CKEditor 4 is reaching the end of life (source). Instead of jumping onto the CKEditor 5 bandwagon, I propose Invision consider an alternative editor. There are many well-established modern editors such as, for example, TinyMCE, Froala, Quill, and Redactor, to name a few. Any of these would make satisfactory alternatives.

 

CKEditor may be 'old school,' but it has become bloated, larger in file size and load time.  Most of the issues it encounters often have to do with responsive layouts on a mobile device and excessive load time. As mobile continues to dominate the landscape, I feel it may be prudent to focus on an editor development that has kept up successfully with the times with the least issues.

 

Changing the editor should not be expected in the next release. But a roadmap should be considered for a future transition.  Thank you for your time and consideration. 😀

Edited May 3, 20213 yr by Linux-Is-Best
clarity

CKEditor 5 was made from scratch, and from what i've seen, it works really well. I don't see the point in moving to a different editor.

What we need is Invision to finally decide to migrate to the new version, but because it was made from scratch, t's not a simple upgrade, but rather its a migration and it will give them a lot of work.

Is there anything so wrong with ckeditor? Is it because of it that people don't participate in discussions? 

What's the best editor for me? Any editor that gets the job done,

Back in the day (long ago), nearly every project and development I know about used CKEditor. In its heyday (gold age), WYSIWYG editors were still a relatively new concept (I feel old. ), and CKEditor was considered top of the line. Times have changed.

Ideally, you want your editor not to be the focus of your development. By that, I mean to say the editor should blend effortlessly in the background as something you do not notice (an afterthought). So many developments no longer use CKEditor because the editor itself often gets in the way.  I cannot count the many times when I have heard or experienced why something was not functioning right because of the editor.  Or why something could not be developed or extended because of the editor. The editor (CKEditor) is not the afterthought it should be.  Even here on Invision, the editor and its limited functionality has proven problematic by the sheer request to work around it https://invisioncommunity.com/search/?q=editor&quick=1&type=forums_topic&nodes=499

Speaking personally, I love where Invision is going. I admire their creativity in where they are taking the development. I enjoy many of the features and am looking forward to the new features they have suggested they have planned. But I dislike the editor. It is my 'pet peeve' for Invision. I know of only two developments that still use CKEditor (the other is not a forum, and they use CKEditor 5). In both of them, I dislike the editor (v4 and 5). Why? Because in both of them, nearly all the issues I encounter, all the bugs I stumble upon, and all lack of functionality and adaptability surround CKEditor.  Besides Invision, only vBulletin, whose market share is shrinking and development has become stagnant, concerning forum software, still uses CKEditor.   

I do not expect Invision to change editors overnight. As SeNioR- pointed out, it is not easy to change editors, not even to CKEditor 5.  So regardless of the discission (whether we stay with CKEditor or change editors), we are still looking at a large transition. We have two (2) years to think this through and explore our options before CKEditor 4 reaches the end of life. Plenty of time to think this over.

You'll note I did not specify any particular editor (besides a few examples I gave). My request is not to promote any specific one, only that an exploratory investigation be conducted and that Invision considers their options.

 

Edited May 6, 20213 yr by Linux-Is-Best
clarity

 

I can't pretend to know much about the different types of editors, but I actually like CKEditor. There's been no issues, that I've personally experienced with it.

IPS should base their decision on a mix of things, not what's now trendy or fashionable.

I'm not suggesting anyone feels this way, but I do know CKEditor isn't something that will disappear over night. It's also well supported, has useful add-ons. If, other editors are stable, user friendly, responsive and isn't going to fall off the face of the earth then fair enough.

But I don't feel a change is needed for the sake of it, it's got to be balanced and we'll thought out.

Requiring to change again in the near future can put people off, I don't think members care about this function - provided it's simply, easy to use and does its job.

To clarify:

• TinyMCE - since 2004 (17 years)
• Froala - The parent company (Idera, Inc.) since 2000 (21 years), the editor since 2013 (8 years)
• Quill - since 2013 (8 years)
• Redactor - since 2009 (12 years)

Nothing I have suggested is a short-term 'fly-by-night' type of company. They are it for the long run. 😉 

Edited May 9, 20213 yr by Linux-Is-Best
clarity

 

Honestly, that's not what happens in practice. The majority will simply use and grow to work with whatever the default is set to, even if the default is a functionally inferior version, as long as the minimum feature set for creators is maintained.

My source for this is Moodle - which made a transition from TinyMCE to its own home-grown editor Atto a few years ago. While inferior functionally (objectively) compared to the legacy version of TinyMCE they were using, the reality is that Atto did enough to support most things that people needed, and the community plugged the remaining holes as they saw it.

My source for the other end of the scale is one of the Moodle derivatives, which followed the TinyMCE -> Atto route and in the last couple of versions introduced their own editor to replace Atto, called Weka. All three editors remain available, but Weka provides zero table support which is a deal-breaker for some content creators. (Their justification is that they intend content to be consumed by mobile and their mobile app does not support tables.)

Basically as long as whatever editor is not so broken that it's deemed unusable by the majority, whatever the vendor does will just be accepted because people will generally move with change.

A new editor, in whatever capacity, is a hefty undertaking to consider not only users' needs (all sets of users) but also to consider security of whatever formatting is being done, as well as side functionality such as uploaded/embedded media.

I will be perfectly content with nearly any editor outside of CKEditor.  It feels worth repeating, but both v4 and v5 I find inadequate for both the front end and back end, so nearly anything would be an improvement.  As you pointed out, and as others have noted, changing to v5 or any other editor will be a significant change regardless (either way).  While CKEditor would argue that v5 was a near rewrite or complete rewrite (I forget which), it's still more or less the same editor by the same development, making many of the same mistakes (and issues). That is too bad because I did buy into all the hype three (3) years ago (2018) when they release v5.

But I digress.  I do like your alternative viewpoint. The idea of making it so the system was "plug and play." If you could swap out the editor as nearly as easily as you could an add-on, that would indeed be impressive. While I did initially say, I have no particular personal preference beyond just replacing CKEditor. If I could have my pick, I would likely jump onto Redactor Editor.

 

Hope IPS is considering adding CKEditor v5 in 4.7.0

And hopefully also a way to manage plugins with it too :,)

This is definitely very much on our minds. 🙂 

 

This is probably what we'll do.

That would be disappointing. I have used CKEditor 4 and 5. It is irreconcilable, incompatible with our needs and not mobile web friendly in terms of usability and performance. I would see it as a missed opportunity to improve and better Invision’s future. While CKEditor may have once been the mainstream web editor of choice; I understand and sympathize with the reasoning on why many developments no longer use the editor.

It is, of course, your development and your vision, but I would urge you to reconsider and give it further thought.