlarea, installed on my website using the sample configuration as a utility, having to open it in IE to format my email.

I've tested a number of routines that could be made part of ListMail Pro.

The bad ones?

I found Htmlarea clumsy, no longer supported or being developed, and wouldn't work with Firefox.

TinyMCE (which is used in WordPress blogs) is difficult; it seems to fight with me as a user, reformatting things.

Interspire has DevEdit. They put a trimmed down version in their SendStudio package that competes with ListMail. It's AWFUL. Changes all the html around, adding all kinds of things. Very difficult to use. Plus you have to pay for it.

So I vote NIX to all of those.

FCKEditor is easy to use... open source... and you configure it with templates if you so desire. You can try it with a 3 minute test here as I set it up for email formatting for my clients:

http://emailformatter.com/editor/index.php?user=cd&pw=5years

UserID is cd  password is 5years ... the link above should instantly get you past the login.

In the above example I turned off uploading files, browsing the server, etc. That is easily undone with a simple true/false setting in the config file, all options that would be desirable in a ListMail inclusion.

For FCKEditor go to http://www.fckeditor.net/

[BGSWebDesign]

Hi,

FCKEditor is easy to use... open source... and you configure it with templates

I've played with this editor before and it is great, you're right, if an editor should be included in LMP, this should probably be the one...  as long as we have the option of plain text also, I'm all for it!

The templates are really cool!

What do you say DW?

[mvoelkening]

Hi,

I looked around a long time and today I am using www.richarea.com. FCKEditor is the best choice for a free one but lacks certain features like decent image handling or enforced pasting from Word. I found the support of www.richarea.com great and very fast and the price is reasonable. I left Devedit and Interspire a while ago, their support sucks and the editor was basically no longer supported.

Martin

[jpinheiro]

How do I proceed to integrate FCKeditor in LMP?
I use dreamweaver and it does not show the objects and I am lost at the moment.
Can someone help please?

[DW]

I doubt integrating your editor with LMP will be easy at all unless you have a great deal of PHP programming experience.  All "message editing" pages are loaded via the included file editmsg.php.

Regards

[dbowen1]

I have to say I disagree with the statement that DevEdit from Interspire is awful. I've been using their editor for years in my content management system and it is great; very feature rich and easy to use. Their support is great (I've been a customer for years) and the editor is under constant development. They recently stepped out of the shadows of "works only with Internet Explorer on Windows" and added went cross-browser and cross-platform.

Plus, paying for something good isn't a bad thing. "You get what you pay for" definitely holds true when buying software. What happens when the developers of these free editors decide to start charging or discontinue development and support? Then you are left with exactly what you paid for. NOTHING. When you pay for something, especially a product that is the core of a company's offering, you can be sure they will be around for the long term.

Anyway, I know DevEdit can be successfully integrated into LMP because I've done it. Take a look at the video I made for my customers
 http://www.driveninteractive.com/media/videos/video.php?video=51

and my other forum post on the topic

http://listmailpro.com/forum/index.php?topic=193.0

Cheers

[BGSWebDesign]

Hi,

Anyway, I know DevEdit can be successfully integrated into LMP because I've done it. Take a look at the video I made for my customers

Good job, I like the integration too    

I had a look around, your other tools look great, Conversion Scout and Insight Stats especially...  you may have seen the threads I've been posting up here asking DW to integrate Conversion Tracking such as yours into LMP?

I think it would be great if your code could be integrated???  Anyway, it would save DW tons of coding time....  I have nothing to do with LMP other than being a faithful happy user    now, from what I see with your Conversion Scout - this could go beyond what I've asked for in LMP, especially this part:

Now when that visitor lands on one of your conversion pages, this means you have successfully "converted" that customer. The conversion code on your conversion page reads the cookie that was set in step 5. This conversion, including the dollar value tied to it, is associated with that visitor and recorded in the database.

This would be excellent, now one thing I wonder about... there's one step in-between...  I currently use AdTrackz, it allows for tracking an Action AND a Sale...  so for example, I'm currently setting up all my links to work this way, but what I'd need is to track the links through on some campaigns (and only on certain ones) to see if an Action has taken place, AND THEN, at a later time, if a Sale results...  you can see where this is going, I'd need the cookie to be set, record the Action, and remain set for the Sale which may follow at a later time...  all the while, I'd like to know the users (email addresses) - which is exactly what LMP allows with it's current tracking, so that in the meantime, I can promote to them differently... and then when/if the sale is made, get statistical data at this point, (time to sale after the Action, etc, etc...)...

Do you think you could integrate Conversion Scout to do this?  And/or into LMP this way?   If so, this could be a VERY, VERY Powerful feature set!!!!  I'm excited.... you can also see my previous posts on Conversion Tracking here: http://listmailpro.com/forum/index.php?topic=29.0
and at these URLS:
Clicks-Removals: http://listmailpro.com/forum/index.php?topic=1371.msg5767#msg5767
Stats and Issue Numbers: http://listmailpro.com/forum/index.php?topic=496.45
Split Testing http://listmailpro.com/forum/index.php?topic=455.0
Statistics: http://listmailpro.com/forum/index.php?topic=1223.0

What do you think...

[don1]

Brett,

I like where this thread is going...I look forward to ALL replies!

~Don

[BGSWebDesign]

Hi Don,

I like where this thread is going...I look forward to ALL replies!

Me too, what I wonder -

WHY has niether DW, or dbowen replied to this?   Is there NO interest from either of them regarding this, do I have to integrate the two by myself?

[DW]

I'm working on a number of improvements but I don't think this one will make it into the very next release.  Perhaps I will revisit it for the next one.  I have been reading replies to this thread.  Thanks for the suggestions and discussion.

[DW]

[Split off topic discussion]

[DW]

This could be the gem I've been waiting for:

http://htmledit.squarefree.com/

Not bad at all - and easy.

I could include a short basic HTML tutorial and maybe even add some buttons so you could bold, change font, etc. easily.

The only downside is what you see in your browser may not come through in email, since email clients tend to ignore some of the more advanced HTML.  An 'admin preview' would have to be recommended.

[mr.trevor]

Hi DW,
Thats fine if you are familiar with HTML etc. but have you looked at notetab from:
http://www.notetab.com/
which will put all the HTML tags in a text copy for you?
There is a free version.

[AlanT]

Since I see that Dean is working on LMP 2.0, I thought that I'd dive in and bring this topic back up to the top of the list.  Honestly, I've had to steer a few friends to other List Managers simply because they were not HTML savvy and needed an integrated WYSIWYG editor.

One thing I'm working on now is creating a core framework for a group of musicians to create websites to sell their CDs.  The shopping cart is based on CubeCart, and I decided to check in to see what the progress might be concerning WYSIWYG editing in LMP.  CubeCart uses FCKeditor, so users of this system will already be familiar with it.

What would be REALLY cool would be if there were a way to include components of LMP within the CubeCart interface, so that LMP content is displayed within the site templates.  As I think about this, an iframe would probably suffice.

And on the note of templates, being able to define HTML templates for messages would be great.  Even if just a header/footer for each issue to format the layout - just like the custom HTML for lists.  

Actually, even text message could benefit from templates, to set up standard intro text to ezines and the general maintainence stuff at the end.  Currently, I'm using message codes for this, so it's not critical.

[auto]

Hi Alan,

You can use custom message codes...

Set !header to spit out your header and !footer to spit out your footer, you can include full HTML in the message codes.

Just wanted to point that out.  Not quite templating, but certainly usable.

Best,
Tara