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August 22, 2005
Wikiwyg
Posted by Ross Mayfield
This weekend we put something cool out into the world. Wikiwyg is what-you-see-is-what-you-get editor for wikis, or pretty much any other text area on the web. It's open source licensed, available for download and demo. Jeff Jarvis said wikiwyg is "the way wikis are supposed to be."
Our hope is this makes the two-way web usable. You can see the genius of Socialtext lead developer Brian Ingerson in something that is almost a bug, but might be a feature: double click anywhere to edit. Then you will notice it snaps into edit mode, as the editor was already loaded with the page -- reducing, but keeping, the distinction between display and edit mode. You can toggle between wysiwyg and wiki text (more efficient when you know it). Sexy Ajax pixie dust lets you edit without touching the server until you are ready to save. Always remember that Wiki Wiki is Very Quick in Hawaiian.
Here's some wikis running it:
* http://wiki.oreillynet.com/foocamp05/
* http://www.kwiki.org/
* http://wiki.wikiwyg.net/
* http://barcamp.org/
One of the benefits of being based on open source is not only that we can share, but innovate openly. We still have some work to do (IE support, ugh) until it's ready for Socialtext production and would appreciate feedback and participation.
Comments (10)
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1. Bill Seitz on August 22, 2005 4:07 PM writes...
Does it support only the kwiki flavor of wiki-text?
Permalink to Comment2. Markus Sandy on August 22, 2005 7:05 PM writes...
Nice looking but the demos seem to indicate real problems with browser navigation (the back button). similar to many nice flash interfaces, this needs more work in that area (see Jon Udell on the subject). It seems clear that mose people expect the "back" button to work. There are mature open-source javascript solutions that do not have this problem. htmlArea is one that comes to mind (http://www.codeproject.com/jscript/htmlarea.asp).
Permalink to Comment3. Ross Mayfield on August 23, 2005 10:47 PM writes...
It's early in it's development, designed to be adaptable to even your wiki text, Bill, and the back problem is easily fixed (it is in prototypes). Markus, the point is this solves problems that htmlArea and others have by consequence of glut, they are slow to load, making them unusable when you want to both read and write.
Permalink to Comment4. Matt Pasiewicz on August 23, 2005 11:46 PM writes...
EnotifWiki looks promising as well. It uses FCK Editor instead of mozile ... so it supports a number of browsers.
http://developer.berlios.de/projects/enotifwiki
Permalink to Commenthttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FCKeditor
5. Paul on August 24, 2005 5:21 AM writes...
Nice blog.I like this.
Permalink to Comment6. David Brake on August 24, 2005 9:03 AM writes...
Is this something that people with hosted blogs like Blogger will be able to incorporate? (Or people like myself with minimal programming skills and limited access to their WordPress directories?)
Permalink to Comment7. Ross Mayfield on August 25, 2005 8:15 PM writes...
Matt, cross browser support is in the works.
David, the latter.
Permalink to Comment8. Nick on August 31, 2005 7:11 AM writes...
Highly crafty and intriguing article. It highlights the intricate relationship between the subject and its essence. It is highly informative.
Permalink to Comment9. Branko Collin on September 1, 2005 12:11 PM writes...
This is in reply to the Wikipedia talk transcript (the comments seem to be switched off at that post--feel free to move this around).
I started out posting with an account there, but switched to posting anonymously. That must have started out as pure laziness. I generally do not like letting the computer log me in, but I also don't like having to do it myself, so posting anonymously was sort of the glorious third way.
But then I noticed that I feel more at ease with posting anonymously than with posting under my account name, because I figured --probably incorrectly, but how do you tell off intuition--that anonymous contributions would come under closer scrutiny from the Wikipedia swarm.
I like my articles being improved. Writing a good article gives me a kick, seeing my good article being made twice as good gives me twice the kick.
Permalink to Comment10. Marry on September 3, 2005 7:19 AM writes...
Very rightly written article, it arrests the attention of the reader. The subject is outlined with clear understanding and focus.
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