Is there any chance that Moodle editor boxes would work with Apple Safari browsers?
Mac users love Safari and usually don't like to move to FireFox only for having the possibility of a better edition of text boxes in Moodle.
Safari is a standard derived from Netscape and fulfill all the w3c standards and runs perfectly with others boxed text editors, notably with Google Docs.
Why not with Moodle?
Safari is the selected browser in iPhones.
Supporting Safari does require some additional work. I believe safari and its rendering engine is under continuing development (see the recent Windows release) and a combination of further development on the browser and work on applications should allow it to run the few items it does not currently support. I believe the Moodle WYSIWYG editor is derived from outside the Moodle project and thus is dependent on that work rather than core Moodle development (IANAMD).
Safari is not derived from Netscape. Browsers with an ancestory derived from Netscape (Mozilla,FireFox,Seamonkey,Camino) use a rendering engine called Gecko. Safari uses a render based on KHTML, see
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KHTML)
Here is a quote from the Google Docs support page
Google Docs is not supported, and probably won't run on:
- IE 5 (Mac) or IE 4 (Windows)
- Safari
- IE 6.0.26
- Netscape 4
- Opera
(taken from)
http://www.google.com/support/writely/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=37560
As far as I know, the basic problem is related with JavaScript, but anyway, the problem is related with the selection developers of Moodle did with the WYSIWYG editor.
There are basically three rendering engines, and the correct functioning of the WYSIWYG editing depends also on the engined used.
"Gecko is generally considered to be the second most-popular layout engine on the Web, after Trident (used by Internet Explorer for Windows since version 4), and followed by WebCore (used by Safari) and Presto (used by Opera)."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gecko_(layout_engine)
There are basically three rendering engines, and the correct functioning of the WYSIWYG editing depends also on the engined used.
"Gecko is generally considered to be the second most-popular layout engine on the Web, after Trident (used by Internet Explorer for Windows since version 4), and followed by WebCore (used by Safari) and Presto (used by Opera)."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gecko_(layout_engine)
"I believe the Moodle WYSIWYG editor is derived from outside the Moodle project and thus is dependent on that work rather than core Moodle development (IANAMD)."
"I am not a martindougiamas"?
"I am not a martindougiamas"?
From discussions I've been heard, this is one of the reasons that they are looking at a different WYSIWYG editor.
Quite a few people in the Moodle dev community use macs (include Mr. Dougiamas himself), and so this isn't a problem that has gone unnoticed. If you search around, there have been a number of topics about the state of the WYSIWYG editor. My personal guess given the current state of development is that a new one will appear in Moodle 2, but that is really just a guess.
-eric
Quite a few people in the Moodle dev community use macs (include Mr. Dougiamas himself), and so this isn't a problem that has gone unnoticed. If you search around, there have been a number of topics about the state of the WYSIWYG editor. My personal guess given the current state of development is that a new one will appear in Moodle 2, but that is really just a guess.
-eric
"include Mr. Dougiamas himself" Is this true Mr D?
Woops, maybe that was a secret I wasn't supposed to spill...
No problems at all! I've owned at least one Mac continuously since my Mac Plus (with a massive 1Mb of RAM) in 1986! At University though, I spent most of my time on Irix and SunOS workstations. When Mac OS X brought my two worlds together I was ecstatic. My current Macbook is indispensable.
However, I don't use the Moodle HTML editor!
However, I don't use the Moodle HTML editor!
Come to the Moodle Moot in the UK in October and fine out!
From what I remember, Martin D uses a Mac. Martin L certainly does. I am typing this on a Mac (in a plain text box) that I also use for Moodle development, but at work I am provided with a PC. I can't remember what other Mac users there are, but when I have been to Moodle conferences I have always seen plenty of Macs.
From what I remember, Martin D uses a Mac. Martin L certainly does. I am typing this on a Mac (in a plain text box) that I also use for Moodle development, but at work I am provided with a PC. I can't remember what other Mac users there are, but when I have been to Moodle conferences I have always seen plenty of Macs.
I know Martin D at least had one (17" MBP) at the Canadian Moot, cause he borrowed my MagSafe brick for a presentation, which also obviously means that I use one for all of my work Moodle work.
Since apache is already installed, it's very easy to get a dev environment setup on a mac.
I can't wait for the UK Moot, my boss approved my journey there.
Personally, I don't mind the plain box, but I'm also the sort of person who would likes to just use terminals to do stuff, and still hand codes HTML, so you know, I'm kinda weird.
Since apache is already installed, it's very easy to get a dev environment setup on a mac.
