Release Notes (Website: Editor for cache description on edit page) - June 18, 2019

[+Geocaching HQ 124]

Release Notes (Website: Editor for cache description on edit page) - June 18, 2019

 

With today’s release, we are adding a WYSIWYG editor for cache owners to edit the cache description on the edit page.

 

Edit page

• Existing caches default to the source code view. To see the user-friendly WYSIWYG editor, click “Source”.
• When you switch from source code view to WYSIWYG editor, you will see a warning that your code might change. The editor may modify HTML code, which is necessary for correct formatting. You can save a copy of your code just in case.
• Once you are in the WYSIWYG editor, you can edit your cache description with the user-friendly interface.
• If you prefer to edit your description using HTML code and want to make sure to keep all your HTML code and styling, simply click ‘Save’ while you are in source code view.
• When you save your cache page in the WYSIWYG editor, you will continue seeing the WYSIWYG editor going forward.
• When you save your cache page in source code view, you will continue seeing the source code view going forward.

 

Cache Submission Page (CSP)

• When you create a cache and edit the description in the CSP using the WYSIWYG editor, you will see the WYSIWYG editor on the edit page.
• When you create a cache and edit the description in the CSP using the source code view, you will see the source code view on the edit page.

 

Nicole (nykkole), Community Volunteer Support Team lead, is watching this thread to answer questions whenever possible.

 

Any posts in this thread should relate to features in this release. Comments unrelated to the release may be removed. Please direct unrelated comments to other appropriate threads. Thanks!
 

[+thebruce0 1374]

5 minutes ago, Geocaching HQ said:

Existing caches default to the source code view. To see the user-friendly WYSIWYG editor, click “Source”.

 

By 'click "Source"' you mean effectively untoggling the source view. Ah terminology.  (maybe the button could read 'Editor' when in source view, or something other than 'Source')

 

Otherwise, this is a good update, I'd say. I recently edited a listing and grew annoyed that my line breaks weren't sticking when editing the source as I wanted it. I assume the Source HTML is still sanitized for allowable HTML?

 

Actually I just tried the same thing again in source view, and the HTML is still modified when saved in source view.

For example, two lines of plain text with an empty line between them is reduced to one single line.  BR tags have new lines forced after each. This is quite annoying... Is it not possible to let the source as entered remain unless there is an html syntax problem and the sanitization has to alter the code?  Line breaks and carraige returns aren't at all something that should be sanitized, imo.  Only disallowed HTML or bad syntax (no closing tag, eg), unless you're attempting to strictly enforce a form of say XHTML syntax, on top of the limited HTML tag support.

I realize this last request isn't specific to the addition of the WYSIWYG editor, since it looks like the Source view save procedure hasn't changed in this update.

[+3Prettys 1]

This is great news!  I've always had to make sure I was ready with my page perfectly laid out the first time because I found changes so difficult in HTML!  Thank you, I look forward to trialing this on my Virtual's page!

[+ru.beus 3]

Only 8 years waiting for this.

[+sernikk 9]

So I have a question. Why is this warning, about code changing, popping up everytime I try to change the view from source to user friendly?

Seeing this warning once is more than enough. People who are editing their caches mostly have experience, so there should be an option like "Do not show this pop-up again".

That would make the switch a lot faster.

 

Apart from that, it is great news! But still, should we celebrate having such basic functionality or should we demand it?

 

Edited June 19 by sernikk

[+thebruce0 1374]

Previously I would have one page open on the listing view and the other on editing, then just save the edit and refresh the final view. I've never been completely sold on wysiwyg previews embedded in other pages that could have other formatting applied, so that's not a huge draw for me as a web app developer, and I'm sure I'll still edit the same way. But, having a wysiwyg editor is definitely helpful for people wanting to apply HTML styles who aren't quite sure how it works or who especially get completely lost when seeing html code itself So that's a better interface than the absolute basics of text formatting (like the buttons above forum comment posting, which is appropriate in this context)

[+jecepede 5]

Aloha !

Did you mess things up with this new feature ?

 

See : 

 

 

Jecepede

 

Cheeeeeeeeeeers,

[+peter-tvm 0]

Excellent. Now I can stop using an external html-editor every time I had do change something in an description.

 

But I have found 2 questions about the current way the editor works.

 

First of all the web browser spelling check only works on source mode. Which means I have to change to source to be able to see my writing errors.
Maybe this is universal thing or is an bug?

 

Second as I'm living in Sweden I use special characters like å, ä and ö And every time I change from source to WYSIWYG the html code is returned to &aring  instead of å for example. Which means that I have to click on save every time after changing to source to get the special characters back and be able to use the Swedish spelling check.

Is there any possibility  keep the html code as it is when changing between the 2 views?

[Blue Square Thing 111]

Did there used to be a way to get a list of allowed HTML tags? And has that gone as part of this?

 

I'm sure it was there the other day when I was checking if marquee text was allowable...

 

It might be quite helpful if some kind of list if allowable tags were there - unless you're opening it up to let me use whatever I need?

[+jecepede 5]

Aloha !

 

2 hours ago, Blue Square Thing said:

Did there used to be a way to get a list of allowed HTML tags? And has that gone as part of this?

 

You are correct. I was unable to fund it too. 
There is a tiny page about it in the Dutch Geocaching forums : Geldige HTML

Eventhough it is Dutch, HTML shoudl be HTML everywhere so you should get a pretty good idea.

 

Other than this, it is just guessing and see what works....

