Somewhere along the way here it seems we have lost our full justify...
Or am I loosing my mind here...
As I write this I notice that there is not one here either in the buttons provided...
No, you are not loosing your mind - there have been lots of discussion about different (necessary or needless) buttons of default editor / user preferences http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-20139
If I could choose I would use user preferences to allow people customize their favourite buttons on the 3rd row of toolbar...
Mauno "If I could choose I would use user preferences to allow people customize their favourite buttons on the 3rd row of toolbar..."
Me too.
Hi,
We have also lost the use of Anchors in the editor. Now if you build a resource page that is fairly long, you can't add anchors and build a hyperlink menu to navigate the page.
I vote that we add the anchors back in or have a utility that will allow Admin to customize the editor button selection.
Clarence
You mean you can't add anchors with a button... surely you can add simple html tags like
<a name="My anchor 1"></a>
or
<a name="My anchor 2">First anchor</a>
anywhere once you press HTML button. All added anchors are visible in link plugin so you can use Link button and select the anchor just under link url in plugin. Or you can use html
<a href="#My anchor 1">Visit Anchor 1</a>
to create those links...
This is exactly the problem I have tried to expain a couple of years and still we have in core moodle 2 default init code that only administrator can change - in moodle 1.9 with administration menu and in current moodle 2 only by editing init code (that 99.99% of moodlers can't /don't want to change). On the other hand every user has different needs - somebody wants to use all available buttons, somebody says that the most user friendly editor has as few buttons as possible, somebody wants to use 7 math plugins and so on.
The greatest "BUT" of all is that we think ourselves mostly as administrators of our sites and have a full power to change those settings. Typical teachers or students can't change a thing - not on your site or not here on moodle.org - most of us are in "student role" on these forums and use those buttons that we are given...
Petr is probably going to implement some user preferences in the near future - line 76 in lib/editor/tinymce/lib.php says:
//TODO: we need to implement user preferences that affect the editor setup too
It can be done in several ways - for example by adding some optional customizable editor configurations (no, simple, advanced, full, math, kids or what so ever) that administrator can enable and customize with editor settings and users can select for example with yui user preferences which can be used with any button, menu etc in any theme. Or it is even possible to give each teacher and each student the option to select individually each button that administrator has made available...
So where is my Style plugin (styleprops button) that Olli took away from default init code ???
Hello Mauno,
Yes, I can add the HTML tags as you suggest, but it is so convenient to be able to grab the Anchor and place it in the text. I assume the "extra" buttons were removed because people were complaining that the html editor was loading too slowly.
Clarence
Exactly - anchor button is useful when people want/need to add anchors because most people don't know how to add anchors with pure html. All the plugins and buttons are useful for somebody - even if some of them may be unknown or useless for most of students, teachers and administrators.
The original/main reason for this removal of buttons was not actually speed even if loading several (let's say 20) editors in some question types can take some more time with lots of plugins. The original reason was "Usability" - different opinions about reasonable number of buttons in toolbar so that people find those buttons they want to find, opinions about such plugins that people don't know and may have difficulties to use etc. And some people may want TinyMCE to be a clone of HTMLArea to make switching from moodle 1.9 to moodle 2 easier.
Olli made some usability testing with a group of students and made some proposals, I commented some buttons and Joseph reminded me that for example "Insert non-breaking space character" is very useful for those people who need non-breaking spaces every day... and so on
You can read some of those reasons / trials to get an optimal DEFAULT init code for most users from
http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-20139
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=122460#p546841
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=130470
The fact that core moodle has only one default editor and this default editor has only one default init code make that selection of default buttons almost impossible because moodle can be used from preschool kids to professors... and recently we found out that current core themes of moodle 2 have difficulties to fit all buttons of tinymce to visible area since right blocks start to cut editor with certain layout and screen width... (theme layout/design problem)
And finally we have some nice custom plugins that are not included to core tinymce or core moodle but some people like to use them.
Personally I have no problems to use different editor configuration with the code that Petr has implemented to moodle 2. On my test installs I have a different "tinymath" editor with math plugins and I have been testing also "tinykids" editor for young kids but creating different skins for those kids editor and selecting/creating "good plugins" for kids is even more difficult than selecting default buttons for adults. I have selectors for different editors so that when you want to use math plugins you can use math editor, if you want to use core tinymce you can select it and when you want to disable editor you can switch it off from the same selector as a part of other user preferences...
We had very long discussions with Marc Bria Ramirez on these forums (a couple of years ago) about Storytelling for kids environments http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=13&rid=630&filter=1 - role based editors, course based editors, user selection based editors, integration of different editors, several different kinds of test integrations made by different people and ... no it was not waste of time ... finally Petr Škoda was the man, Developer with big D, who wrote that simple code that makes editors fully pluggable in moodle 2. All that we need now is a fully customizable administration of settings of default CORE editor and possible with user preferences in default CORE editor so that all users of moodle can enjoy the flexibility that moodle 2 and tinymce together really can offer...
I am interested in two of the topics covered here and am wondering if either has been addressed. I recently switched from 1.9 to 2.0 and need to insert some anchors. Other than the html method, has something quicker been devised? Is there now a quick way to justify text? Is there a way to add more buttons to the tool bar to access more features, or the html editor limited to what you see on the default tool bar? Thanks for your help here. I know you've been working on and addressing many of these issues, but I'm coming into 2.0 a little late and am trying to catch up. Thanks.