SurfiOnline

TinyMCE is a great free javascript based WYSIWYG editor however it is distinctly lacking in one main area: appearance. If you ask me, the default design of the editor sucks and one of the most important features of web based WYSIWYG editors is that it looks and feels like a real editing interface.

The default “full featured” interface of TinyMCE looks as follows:

The layout of the elements, though customisable is a mess - you have no clear division of elements which serve different purposes - tools which relate to text manipulation, inserting content or formating text.

I spent the better half of the afternoon redesigning TinyMCE in to what I’d say is a much more pleasant interface to work with. I did this for a client project I’m currently working on that requires a simple WYSIWYG editor for managing site content.

I honestly feel I’ve improved the interface a lot and at some time in the future I’ll submit my changes to the TinyMCE Sourceforge site as a patch as well as a few other code modifications I’ve made. All that I feel the need to do now is replace the silly popup windows TinyMCE uses to insert links, smilies, images, etc with some inline versions which would make TinyMCE just that much better once again.

If there is enough interest - I’ll release them here.

That’s basically it for now as I’m really busy with several things so Merry Christmas for last week and Happy New Year for this week.

Dear Adobe,

I love your applications, I’m using at least one of them every day for one purpose or another. From Photoshop to Acrobat, Audition to Premiere, or Acrobat to InDesign - I love what you do so much that I own licenses for all of these products and a few more.

As you and I are both aware, I’m quite lazy and a sometimes forgetful person. Lazy because I like to believe Microsoft Windows is a stable operating system and don’t feel the need to save my work in case of a crash (hey - who likes performing miscellaneous tasks?) and forgetful for those times I just forget to save changes I make to my work in one of your authoring products to avoid losing my work in case of a crash of some sort.

Now I’ve heard rumours out on the internets and through the tubes that you’re releasing a public beta of Creativity Suite 3 some time soon and I’m looking forward to see the changes you’ve made and improvements to your software. Another reason I’m also looking forward to your release is to finally see an Intel compiled version of CS3 which I can productively use on my Mac without running it through Rosetta.

I have a question for you good mate, For the love of god, why do we not have “auto save” and “auto recovery” features in Photoshop or the majority of your other products? It’s an “oh so 2000″ feature and we don’t have it.

Just tonight I was using Photoshop to work on the design of a stubbie holder which is part of a Christmas present for a friend. This involved recreating a larger version of a company logo and getting all of the sizing and positioning correct too. I was annoyed when we had a blackout right after I’d finished my master piece and I’d lost everything.

Please Adobe, will you consider adding the auto save and auto recover features we’re all so familiar with from Microsoft Office?