CKEditor released

After a long time, finally the first stable version of CKEditor 3.0 has been released.

There are still some important features that are missing in order to do a smooth upgrade fro FCKeditor 2.x, but nonetheless this release is very important to really show what's coming with this new version.

I might add some follow up posts with small snippets of code about how to do some basic things with this version, trying to cover some areas that for the moment are lacking proper documentation.

These are the current articles:

1. Using CKEditor, prerequisites.
2. Creating an instance of CKEditor
3. Delayed loading of CKEditor
4. Creating CKEditor instances with Javascript

 

Installing PHP in IIS 6 (windows 2003)

Some time ago I tried to install PHP in a test machine with Windows 2003 and IIS, so I could do some tests more easily. At that time I failed to get it working. The theory is simple, I found several tutorials explaining how to do it, but I wasn't able to get nothing but a "404 page not found" whenever I requested a .php page in that server.

Today I decided to try again. Quite a lot of things have changed in this time.

PHP has setup a separate site to handle installing PHP in Windows. Unfortunately the site is not as friendly as it seems that they are planning, but at least it's clear that they acknowledge the fact that there's a need for help installing PHP in windows. Besides the downloads it seems that there's little more in that site at the moment, but that download page is a little daunting:

Reading the sidebar you can see that you need to get the VC9 versions to install it in IIS, and the VC6 are meant to be used with the Apache server. But:
Thread safe or Not Thread safe?
Zip, Installer or Debug Pack?

Wouldn't it be better to move that Debug pack to somewhere else?

I'll skip some steps, and I would like you to introduce you this page that explains how to configure FastCGI and PHP in IIS.

You could have done the two first steps like I did, I downloaded the installer for PHP-non threaded-vc9 and when I tried to run it and configure for "IIS FastCGI" it warned to first download and install the FastCGI extension.

But you won't get the explanation about how to configure the FastCGI extension, so keep reading that page. I tried to do the automatic configuration using the script, but I got an error, so I don't know what's wrong. I tried to verify then all the steps according to he manual configuration and it seemed to be OK. But I got again a "404 page not found" trying to load any php page.

The next step was removing all of it and try with this automated installer for PHP in IIS . Yes, now Microsoft is hosting a whole site devoted to support for PHP in IIS, so this looks like a first stop when you try to get it working or troubleshoot something related to IIS and PHP. Wow.

After installing that "Web plataform installer" it took care of the rest by itself, each product was downloaded and installed, and I guess that it might have done that "configure FastCGI" in the bundle.

But again it didn't work!!!

The difference for me was that this time I knew that I was using the correct files, it's a tested installer, so I can't blame it on me due to having picked the wrong file in the PHP downloads (in this case I've noticed that they are using PHP 5.2.10 instead of the latest one PHP 5.3 that I picked).

So I tried to look more carefuly at it and then I noticed that under the "Default web site" properties it doesn't have assigned the .php script mapping. It was done correctly at the "Web sites" (parent folder), but not on the site itself. For some reason that setting didn't propagate to the child nodes, so I "edited" it and pressed OK, and it asked whether to update the value in the child sites. I said YES, and Now PHP Works!!!

As a summary:

The problem that I had was that the setting was correct for the "Web sites" node, but the real website node didn't get that setting applied, I guess that I might have messed previously (as I said this is a test machine) and those automatic scripts didn't try to update it.

 

 

SWFObject plugin Update

Almost two months ago the fine folks at SWFObject did release the 2.2 version, so finally I've modified the FCKeditor plugin to make it use that version by default.

What does it means to you?

-If you don't use my plugin, not too much. Maybe you can take a look at it anyway if you are a FCKeditor user and don't like embeds.

-If you use the plugin, but are using a version of SWFObject hosted in your server, then you don't need to upgrade my plugin. Anyway, you might want to upgrade your copy of SWFObject, and if you place it with a different filename, then the upgrade of my plugin might be useful or you might end up including in the pages a link to the old library and another to the new one. Sorry, I didn't thought about it.

-If you are using the plugin and are relying on the externally hosted library, then it would be good to upgrade the plugin. The caveat is that you need to open and save again any page with a reference to the plugin to get it updated (unless your CMS has some option to do a search&replace in all the content). The good part is that even if you don't touch the existing content, the new files will use the new version.

