Specification thoughts: (1) They need to be able to do a range of simple mark up (Bold, Hyperlink, Italics, Paragraphs etc) without worrying about HTML (2) Some more advanced functions would be nice (Certainly adding in images and captions aligned right, left or centre) (3) The ability to toggle between WYSIWYG the raw HTML view (many of our editors are tech savvy and will handcode special bits)
IK - Do you care about the validity and quality of the HTML produced? Most WYSIWYGs produce pretty awful HTML, and if you intend to allow content editors to edit HTML as well, you'd lose more control over the quality of the HTML. Does your CMS store HTML or are you planning to parse it in a post-process, clean it up and store content separate from presentation? Is it important to enable semantic markup rather than 'bold' and 'italic' type of markup? Should the editor be able to utilize CSS? (4) Wait for it... It needs to work on Mac and PC clients! IK - Only applet, flash or some other plugin based product (which may be quite inconvenient for end users: security, another download, etc.) could offer a web based cross-platform wysiwyg. Unfortunately, I don't know of any that are good and cross-browser and cross-platform. (C) Would you say I'm missing anything in my spec? IK - It seems the WYSIWYG you describe in your spec would not separate content from presentation (unless your backend does something about that) or attempt to separate production concerns, which IMO are crucial for a good editor. How can you ensure consistency of look and feel if editors could edit the HTML? How can you ensure the quality of the output? What happens if you need to redesign and you have all sorts of inconsistent markup intermingled with the actual content? My company has also developed a CMS with a WYSIWYG (XML). Feel free to take a look at our site (www.livestoryboard.com) - our editor is part of our CMS and not available as a stand-alone editor, so it's not a solution for you, but it might be helpful in generating ideas on how to further refine your requirements. best, Iva -- http://cms-list.org/ trim your replies for good karma.
