KevinHarder.com

In my last post I showed how configure Community Server to use a plain textbox instead of FreeTextBox as it's default text editor. I decided to do further research on text editor replacements and look for other free text editor controls that produce better html code and are less annoying than FTB. I was actually looking for a web control that is like a mini HomeSite (the classic html editor from Allaire/MacroMedia/Adobe), which has long been my HTML editor of choice since I prefer to type my blog posts in source view. I didn't find what I was looking for but I did find several other free WYSIWYG editor controls and one in particular caught my eye.

XStandard is a WYSIWYG html editor that can be used in a browser or a client application. The cool thing about XStandard is that it doesn't use the quirky MS IE HTML4 dll to generate the source like most other free editors. XStandard was written from scratch as a standards compliant, valid XHTML-producing editor. This means it produces much cleaner code than FreeTextBox does and won't mangle your hand-typed code nearly as much when you switch to design mode and back. It has a free "lite" version and a commercial "pro" version with many spiffy features. The only drawback to using XStandard is that it is not a pure JavaScript solution. It requires an ActiveX object (for IE) or plugin (for FireFox) to be installed before you can use it. You can download the free lite version from xstandard.com. It also is supposed to have a feature where it will automatically try to install if the ActiveX/plugin doesn't already exist on your browser, although I have not tested that part yet. This means that while it may be a great solution for someone just running CS Blogs and Gallery like me, it may not be practical if you are running CS Forums with a large user base, as that would require each user to install the control in order to post a forum message.

Community Server uses a provider model that allows users to easily change which text editor they want to use, as long as there is an appropriate wrapper for it that implements the ITextEditor interface. So I wrote a Community Server wrapper for the XStandard text editor control. It is very simple to change a CS installation to use the XStandard control rather than FreeTextBox. You just need to copy the wrapper .dll file to your bin directory and change one line in the communityserver.config file. You can download a zip file containing detailed instructions, the .dll, and the source code on my Community Server Development Page.

This is version 1.0 of the wrapper, and so far I have only tested it on my web site. If you run into any problems or have questions please contact me. In the future, I would like to modify the CS source to allow each application (blog, gallery, etc.) to be able to specify what text editor they wish to use rather than it being a global setting.