If you want an enhanced editing experience and you’re using Firefox, try installing wikEd. Its a WYSIWYM editor that provides functionality such as copy-and-paste from word.
For now we’re having a using-driven installation on the MIKE2.0 site but may provide it for a general release.
1. Log in.
2. Figure out which skin you’re using: http://mike2.openmethodology.org/wiki/Special:Preferences (or any other wiki instance), 2nd tab is “skins”.
3. Edit http://mike2.openmethodology.org/wiki/User:firstname.lastname/mike2.js
Add the following text to the end of the page (it’s OK if it’s empty to begin with):
// install [[User:Cacycle/wikEd]] in-browser text editor
document.write(’<script type=”text/javascript” src=”‘
+ ‘http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Cacycle/wikEd.js‘
+ ‘&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript”></’ + ’script>’);
4. SHIFT + Reload the page, the editor should be there.
As an example go to: http://mike2.openmethodology.org/wiki/User:Sean.mcclowry/mike2.js
This approach could also be installed on other recent versions of MediaWiki that provide user-enabled scripting (such as BearingPoint’s IM Collab environment).
For more information, go to the wikEd home page.
April 21st, 2008 at 7:57 pm
Sean,
WYSIWYG or not for wikis is a big issue, at least for corporate deployments. Most enterprise wikis (like Socialtext, Confluence, Zoho etc.) offer some kind of WYSIWIG editor to their users. But whether this is a necessity or not splits the community. Wikipedia still has not deployed a WYSIWYG editor, although it is currently being discussed by their key developers. This camp is supported by people who think it’s against the concept of focusing on content and not on presentation (see short paper). The other side is representative of people who have worked in Microsoft Office for the last 15 years or at least the majority of their professional lives. Not having the same buttons like Microsoft Word on top of an edit box, makes a lot of people scared of typing anything into the box! What content? I need headers, bullets, bold text, la la la… We will need to find a common ground. And the one thing that no one is opposed to, it making wikis word better with Office products (Microsoft or Openoffice). A first step would be a decent copy/paste functionality, as offered by Zoho, would be a big step forward. And believe it or not, as offered by wikiEd. We’ll get there…
-Andi