Upgrade to CKEditor 5

[Grafidea]

Updating CKEditor to version 5. Are there any plans for this?

[Luuuk]

See this topic:

Staff responses suggest that they will implement CKEditor 5 with the next major re-write.

[KT Walrus]

CKEditor 4 is EOL by the end of 2023, it seems.

Invision should be prepared to deprecate CKEditor 4 sometime in 2023.

Since CKEditor 5 is very different than CKEditor 4, I think Invision should release a beta of CKEditor 5 in an upcoming release with CKEditor 4 being the default editor. An ACP setting should be available if a site wants to switch to the beta CKEditor 5 early. This forum could switch to CKEditor 5 as soon as possible to help get any integration problems addressed early.

[Luuuk]

2 hours ago, KT Walrus said:

Since CKEditor 5 is very different than CKEditor 4, I think Invision should release a beta of CKEditor 5 in an upcoming release

According to this, I doubt that the implementation will be in the next 4.7.x release . You rather should expect IPS5 with CKEditor 5...

Edited February 12, 2023 by Luuuk

[SeNioR-]

On 2/12/2023 at 6:34 PM, KT Walrus said:

An ACP setting should be available if a site wants to switch to the beta CKEditor 5 early.

Not possible, they have to implement CKE5 right away because it's a completely new editor. Leaving CKE4 will only create problems and more work.

Edited February 13, 2023 by SeNioR-

[AlexJ]

Is their laymen terms explanation of CKE v4 vs v5 for benefits and improvements? Thanks

[Gary]

Hi @AlexJ,

• Enhanced UX
• Highly customisable and extensible
• New data model
• Modern

Taken from their website on the link below if you want to read more into it.

What is different about CKEditor 5 compared to CKEditor 4? – CKEditor Ecosystem Help Center

[PatrickRQ]

And now realize amount of work custom app/plugins developers will have upon the change.. and below is presentation of a speed at which money will fly away from your pockets 😄

Edited February 17, 2023 by PatrickRQ

[AlexJ]

On 2/17/2023 at 5:10 AM, PatrickRQ said:

And now realize amount of work custom app/plugins developers will have upon the change.. and below is presentation of a speed at which money will fly away from your pockets 😄

It’s design flaw if every developer is not using ips editor even though underlying is ck4. Their needs to better way to handle this for 3rd party addons.

[PatrickRQ]

You did not get me. Possibly upgrade to CKE5 will require update of every app that uses current editor because core design of CKE5 changed completely. So, if you use 100 custom apps using the current editor you will likely need to update all of the 100 apps what in result is equal to animated presentation I posted 😄

Edited February 20, 2023 by PatrickRQ

[Nathan Explosion]

Could you not make that assumption, please? It could lead to unnecessary 'panic' from people, as the addition of an Editor in a resource is a lot more simple than I believe you think it is.

[Adriano Faria]

On 2/17/2023 at 7:10 AM, PatrickRQ said:

And now realize amount of work custom app/plugins developers will have upon the change.. and below is presentation of a speed at which money will fly away from your pockets

IPS will have a lot of work to update their custom CKEditor plugins, not 3rd-party devs, if that’s what you meant by “app/plugins developers”. As explained by @Nathan Explosion, custom apps will have no impact on it as IPS4 uses a helper form and it’s enough to add an Editor field to the form (via script).

[Matt]

It's on our list for this year, but it's a significant undertaking given that we have many custom plugins that touch core areas such as drag and drop uploading, emojis, normal uploading and more.

[AlexJ]

29 minutes ago, Matt said:

It's on our list for this year, but it's a significant undertaking given that we have many custom plugins that touch core areas such as drag and drop uploading, emojis, normal uploading and more.

Out of curiosity.. is not possible to create framework, so that IPS updates their core framework to use CKE5 and other custom plugins use, IPS functions? This way, always IPS can make changes without breaking existing apps. If new functions/features are introduced, apps need to be updated as well. 

This way, at least existing apps will continue to work. Now this comes from a non technical mind, so take it with grain of salt 🙂 

[Randy Calvert]

What you're failing to understand is that IPS basically has a HEAVILY modified version of CKEditor that is used.  It's not possible to just "drop in" a new version of CKEditor without breaking a TON of different areas of the core IPB software.  Those functions are based on CKEditor 4.x and dropping in CKEditor 5.0 code will break existing IPB code when it starts interacting in ways it was never intended to do.  

Think of it this way...  the editor is most likely the most commonly used component in the entire suite.  You use it virtually EVERYWHERE.  Anytime you touch even a very small component of this is very dangerous and can cause unintended consequences.  Now we're talking about replacing it basically with a new from the ground up code base.  Just dropping in a new set of code is going to break 100 different things that no one would ever think about.

That's like saying can you just swap out the foundation of your house.  Is it possible?  Sure... but it's a heck of a lot of work, potentially dangerous, and something that needs to be very CAREFULLY planned/executed.  

Edited February 20, 2023 by Randy Calvert

[AlexJ]

@Randy Calvert I think you misunderstood my suggestion. I am not discounting the work required by IPS and no one is contesting that. 

Suggestion is can IPS create a framework, so that they can do heavy lifting and addons are using IPS end-points/functions VS CKE4. This way third party developers can avoid the work which IPS is doing. Now some addon developers would like to use CKE5 in their code, then it's fine, they have to do the change. 

From what I understand, currently IPS and addons dev's - both need to upgrade their apps. Suggestion is to minimize later if possible. If not possible because of abc technical limitation, then suggestion can be ignored.

Edited February 21, 2023 by AlexJ

[Nathan Explosion]

4 hours ago, AlexJ said:

Suggestion is can IPS create a framework...

They already have, and we already use it.

As far as I am concerned as a 3rd party developer I have no concerns with CKE 5 replacing CKE 4 in a later version, other than the couple of resources where I actually do something different with the Editor in the front-end. I am pretty sure that the majority of resources that have an Editor implemented will be fine - it's those that do something extra with it that will need to do some work.

Some examples of something different/extra:

1. (NE) Add 'Preview' button to Editor instances 1.0.0 - I trigger the ipspreview CKE plugin in a different way; I will likely have to change how I interact with that plugin.
2. (NE) Editor content limits 2.1.2 - I analyse the content of the Editor while it is being added; I will likely have to change how I gather that information from the Editor.
3. Legend Editor Buttons 1.0.1 - the developer on that may have to make some changes to the plugins contained within the resource.