Enjoy it

Imgmap plugin update

Adam has been working on the imgmap code, and recently has released a new version to improve compatibility as well as fix some issues.

So finally I've upgraded the demo and the download link. If I ever forget again, just remember that the imgmap project is hosted at Google code.

I'll try to review these days all the mails that I have in the queue.

Edit

Now the CKEditor version of this imagemap plugin is available.

Even Microsoft knows it

Just today I was a little surprised to read the System requirements for SharePoint Server 2010.

Two quotes:

To ensure the best possible experience across multiple browsers we’re focusing our SharePoint 2010 engineering efforts on targeting standards based browsers (XHTML 1.0 compliant) including Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3.x. running on Windows Operating Systems.  In addition we’re planning on an increased level of compatibility with Firefox 3.x and Safari 3.x on non-Windows Operating Systems.  Due to this focus Internet Explorer 6 will not be a supported browser for SharePoint Server 2010.

And

Q: What about Internet Explorer 6 and SharePoint 2010 publishing sites?
A: The Web Content Management features built into SharePoint 2010 will provide a deep level of control over the markup and styling of the reader experience.  These features will enable customers to design pages that are compatible with additional browsers for viewing content, including Internet Explorer 6.  A standards based browser such as Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 8 or Firefox 3.x will be required to author content.

Yes, you are reading correctly.

Even Microsoft aknowledges that IE6 is a PITA, so you'll need something newer in order to author content there.

Little by little the web is moving forward, as more of these announcements popup everywhere people will finally realize that IE6 is a dead end, and that they must upgrade their browser if they want to use the new tools.

The reasoning should be easy:
Do you want to use the new tools? -> Use a new browser.
Do you want to keep using your old browser? -> You'll have to keep using tools and pages developed some years ago. Good luck with that!

Don't be afraid, IE8 doesn't require to install any WGA validation on your computer, it won't eat your children. Yes, it has bugs, but as the web moves to the future, the new webs are tested with the new browsers, and little by little IE6 fails into oblivion, so you'll see that more and more pages break in your old browser.

Stand up and say No to IE6! ;-)

Google Maps v3

Just last week Google announced the third version of the Google Maps API.

It's a full rewrite, so for the moment it can't be used to replace the current maps in most of the sites (features like polylines and polygons are missing at the moment), but it can be tested and I might start porting the current plugin for FCKeditor to use the new API.

Why should I care about it if it isn't ready?

One of the first claims that you see is the compatibility with mobile browsers, that's nice. Improved speed is also welcome. Modularization means that less code is loaded and everything will work better, but....

NO KEYS REQUIRED!!!

(Sorry for the caps)

So when the new version of the plugin is released, you'll be able to use it in any site without worrying about getting and storing those stupid keys. If you have a site that it's served under different names it will work without any extra magic. OK, one problem might remain: the static maps do still require the key, but if it isn't available the rest of the functionality should work.

Things might go like this:
A version 2.3 for use in FCKeditor 2.x with the Maps Api 3
A version 3.0 for use in CKeditor 3.x with the Maps Api 3. This one will be easy to remember :-)

Of course, that 3.0 version might take a while, the v3 maps must get back enough of the functionality from the current version so it can be used without problems, and CKEditor v3 must be released and then I have to rewrite all the code so it can work with the new CKEditor API.

As you can imagine, rewriting all the code is not a pleasant task, and due to the work with new versions some unexpected bugs might arise that needs to be fixed at the other side.

Write Area 0.8.0 released

If you have installed WriteArea then soon you'll get the updated version.

It finally adds tooltips for the toolbar buttons, and two new buttons besides the "save" button.

The first one allows to save the current content to a file in your computer, great if you want to keep drafts of any kind of templates around. The second button is obviously the one to load those files, the icons might not fit exactly with the rest but I'm not a designer and I always rather focus on the most important things.

Now that CKEditor 3 is getting closer everyday I don't know if next update will be based still on the 2.6 line of FCKeditor, or if it will start using that fresh new code. Some of the advantages of the new code doesn't apply the same way inside chrome than it does in a website, but on the other side it might open new opportunities, they might need some time to check and test the ideas so such future update might get delayed quite a while.

There are other ideas for the current code, but they also take time, I wish that there would be a way to code everything that goes through my mind.