Long before we threw the doors open to our IP.Board 3.2.0 preview board, we blogged about our new text editor. We reasoned that maintaining our own in-house post editor was becoming more time intensive due to the speed at which new versions of all the popular browsers are released. We chose CKEditor in the end because it's a very popular and capable editor that allows one to extend the core code.
We had a lot of compliments on the new functionality of our editor but most were put off by its look. We agreed that the default skin is a little ugly and not really suitable for a professional application like IP.Board so we took an afternoon to skin it to fit in better.
We're pleased with the end result. In a very short space of time, we were able to match it to the current editor which will give you and your members that familiar IP.Board feel.
Not only were we able to easily match the current IP.Board editor look and feel, but we made it easily skinnable via the normal Admin CP interface so skinners won't have to settle for the default look in their skins. After all, if you have a dark or strongly colored skin, you're not going to want to settle for the mundane grey default CKEditor skin.
Here's a few screen shots of our CKEditor implementation:
It's also worth noting that the CKEditor is 'hidden' in the fast reply area so that it when you're ready to make your post, a simple click into the area expands the textarea into a fully operational editor without it grabbing focus on the initial load.
We hope you've enjoyed this blog entry and we're thrilled to be able to make improvements based on your feedback so far. Keep an eye on this blog for some further entries about other tweaks and improvements!
By Matt