User's Manual: The Epinions WYSIWYG Editor
Sep 03 '08 (Updated Sep 10 '08)
The Bottom Line The WYSIWYG Editor has a few bugs - here's a quick guide to its use and methods for making your trip through the new interface as painless as possible.
What is a WYSIWYG editor?
WYSIWYG stands for "what you see is what you get." If you see bold letters in the submission window, you'll see them in your submission; the same goes for italicized text. This means that it is no longer necessary to type your own html tags - no more coding <i>text</i> to get text or <b>more text</b> to get more text. What You See when you click the publish button Is What You'll Get!
The Submission Window:
Upon clicking the "Write a Review" link you'll be taken to the Step 1 page. It includes four boxes: Title, Body, Pros, and Cons. For all but the title, the text bocks includes a shaded bar across the top containing nine icons. From left to right, they are
• B for "make text bold"
• I for "make text italic"
• a two-link chain for "make text a link"
• an exploding two-link chain for "remove link from text"
• two arrows for "undo" and "redo" - undo removes the last change you made, including typing, bolding, etc.; redo puts back the last undone change. There are multiple levels of undo and redo.
• clipboard and W icon for "paste a document from a word-processor" - this opens a new window into which you can paste a formatted document copied from a word processor.
• a blue ABC with a checkmark, which turns on the spell-checker
• the letters HTML, which pops up a window containing the page source
The process of entering text is the same in all three windows and in the "Bottom Line" window on the subsequent page, which has precisely the same layout. The single difference is that only the body window has the link and unlink icons, since links are not allowed in pros, cons, and the bottom line The process of entering a title is NOT the same: you may no longer use html tags in titles, and doing so will raise an error message upon attempted submission.
Using the WYSIWYG Editor:
Users may type directly into the submission window or paste text from an ascii editor such as Notepad on Windows®. In typing your text, do not enter html tags by hand to get italics, bolding, or links. Instead, highlight the text using a mouse or the keyboard, and then click on the desired icon in the toolbar at the top of the window to change the text's formatting or turn it into a link.
You may also click the bold link (or use the keyboard shortcut CTRL+B) to start typing in boldface. Boldface stays on until you use the same technique to turn it off. The same works for the italics button (or CTRL+I). The Link and unlink icons, however, are grayed out until you've highlighted the chosen text.
Users may also paste formatted text - text that already includes bolding, italics, and links - from a word-processor window such as Microsoft Word or WordPerfect. Start with a blank submission window, then begin the process by clicking the Clipboard link (the one with the blue W), which will raise a new window. Use the "select all" and "copy" commands (or simply CTRL+A, CTRL+C in Windows) to highlight the text and copy it to the clipboard. Place the cursor in the blank window and press CTRL+V (press the keys marked "Ctrl" and "V" simultaneously), then click the INSERT button. The copied text will be pasted at the site of the cursor - so if you do not begin with a blank window, you may have a mess on your hands.
Once text has been placed in the window, you may edit it at will, using your normal cut and paste procedures as well as adding formatting. To turn a word or phrase into a link, highlight it and click the "chain" icon - a small window will pop up to allow you to paste or type the URL. If you later decide that the link is unnecessary, you may highlight the link and choose the "unlink" icon (the broken chain) to remove it.
Old Rules Are Still Enforced:
WYSIWYG editor or not, the existing site rules are enforced:
• the objectionable words filter ("in-line filthter") is still active
• links are forbidden anywhere in the review except in the body - not in title, pros, cons, or bottom line
• only links within the epinions.com domain are permitted; no linking outside the site
An Important New Rule, some New Functionality:
You may no longer use bolding and italics in review titles. Any attempt to do result in a bright red error message "The following field contains unacceptable markup code (HTML)" above the title. When this message is placed above the title box, it has nothing to do with the body of the review - html errors in the body get their own error message(s) between the words "Review Body" and the text-entry box.
The spell-checker can be toggled on and off by clicking on the ABC icon. When "on," words that are not in the spell-checker's dictionary are underlined with a wiggly red line. When off, the lines disappear (although the misspellings remain). There is no functionality for adding words to a private dictionary: it's the same old Epinions dictionary. As of mid-September 2008 there is a "suggest" function: click on an underlined word to see a pop-up list of suggested replacements.
The HTML icon allows you to view and edit the source of a review. This is the technique of last resort for removing html tag errors. See notes below...
Known Problems:
(as of 3 September, 2008)
• pasting from Microsoft Word 2007 yields undependable results
• pasting from any version of Word while using Firefox v. 3 appears to give unsatisfactory results
• italicized and/or bolded text that extends across a hard carriage return (one the author created using the "Enter" or "Return" key) will cause a set of HTML errors concerning unclosed tags ("You have an opening <i> without a closing </i>. You have a closing </i> without an opening <i>," etc.). See below for a fix.
• pasting from a word-processor may result in the addition of multiple lines between paragraphs. The only known fix for this bug is to remove line break tags ( <br />) manually using the HTML window.
• attempting to paste from a Word Processor directly into the submission window can be disastrous (make certain to click the "clipboard" icon and use the new window)
Other problems appear to be a result of user unfamiliarity with the interface.
Fixes and Workarounds:
1) When all else fails, type your content directly or paste plain text into the submission window and perform bolding, italicization, and linking within the interface.
2) Always make certain that there are not HTML tags in the review title - this is especially critical when updating!
3) If you wish to use italics and bolding on two or more consecutive paragraphs, add the formatting to each one separately and make certain that the last character of the paragraph is not included when you highlight. It helps if you type an extra character at the end of the material, stop short of the letter when highlighting, add the desired formatting, and then remove the extra letter. NOTE: you will have to perform this workaround before pasting from a word processor as well.
4) You may be able to remove objectionable formatting by using the HTML viewer. This is most useful when attempting to remove excess carriage returns.
Mis-Nested HTML Tags:
HTML tags come in pairs - <i></i>, <b></b>, <a></a>, for instance. If tags are combined, to create an italicized link, for instance, the tags must close in the reverse of the order in which they opened (e.g., <i><b></i></b> is mis-nested; <i><b></b></i> is correctly nested). The new interface inserts the carriage-return tag <br /> at the end of each paragraph; if this tag falls between italic or bold tags (<i><br /></i> or <b><br /></b>) the tags are mis-nested. You can use the HTML editor to fix the condition or, if there are too many issues, remove the "offending" formatting and re-apply using workaround number 3 above.
Some Suggestions:
If you have not already submitted a review with the new interface, create a bogus review (one for pseudoprods, perhaps) by copying some random text and pasting it into the submission window. Practice using the formatting icons, linking and unlinking, and the undo and redo buttons. Look at the function of the spell-checker. Try pasting in some random text from a word processor to see how that function works.
If you attempt to update an old review, your most likely problems are forgetting that you have HTML tags in the title (been there, done that) and the problem of having mis-nested tags if you have bolding, italics, or even links at the end of a line that ends with a carriage return. Use the HTML editor (which, admittedly, is rather clunky) to repair the problems
Hope this Helps!
Note: this review was typed and formatted in MSWord 2003 under Windows XP and pasted into the submission window using IE 7.05. There were zero errors.
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