I can't wait for the UK Moot, my boss approved my journey there.
Personally, I don't mind the plain box, but I'm also the sort of person who would likes to just use terminals to do stuff, and still hand codes HTML, so you know, I'm kinda weird.
There are also many teachers here at my University that use Macs! They don't need any other thing and love their Macs.
I've been off OSX for a while now, but I definitely run Safari on my Ubuntu Linux (I've hand compiled Webkit, and love it).
I normally use 2-3 webbrowsers of different make to test moodle. Opera, Firefox (and other gecko-based browsers) and Safari and all in constant use on my dev machine. Don't think anyone can claim Moodle isn't tested with a variety of browsers.
I even use dillo sometimes
I know that Nicolas Martignoni (French translation) use a mac too 
Correct 
And at the french MoodleMoot 2005, Martin D. made his keynote on a Mac.
Absolutely, new editor in Moodle 2 for sure.
YESSS!
...and TinyMCE 3.0b1 (beta) released 2007-11-21 is very near stable version already and looks better and faster than ever in IE, FF or Safari. Opera has still some small-scale problems with compressor and some plugins but...
This is indeed happy news.
Thank you very much for your hard work.
Sorry to be nudgy, but when will this show up in Moodle? I see Martin D's comment "Absolutely, new editor in Moodle 2 for sure," so perhaps my question should be when will Moodle 2 be out?
Thank you very much for your hard work.
Sorry to be nudgy, but when will this show up in Moodle? I see Martin D's comment "Absolutely, new editor in Moodle 2 for sure," so perhaps my question should be when will Moodle 2 be out?
LP,
This doesn't exactly answer that question, but it's a hint:
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=84757#p374731
RLE
This doesn't exactly answer that question, but it's a hint:
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=84757#p374731
RLE
Ah - a valentine.
Thanks very much for the hint.
Thanks very much for the hint.
Some more news:
FCKeditor 2.5 released November 30, 2007 introduces now official Safari and Opera compatibility (no more experimental). I tested it right away and Safari support is great and Opera support is also true as soon as they have fixed a similar "bug" as we have in moodlelib.php. Opera had an alpha release 9.50 but they finally released version 9.24. If somebody is using the latest version of FCKEditor I posted an easy fix to get it working with the latest version of Opera too here: http://dev.fckeditor.net/ticket/1618
There may still be some minor bugs in both TinyMCE and FCKEditor but they both seem to be cross browser compatible now.
...sorry to say I was wrong about FCKEditor. "Stable Opera 9.24" is not stable after all and their alpha version of 9.50 should become the "stable Opera version" with FCKEditor in future. My mistake. Time to change to Opera 9.50 alpha...
As others have noted, Safari is based on WebKit, not on the Firefox Gecko engine.
This is a long-standing deficiency in WebKit that the WebKit guys at Apple are going to have to fix. They know about it, of course, and it's #3 on their compatibility hit list.
It affects lots of things, not just Moodle.
This is a long-standing deficiency in WebKit that the WebKit guys at Apple are going to have to fix. They know about it, of course, and it's #3 on their compatibility hit list.
It affects lots of things, not just Moodle.
Actually, both the bugs you point to are for TinyMCE, which Moodle does not use (and the hit list you reference is over a year old). Moodle currently uses an outdated and unmaintained client called HTMLarea (by default).
The latest builds of TinyMCE and Safari actually do work together. There are some problems, but TinyMCE is usable.You can enable TinyMCE in the admin pages of Moodle (edit:option appears to be gone now), but I'm not sure what version is included at the moment.
There is a full discussion here, but basically problem is that TinyMCE is huge and slow to load, which it is not yet the default.
The latest builds of TinyMCE and Safari actually do work together. There are some problems, but TinyMCE is usable.You can enable TinyMCE in the admin pages of Moodle (edit:option appears to be gone now), but I'm not sure what version is included at the moment.
There is a full discussion here, but basically problem is that TinyMCE is huge and slow to load, which it is not yet the default.
Two comments:
loading times of editors depend on configuration and I haven't noticed a huge difference between editors if the basic configuration is similar (css, buttons, plugins). TinyMCE 2.1.2 (Released 2007-08-21) does work well with Safari - but the old way to integrate TinyMCE (old version) does not work because it is not allowed to use Safari in moodle (moodlelib.php checks if browser is Safari and selects textarea instead of editor)
But Michael - TinyMCE has 9 open reported bugs http://bugs.webkit.org/buglist.cgi?query_format=specific&order=relevance+desc&bug_status=__open__&product=WebKit&content=tinymce
If you compare this to htmlarea that does not work at all in Safari and has a huge amount of bugs and no official support or developers what's the point of keeping htmlarea ???
