CP has major advantages over WP, yes, like decreased size and increased speed, but the main reason I switched from WordPress to ClassicPress is the block editor.
The editor is very personal to the blogger. We use it to pour out our heart and soul into words. Everything about it must be familiar, so that that creative process flows as freely as possible. You mess with that… and you’ll have millions of angry people.
Now, using ClassicPress instead of WordPress means a return to the previous editing experience… but updating the editor to version 5 means a very strong guarantee for the future. We will be confident that we are building (our ideas, our dreams, our hopes) on a more solid ground of newer technology, and we will be assured that something like the block editor will never happen again to cause us grief. As Code_Potent said, it is a very tangible evidence that ClassicPress is indeed determined to preserve WYSIWYG post creation for its users.
And also, we can all stop thinking that we rebelled and went back… and start dreaming that we are now indeed charting our own course…
Thanks for splitting the topic, but I think the title is wrong, since @james actually meant the ClassicPress project in general (not just the TinyMCE deal).
And there is so much more than the editor that can make CP amazing
No, I spoke with James prior to his post (and that’s what prompted it) … the title is correct.
So, I think it might help us move forward more effectively if everyone on this thread could share a bit about why this particular project appeals to you so much.
Emphasis added.
The intent (of this question) is to determine why this (TinyMCE) project got people excited. Most ideas haven’t garnered this much activity/effort in such a short time. So, if we can figure out what it was that got people moving, then perhaps that same method/idea can be used to get people interested in other projects in ClassicPress.
There are clearly a large number of users who want to type pages and posts in something resembling the standard, familiar word editor. It has developed over decades so that everyone now just “understands” it and can immediately use it and get to work. Hence the backlash against Gutenberg.
But, people also expect a few more features than are available in TinyMCE4. To me, that is just too basic. It’s like using Wordpad… you expect some common feature and then get annoyed when it isn’t there. Moving to version 5 will give people the extra features they have come to expect, and will also show them we are serious about looking after those who want to write this way.
Not sure is this refers to me, but I came out of retirement when we started addressing the WP4.9/WP5+ updating issue. Happy to be back!
I will try to help if needed and I will have the time. The most interesting feature for me is collaborative editting, something in which ckeditor seems to be ahead, but switching to it is probably just too much work. Even without that feature, just making sure tiny get updated to support modern browsers with whatever quirks they have should be a good enough reason. Rethinking what elements should be in the UI is a bonus.
This would be a major change to the platform that is both (a) not backported from WP and (b) clearly visible to any user. This makes it symbolically important as a means of showing that the project is both looking forwards and capable of standing on its own.
TinyMCE 4 looks tired and out of date. Version 5, on the other hand, looks fit to compete with Froala, which has been (in my view) the gold standard for WYSIWYG editors on the web for a while.
As @anon71687268 pointed out, the documentation for v5 is several orders of magnitude better. While I typically disable Tiny v4 in the admin (partly because of the way it looks but also because its ability to output truly semantic HTML is limited), I frequently make use of it on the front-end. This is not hard to do using wp_editor(), but trying to customize it is a bit of a nightmare and requires a ton of trial and error, because there is no documentation. V5, on the other hand, has a ton of documentation.
Tiny v5 offers a lot of plugins that can be used to upgrade the editor if someone wants to do that. Yes, these are paid plugins, but those who are likely to need them are also likely to be organizations that expect to pay. These raise the editor to a level v4 cannot possibly reach (and neither can any other web WYSIWYG editor that I know of).
What I don’t know (but am looking forward to finding out when I try out what @anon71687268 has managed to achieve) is how easy it is to make v5 is capable of producing the highly semantic HTML that I often need.
It looks like Editor V5 is much more concerned about modern HTML standard than Editor V4.
And since Code Potent is serious about breaking backward compatibility, it’s likely that you’ll get what you want in an editor. Which is also what I want
I don’t mind if backward compatibility is built in; it’s just that I don’t want to spend my own time on it because I think it’s the wrong path forward.
Anyway, let’s not drag the thread into the weeds… the topic at hand is what appeals to people about moving from v4 to v5.
Having at last had a chance to try this out, it looks extremely impressive, @anon71687268. But it seems that Tiny has it that adding a custom button, menu (or indeed, anything) requires access to the tinymce.init({ function (so as to add the relevant configuration information). How are we going to make that possible?
Thanks! Isn’t it ironic that WP went to all that trouble of adding hooks for TinyMCE (a JavaScript app) in PHP, yet now wants almost everything written in PHP to be in JavaScript?!
I should note that the existing hooks will not work with the new editor at this time as the plugin has not yet been integrated with them. That hook, though, (as well as those @Simone mentioned) is going to be the presumed path for integrating 3rd party functionality. I anticipate we’ll be able to leverage all the existing tiny-related hooks for the actual releases.
Reading over these replies, I think it’s not that you are missing something, but that people have a limited knowledge of what is involved and how to do changes.
I didn’t see anyone mention that WP is unlikely to fix it so we better do something now that the 4.x support is questionable, (the editor being our biggest distinguishing feature from WP).
I wasn’t interested in whether the editor was upgraded or not. I got involved because it’s a puzzle (and I like puzzles), and it was bugging me to see so many clueless comments and speculations thrown around. I don’t like the 5.x defaults or styles and I don’t think most of the standard Tiny plugins should be loaded, so for me it’s about making the new code run without being able to tell it’s changed. Seamlessly upgrade.
