There have been some new releases in the Rich Text Editor over the years, (http://docs.releasenotes.salesforce.com/he-il/winter15/release-notes/rn_general_html_editor_updates.htm), but we still have the problem of having 4 different HTML (or Rich Text) Editors. And now MORE with Lightning and Quill!
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- Some lines of text get put over two lines
- Numbers are separated from their paragraph and separated by two lines.
- Many line breaks
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This is not good. Not good at all.
This is the HTML it saved
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<div><p><br></p><p><br></p><p>A simple note document:</p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p>- </p><p>Would have some bullets</p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p>- </p><p>And another bullet</p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p>And maybe some <b>bold</b></p><p>and <i>italics</i> for emphasis:</p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p>1. </p><p>And a numbered list</p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p>2. </p><p>Continuing. </p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p>And a hyperlink to <a href="http://www.google.com/" target="_blank">google</a></p><p>for good measure. </p><p><br></p></div> |
Well, look I can be thankfull it didn't save ALL the word style info, so that is good. Now if it could just fix up the extra spacing then it might be on the right track.
Look, we ALL know that 90% of sales type people are going to write their notes in word and upload the word document, or paste it into notes. If you can't even get pasting from Word right, then we have a problem. How is this even going to work for Knowledge articles.
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- Markdown style editing as an option - eg even Word has put stars around a word to make it bold (yes you can turn it off).
- This allows you to keep your hands on the keyboard.
- A predefined set of styles that the user can choose from in the corporate style guidelines - eg Heading 2 is always 1.2em Arial Bold.
- But ensuring that only <h2> is saved in the raw HTML that is saved, and that the styles are only applied by CSS in the text editor.
- But this depends on where the text is displayed and that that applies the styles consistently.
- And if it is in an email that it knows that it has to save the styles as inline styles into the raw HTML.
- The ability to paste images in or drag and drop them in, and if they come from a URL keep the URL (eg serving images up from an external CDN).
Using TinyMCE, I have been able to create a simple HTML Editor that does the following:
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Tiny MCE has Textpatterns, which for end users are probably much better - it behaves more like word. http://www.tinymce.com/wiki.php/Plugin:textpattern. You type *bold* and you get bold text. You type
* my bullet 1
* my bullet 2
and you get bullets.
you type
# heading
and you get heading 1
Tiny MCE has style_formats http://www.tinymce.com/wiki.php/Configuration:style_formats and again it's a pretty simple format so it could be set in a configuration.
The second feature I want is standard styles so you can keep a corporate style guide. This is exceptionally important for Knowledge - you just have to have a look at the public knowledge articles for many sites to see how bad they look with inconsistent formatting across their knowledge articles (I'm sorry to say that even knowledge sites I've been a part of end up looking shit because people don't care enough about this stuff, so we have to make it easy for them).
Tiny MCE has style_formats http://www.tinymce.com/wiki.php/Configuration:style_formats and again it's a pretty simple format so it could be set in a configuration.
The next thing I want is that it is configurable as to what buttons are visible. Because in some corporate stylings you do not ever want the colour picker available, and you may decided that tables are not a feature that is allowed in your richtext boxes.
Eg, I would remove the following buttons from the knowledge editor.
- Font Size
- Font Style
- Strikethrough
- Font Colour
- Background Colour
The next thing I want is clean paste in from Word. Tiny MCE has http://www.tinymce.com/wiki.php/Configuration:paste_word_valid_elements
One thing I want, which is not so important but a nice to have is the ability to paste images in or drag and drop them in, and if they come from a URL keep the URL (eg serving images up from an external CDN). I have a client who has huge numbers of videos on Amazon that they need to embed within their RTE - they don't need to store them in Salesforce.
With all of these configurations it would be OK for them to be site-wide, but object specific would be even better - eg in Opportunities you may have the ability to do more formats than in Campaigns for the text that is used in the emails.
I know SKUID allows for a custom CKEditor, so I'm sure something would be possible with that.