Basically, if you stick to tables, bold face, italics, italics, some asign-tags you should be fine.

 

Äs för thè wéïrd létters

 

12 hours ago, peter-tvm said:

Second as I'm living in Sweden I use special characters like å, ä and ö And every time I change from source to WYSIWYG the html code is returned to &aring  instead of å for example. Which means that I have to click on save every time after changing to source to get the special characters back and be able to use the Swedish spelling check.

Is there any possibility  keep the html code as it is when changing between the 2 views?

 

You can use these.

 

Á   á   À      à      â   Ä   ä   à  ã   Å   å   Æ   æ   Ç   ç   Р  ð   É   é   È   è   Ê   ê   Ë   ë   Í   í   Ì   ì   Î î   Ï   ï

Á   á   À      à      â   Ä   ä   à  ã   Å   å   &Aelig;   æ   Ç   ç   &Eth;   ð   É   é   È   è   Ê   ê   Ë   ë   Í   í   Ì   ì   Îî   Ï   ï

Ñ   ñ   Ó   ó   Ò   ò   Ô   ô   Ö   ö   Õ   õ   Ø   ø   ß   Þ   þ   Ú   ú   Ù   ù   Û   û   Ü   ü   Ý   ý   ÿ

Ñ   ñ   Ó   ó   Ò   ò   Ô   ô   Ö   ö   Õ   õ   Ø   ø   ß   &Thorn;   þ   Ú   ú   Ù   ù   Û   û   Ü   ü   Ý   ý   ÿ

©   ®   ™   &   <   >   €   ¢  £  "   ‘  ’  “  ”  «  »  —  –  °  ±  ¼  ½  ¾  ×  ÷  α  β  ∞  non-breaking      space

&copy;   &reg;   &trade;    &amp;   &lt;   &gt;   &euro;  &cent;  &pound;  &quot; &lsquo;  &rsquo;  &ldquo;  &rdquo;  &laquo;  &raquo;  &mdash;  &ndash;  &deg;  &plusmn;  &frac14;  &frac12;  &frac34;  &times;  &divide;  &alpha;  &beta;  &infin;  &nbsp;

 

Uhmm switching ? Dunno. I never use the WYSIWYG editor...
I think it sucks badly by adding <p>'s you don't want, messing up the special chars etc... 

 

 

- - -

 

 

By the way, suddenly the editing works again so I am  happy cacher 🙂

I bet they changed something. The only thing I do is copy paste my HTML from a TXT file into the website.....

 

 

 

Cheeeeeeeeeers,

 

Jecepede

 

[Blue Square Thing 111]

6 minutes ago, jecepede said:

Aloha !

 

 

You are correct. I was unable to fund it too. 
There is a tiny page about it in the Dutch Geocaching forums : Geldige HTML

Eventhough it is Dutch, HTML shoudl be HTML everywhere so you should get a pretty good idea.

 

Other than this, it is just guessing and see what works....

Basically, if you stick to tables, bold face, italics, italics, some asign-tags you should be fine.

 

 

The problem is that I'm much more likely to be doing stuff like this:

 

So having a list of what tags won't be stripped out is quite handy.

[Blue Square Thing 111]

12 hours ago, peter-tvm said:

Second as I'm living in Sweden I use special characters like å, ä and ö And every time I change from source to WYSIWYG the html code is returned to &aring  instead of å for example. Which means that I have to click on save every time after changing to source to get the special characters back and be able to use the Swedish spelling check.

Is there any possibility  keep the html code as it is when changing between the 2 views?

I was expecting the final webpage to have changed the text to be the &aring; versions - based on my experience of writing html and the need to do things like &gt; - but that doesn't seem to be the case (from looking at the source code for one of your event caches).

 

I can understand why it does it; I can also understand why it's a pain for you wrt the spell checker. Interesting issue that I'd not thought about (mind you, spelling errors are my speciality...)

[+CAVinoGal 271]

On 6/18/2019 at 10:46 AM, Geocaching HQ said:

 

With today’s release, we are adding a WYSIWYG editor for cache owners to edit the cache description on the edit page.

 

Yes!  While I am 'fluent" in HTML, and quite comfortable working in the editor as it was, hubby always called me in to help with his edits as he is not as fluent!  Not a big deal (we each have a dozen or so caches hidden at this point) but I know he will enjoy creating and editing his own cache pages in the WYSIWYG editor.  I find myself flip flopping back and forth; not having to "Save and Preview" to see the results of my HTML edits is nice as I can just toggle the view.

 

I do miss the allowable tags in the HTML view; inline CSS as used by Blue Square Thing is useful, and I often checked the table to see what would and would not work before tweaking the look I wanted too much only to have it stripped out.  I haven't had a chance to play with the new editor too much, but we have a couple of caches ready to hide and finalize the cache pages before submitting, and will likely get on that this weekend.  Hubby is needing to create his cache page from the beginning; mine was in progress when the switchover to the new editor happened.  We'll see how it goes.

[+vj24 0]

Now I try and hit save/preview and all I see is HTML on cache page.  

[+thebruce0 1374]

That happened because the source code was saved, itself, as HTML, rather than the source code. So the preview would have looked like the source code.

That could happen either because you were in the editor mode and wrote html source (unlikely given that content :)) or there was a bug in the widget that somehow copied the source code to the visual editor.

If that was a bug, then that's not a good bug...

 

To make it normal again, copy the text you see when it's displayed like your screenshot (with all the triangle brackets), then go back to the editor, make sure you're in Source view, paste it all, then preview/save. That should fix it.