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Show HN: ContentBuilder.js – JQuery Plugin to Write Anything Beautifully

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Re: Show HN: ContentBuilder.js – JQuery Plugin to Write Anything Beautifully

#21

Post by teleclimber »

bliker wrote: post #9

I am curretly working on similar project. I really like your concept. But I see some flaws. - No list auto-creation - Sometimes ugly html like - Does not produce nice htm5 like hgroups, sections and em/strong - I cannot make a paragraph in chrome, just s

I am also working on something a bit like this. Sounds like a trend is starting... I also like OP's work, it's far nicer than Sir Trevor. (http://madebymany.github.io/sir-trevor-js/)

Some things I notice as well in OP's implementation:

- when selecting text you can only select a small subset of the content (if you start your selection in a paragraph, you can only select within that paragraph). This is going to drive authors crazy.

- moving the cursor with the keyboard suffers from the same limitation. Once you reach the top of your current paragraph, the "up arrow" key does nothing. It should really move to the bottom of the next content.

- for any web-based editor that uses contentEditable: cE is full of quirks (that's putting it politely). Addressing how you tame contentEditable from the start is the key to making a good editor. I think patching the editor as the quirks surface is a poor strategy.

Re: Show HN: ContentBuilder.js – JQuery Plugin to Write Anything Beautifully

#22

Post by bshimmin »

fpopenerp wrote: post #8
bshimmin wrote: post #7

Slightly depressing that the comments are all (as I write this) about the pricing... I'm always interested in these sorts of things, having come close myself on several occasions to building something similar (CKEditor is usually what we end up using, though it's a bit warty in places and much bulkier than this). I quite like this one, though my first instinct was "How do I delete the image in this block?" rather tha…

What do you think about this one? http://odoo.com/start/cms It's not a standaline jquery lib but can easily be extracted from the code of Odoo as it's open source. We worked a ot on the usability to make it smooth to handle images, backgrounds, specific properties of building blocks (e.g. banners, parallax, ...)

Definitely looks like it has a lot of functionality!

A few quick comments because I've only looked at it for about thirty seconds:

1) Not really a huge fan of the Bootstrap UI - I know it's practical, but it always just looks a bit amateurish to me, as if it's a first prototype before there's been chance to pay for a proper designer.

2) The interface is a bit frenetic - not overly keen on the purple highlight strips appearing as I drag new blocks about.

3) The "customize" menu on each block is terrific though - very nicely done and useful.

Re: Show HN: ContentBuilder.js – JQuery Plugin to Write Anything Beautifully

#24

Post by yusw »

pluma wrote: post #5
tomw1808 wrote: post #4

Not free, not free, wooh. I think you spend a reasonable amount of work there and therefore it is just normal that its not free. Nothing great is free these days, and, to be honest, if something awesome like that is free I would be more than suspicious. Well, that said, it would've been nice if you provided a free developer version. Not every project works the same. Sometimes someone want to test if your product real…

Considering how similar licenses work, I'd guess that "resale" means bundling it in a project you hand off to a client whereas "unlimited websites" means using it in a project you keep the ownership of. Not sure how this works for SaaS projects, though.

"Unlimited websites" includes websites for clients' projects (commercial). "Resale in product" means distributing the plugin in an application/product (ex. CMS) for sale (this includes usage in SaaS project).

Re: Show HN: ContentBuilder.js – JQuery Plugin to Write Anything Beautifully

#25

Post by yusw »

koolkokil wrote: post #23

Can I add a custom dialog, on the image link popup, to show the images already in my website.

Yes, this feature (option to open custom dialog) is still in development (95% complete). Using the current 'direct image embed' also allows embedded images to be saved on specified path on the server.

Re: Show HN: ContentBuilder.js – JQuery Plugin to Write Anything Beautifully

#27

Post by bung »

fpopenerp wrote: post #6

We built the same features in open source for the Odoo website builder. You can try it here: https://www.odoo.com/page/website-builder We also put features like resizeable bootstrap column with drag & drop (col-md-X), link manager, media manager, special fields edition (e.g. prices with currencies)... Playing with building blocks look more sleek in Odoo version. Github: https://github.com/odoo/odoo Disclaimer: I am t…

I've noticed a few CMSs with varying levels of this sort of thing, would be great if you released it :)

Also, it would really be great if tools like this were listed somewhere, and/or one of them managed to get enough traction to end up being something as fundamental as "bootstrap" is.

I sometimes get sad seeing all these different tools and libraries re-created rather than having features added/improved by a larger community.

Re: Show HN: ContentBuilder.js – JQuery Plugin to Write Anything Beautifully

#29

Post by tomw1808 »

yusw wrote: post #24
pluma wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering how similar licenses work, I'd guess that "resale" means bundling it in a project you hand off to a client whereas "unlimited websites" means using it in a project you keep the ownership of. Not sure how this works for SaaS projects, though.

"Unlimited websites" includes websites for clients' projects (commercial). "Resale in product" means distributing the plugin in an application/product (ex. CMS) for sale (this includes usage in SaaS project).

Other question: How can you use a JS library without having the source? ... I mean, how do you make sure that it remains closed source? As far as I know obfuscating and minifying is very easy to overcome. Do you have any special techniques?

Re: Show HN: ContentBuilder.js – JQuery Plugin to Write Anything Beautifully

#30

Post by phirschybar »

This is really impressive. Well done.

Having build a number of CMSes I have a few, hopefully constructive, criticisms:

1) I understand why you are utilizing a lot of inline styles in your rendered HTML output. However, this will become a huge problem if the HTML becomes stored in a database and the site's front-end CSS needs to change.

2) Outputting HTML in general is tough to work with in a CMS type environment. It would amazing to have a markdown output for this!

3) I fully understand why you are saving images as inline data as it does not require any backend development. However, it would be helpful to have the option to post uploaded files to a URL for server-side processing.

Great job!

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