Dear Mozilla-Editor group, first of all, thanks for the outstanding job you guys are doing on such a difficult project. I'm positive that in the future, Mozilla will do for the client-side web what Apache did on the server-side, keeping open standards "open" and keeping other players "sane".
I'm writing you because I'm the author of an XML publishing framework called Cocoon (see http://xml.apache.org/cocoon2/ for more info) and we are getting close to hit the big wall of digital publishing: how content is edited. After looking around for a tons of editing solutions, both open and closed, I came to the conclusion that inline-editing is the key, after having used an editor called "Xopus" (look in Google for more info) which uses special IE 5.5+ inline-editing functionalities of the MSHTML component, along with in-place XML/XSLT transformations. The concept is *way* cool, even if Xopus had to jump thru hoops to do it in IE and for sure there are many things that could be improved, but the idea is simple: current Composer is done for people that want to write their own HTML pages, but nowadays, there is absolutely no need for that in a closed environment (think of intranet, extranet): editors (here I mean the people that edit) should be given a structured-WYSIWYG tool that allows them to edit content, but *ONLY* the content they are responsible for (thus avoiding changing the other parts like sidebars, banners, etc...) IE 5.5 has a special attribute contentEditable="" which, if set to true (even thru scripting) turns the element editable. [see attached a demo page cloned from a CNN.com page, of course, it works only on IE 5.5+] While their current implmentation has major WYSIWYG limitations (text doesn't go around images, for example), the concept is, IMO, a great one. The ideal tool for structured-content editing, in my personal vision, should be something that "forces" the editors to write the content only in the position allowed, but with the full visual simplicity of WYSIWYG (not with forms and stuff like that). Even more, the editor should not even open/save the content using normal files, but sending back the content to the server. This allows for *true* distributed editing environments and for *true* content workflow management. Ok, this said, I have a couple of questions: 1) is there anything like the IE feature of contentEditable="" for Mozilla? 2) if not, did you guys already plan to implement it? 3) if not, would you be willing to do it after my suggestion? 4) if not, how hard do you think that would be for external people to do it? 5) do you see/plan/imagine equivalent solutions that are possible with today's code or with planned future additions? 5) moreover, it is possible to use the Composer to edit generic XML content? I mean, associating with some event the creation of a specific element and use CSS to present it? 6) finally, what is the current status of embeddability of the editor? Sorry for the long email, but I see great potential in Mozilla and if something like this structured-WYSIWYG on XML editing could be possible, Mozilla will instantly turn into the "browser of choice" for intranet and extranet that are based on XML content published and transformed on the server side. (which is the trend that most companies are initiating right now) Thanks for your time and keep up the great work! Ciao. -- Stefano Mazzocchi One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Friedrich Nietzsche --------------------------------------------------------------------
demo.1.0.zip
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