Archive for July 4th, 2005

Rich Text Editor and Mac OS

By
Andy
 – July 4, 2005Posted in: Linux, Web Development

All the problems are solved! After spending all day pouring through javascript, Googling the forums to death and non stop testing I´ve finally cracked it! Some users were having trouble entering data on our site and I finally managed to figure out that most of them were using IE5.2 on the Mac. Turns out that the features of the Rich Text Editor I was using along with similar editors is powered by the browser. I kind of knew this but didn´t know how it was done.
 
Turns out that its implemented in IE in versions 5 and above (but not on the Mac) using something called MSHTML and in the various Mozilla browsers through Midas (I think). These are pretty much compatible but if the browser doesn´t support one of them then your users have no way of using one of these editors.
 
I´ve just had to go through and change the sites so that those who haven´t got up to date browsers can stick text in using standard textareas. Just to make it a bit neater I´ve hidden them inside hidden divs until they click on a link to show them. Not too bad considering.

Im just going to scream into a pillow…

By
Andy
 – July 4, 2005Posted in: Web Development

I´ve been working where I do for a couple of years now and most of that time I´ve been building up various websites that are now finally starting to get used a lot more. Unfortunately they are now being used by real people (I miss the days when Googlebot was my only visitor). This is a good thing but I´ve never had the chance to test any of the bloody things in more than a few browsers.

 
End result: all the complicated javascript form validation and stuff doesn´t work, I have to disable it to get it working for everyone and then some pillock comes along and starts submitting the forms without filling anything in! SO annoying….