Edit: and the most interesting bug ever is http://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13229
Another plea for Safari support. Safari-using teachers and students do miss the html editor and don't want to have to turn to Firefox just for Moodle.
I'm hoping I'm interpreting prior comments correctly and that full Safari support is imminent. If so, it will be much appreciated.
I'm hoping I'm interpreting prior comments correctly and that full Safari support is imminent. If so, it will be much appreciated.
The Safari developers also need to do quite a bit of work. Remember to ask Apple for support for HTMLArea on Safari.
Have just done. Thank you for the suggestion.
I don't see how it is reasonable to ask the Safari developers for HTMLArea support when HTMLArea is no longer maintained nor supported.
Is there any official word on Moodle finally switching HTML editors? IMO, HTMLArea is holding Moodle back at this point.
Is there any official word on Moodle finally switching HTML editors? IMO, HTMLArea is holding Moodle back at this point.
It really should not be difficult to get moodle "understand" that latest version of Tinymce and FCKEditor with Webkit and YUIRTE all work with Safari. My knowledge about javascript is newbie level but still I got all of them to work with moodle but not with the traditional integration. All editors - including HTMLArea - are just replacing textareas with editor fields and that replacement may be done with different methods. The basic idea in moodle is that function print_textarea creates textarea and use_html_editor replaces textarea (class="form-textarea") with editor if variable $usehtmleditor has value 1. If class of textarea is alltext it should be plain text so only textareas with class "form-textarea" must be replaced if use_html_editor=1. Sounds simple doesn't it - and this can be done with all editors with a little bit different code.
There are however some special cases like sending messages and in moodlelib.php the browser checking code that need some small fix. Here is a tiny screenshot from one of my test moodles running tinymce (latest version) with moodle 1.9 (latest version) - in Safari all selection boxes etc look really nice...
Mauno,
Have you managed yet to integrate Moodle's file manager into tiny?
Have you managed yet to integrate Moodle's file manager into tiny?
Yes I have but I never "published" it. Moxiecode changed plugin API for TinyMCE 3 and my filemanager plugin (combination of plugin advimage and coursefiles.php of moodle) was written to tinymce 2.1.12. so it would need small changes to latest (beta) version of tinymce.
I might prefer a file manager like http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/paypal/item_filemanager.php
with an image manager like
http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/paypal/item_imagemanager.php
and therefore made a lot of tests two months ago with Tinymce and also FCKeditors filemanager & Ajax file/image manager but decided to wait for the "official integration" of Tinymce and moodle or FCKEditor and moodle.
Thanks for this update, Mauno.
Lack of Safari support continues to frustrate teachers and students both at my school as I introdce them to Moodle. Firefox's Windows-like look and feel and less than stellar text rendering are just uncomfortable for many Mac users. The need to switch to Firefox just for Moodle use remains a strike against Moodle.
I'm mot clear from your message when the "offical integration" of Tinymice and Moodle or FCKEditor and Moodle is meant to occur. Is that scheduled for 2.0 or before?
Thanks very much,
Lisa
Lack of Safari support continues to frustrate teachers and students both at my school as I introdce them to Moodle. Firefox's Windows-like look and feel and less than stellar text rendering are just uncomfortable for many Mac users. The need to switch to Firefox just for Moodle use remains a strike against Moodle.
I'm mot clear from your message when the "offical integration" of Tinymice and Moodle or FCKEditor and Moodle is meant to occur. Is that scheduled for 2.0 or before?
Thanks very much,
Lisa
wow, I hadn't seen that file manager before..that is fantastic and far more intuitive.
i am thinking I might be in a position to fund an editor update. Should this go through martin as it is core code, or can a Moodle partner facilitate?
i am thinking I might be in a position to fund an editor update. Should this go through martin as it is core code, or can a Moodle partner facilitate?
I don't really understand the tech stuff -- tho I do understand that Apple does things differently -- but I echo the original post: I wish Safari could do the html editor thing. I just had to switch to FireFox because I wanted to hyperlink some text.
my 2c ...
my 2c ...
Using Safari, in fact the last version of the knightly in-dev WebKit, the core of Safari, yet the problem holds. What can we do?
Fixed in Moodle 2 (moved to TinyMCE for the editor). If you want it in moodle 1.9, search around on the forums, people have posted instructions on how to change the editor to TinyMCE.