Currently, when creating a new wiki on PBwiki, one must choose between ‘Classic Editor’ and the ‘experimental WYSIWYG editor’. Depending on your answer, this enables (or not) our fancy new editor for that wiki. We’ve been receiving a lot of praise for the new editor (thanks guys!) as well as a few questions regarding continued support for our old interface that we would like to address.
As it stands now, there is no way to change editing style for a particular wiki. Once you create a WYSIWYG wiki, it can’t be edited in the classic “WikiStyleâ€? interface, and vice-versa.
We’re going to change that.
First and foremost, in January we will be giving all wiki administrators the ability to upgrade their wiki to WYSIWYG mode. There will be no charge for this upgrade!
Additionally, for those of you who just can’t get enough WikiStyle, you will also have the option of editing WYSIWYG wikis with our classic, WikiStyle editor. We can’t promise that all new WYSIWYG-specific features (like plugins) will be available, but you should still be able to use the same wiki markup that you have come to know and love.
As an aside, it is worth mentioning how we came around to this decision. The decision to maintain support for WikiStyle editing was greatly influenced by feedback from our users. We originally thought WYSIWYG would be the best option for everyone. But we sought feedback, mulled it over at lunch, and came to the conclusion that 1) we underestimated how much people like our classic interface and 2) Red Lobster’s cheese rolls are amazing. Listening to feedback is a big part of PBwiki, and drives a lot of the discussions here.
Stay tuned for more progress around WYSIWYG editing, and other new PBwiki features!
4 Responses for "Support for both WYSIWYG and WikiStyle editors"
Thank you, thank you, and thanks again.
I’ll be going out today to try out our new WYSIWYG wikis so I can learn more about the features.
I was thinking it would be really cool to have the ability to edit any wiki page in either format. Perhaps a checkbox at the top and bottom of the edit window would allow WYSIWYG or WikiStyle.
Best wishes and Merry Christmas
Clif
THANK YOU.
Let me second the bump for having both wikitext and wysiwyg interfaces for editing content. This would be perfect for a mix of wiki-savvy and word processor only collaborators where there is an active moderator (like me) who can always come in and fiddle with what other people did to make things cleaner, clearer, and populate links in all of the pertinent places.
I FAR prefer wikiformat (and html) to WYSIWYG (at least at this point when the latter is a bit slower to load, slower to physically select, and lacks certain features like tricky tables and scripts stuff) because I can just stream out a page on the keyboard and save it. Most of my fellow collaborators will prefer the other version and aren’t not quite sure that programs exist beyond MS Office!
I will say that the real worry I had with the WYSIWYG editor is how it handles spacing and the logic of switching between styles. I should probably read and memorize the CSS associated with the template or something to really grok this, but I was never quite sure what was going on with the WYSIWYG editor. I often retyping material when I got trapped in a heading or similar. These are natural kinks expected for bringing in a new tool, so I figure you’ll iron these things out in the next month or so!
Maybe I’ve just been a wiki-geek in hiding all of these years, but I’d rather build a loose structure in wikitext, set the look of things, and then approach everything as WYSIWYG for content as a way to STOP thinking about formating.
My real dream? Probably a pain in the tail. A WYSIWYG editor that has a toggle to reveal or conceal code/script stuff. If I could do my part to make a page beautiful and then know that my users won’t flip out when they see HTML or complicated wikitext, then I would…I dunno….giggle?
Matt
Matt
That’s great news. There are too many tools that are not available on the WYSIWIG interface (e.g., buttons for “Paste without formatting”, “Anchor”, etc.) so that I constantly have to revert to HTML anyway, negating some of the benefits of using a wiki versus a classic Website. If I’m going to markup by hand and on the fly, I might as well do it in wiki style.
I have seen another Wiki website provider use a drop down choice for selecting between editors.
It can be changed in the “configure” settings when desired.
Leave a reply