Beginning to work on an updated ScreenShots manual for a client, and my No Number plugin buttons would only work if I toggled the editor OFF.

Not Acceptable!

I found I had to set the JCE Profile “Editor Parameters” setting for Validate HTML to “No”.

All is back as I expected.

Today I was working on a Joomla 2.5.7 site with a responsive template.   Some image dimensions got saved in an article, so they wouldn’t behave responsively.    As I went looking for a setting I remembered seeing  to set “Always include dimensions”  to “NO”  I discovered that this is an option for the standard Image Manager that is not available in the Image Manager Extended.  I uninstalled the JCE pluggin  and all of my editor icons disappeared.  The “toggle editor” link displayed, but wouldn’t work.

Off to google and the JCE forums —   some people had success with other browsers — indeed, Chrome and Safari were fine with JCE.   Someone suggested clearing the browser cache — I did, but still no go in Firefox.

I uninstalled JCE,  reinstalled 2.2.9.1  and the File Manager but NOT the Image Manager Extended.  Still no go in Firefox.   Finally I  1.  Quit Firefox,  2.   Restarted Firefox,  3.  Cleared the Cache (again) and all was well.

Not sure what the bug is,  but Firefox takes some extra TLC. 

Happy to have found a sequence that solved it for this site.   Now I’m off to a Joomla 1.5.27 site  where I had given up on JCE for similar symptoms.   Maybe I can get it back again!

This topic came up at Joomla! Day New England — how to get template styles to show up in jce styles dropdown and to affect the content in the editor window.

For some time now I have been installing the JCE editor for my clients to use on their Joomla sites.   And each time I have to make a decision about how to configure the editor, because this can be done in different ways and “It Depends…”  is always the right answer.

Here are a few possible issues:

1.  If the site has a colored background or image for the body tag, then the editor will also display that background — and it’s hard to edit black text on a dark background!

2.  Some templates include css something like this:

body { text-align:center ; /* for ie */ } div#wrapper { text-align:left; /* reset text alignment */ width:748px; /* or a percentage, or whatever */ margin:0 auto; /* for the rest */ }

This was for early versions of IE and we no longer need to use text-align:center; in order to center the page in the browser window, but… if you have these styles, then everything is going to appear centered in the editor window if you use template.css styles.

3.  If I want the client to be able to choose and apply special styles to the content, I need to think about what’s enough and what’s too much.

Back in May of 2009 I posted about a solution for the background color issue — it was coming up with WYSIWYG-Pro.

That solution involved modifying the template’s html to include a class on the body tag. And then, in template.css, set

body {background-color:white;} —  this will be in play in the editor window

body.body {background-color:dark;} — this will be what displays as the background when site is viewed in a browser.

This works  if you configure JCE to use the template.css styles.

But..   This will also display all classes used in your template.css   including things like .moduletable  and .menu.  On a large site with many custom styles, this could be overwhelming, when all your client needs is the ability to use  a few styles for controlling floated images, or a style for .quote,  .quotee,  or .alert.

 

In this case, I would opt to NOT use the template.css file, and to create a special  editor_content.css file, including only the classes and styles that I need the client to have access to.

 

If I choose to create a separate editor_content.css file, there is no need to add the class to the body tag, as I can create a rule setting a white or light body background (and aligning text) that will apply in the editor window.