What about the other way around? I’ve run into a lot of problems with the fancy editor when I’m browsing with my mobile phone. Most elegant of all would be to default to text-editing when a mobile device is detected, but a global text-by-default would be a good start.
I haven’t had any problems on smartphones,… yet … iPhone/Android; they all work fine.
I’m sure there are other platforms (Windows,BlackBerry) but I do not know anyone who has either to test.
What problems do you run into?
I’d be very interested in your feedback on where it goes wrong/misbehaves (so I can adapt my website as well).
– Does tinyMCE misbehave?
– Or simply not work (lack of JavaScript)?
It might be difficult to determine if a visitor uses a phone or a regular computer, specially since the gap between the two is getting more narrow by the day.
Some examples are discussed here: Stackoverflow.
There is an example of browser sniffing (not my favorite) and some other techniques.
However … they all rely on JavaScript (which would be too late for doing something in PHP).
I did find some PHP code that could do the trick here: php-mobile-detect.
I have not tested it though.
If a cellphone is detected call (untested):
bbp_the_content( array( ‘context’ => ‘reply’, ‘tinymce’ => false ) );
I tested it on bbpress.org right now (which btw is definitely not mobile-friendly overall).
Seems to work better than before now, maybe it’s got to do with the chopped down editor functionality. One big problem still is that you can’t easily highlight text for special formatting, since that’ll just zoom you out. Different interaction models like that just makes the wysiwyg tools rather redundant for mobile.
OK, I’ve been testing Android a little more intense than before; boy that’s a drama on it’s own.
So the first problem I noticed (T-Mobile/HTC myTouch 4G): Android does not like tinyMCE. It will let me type, but nothing appears in the editor, instead it ends up in the email input (not sure if this is a generic problem or maybe just my theme).
Adding elements through tinyMCE plugins works but the FancyBox appears to be not working all that well.
Submitting works – but of course none of the typed text in the message, only what I added through one of the tinyMCE plugins.
Next I tried a Amazon Kindle Fire HD (can’t really recommend this tablet – great hardware, crappy software). Things work better here, including entering text.
However … submitting the comment ends up in a “Webpage not available – The webpage at http:///wp-comments.php could not be loaded because: Unkown Error”.
Is this in anyway familiar with the situation you run into?
Note: iPad (3rd gen) and iPhone (4S) work just fine.
Well, Here’s a test from my nexus s. Seems to work, but it’s slow and there’s no proper text box, so I’m quickly writing outside my screen.
Android devices appear to be very slow here as well, and selecting text is a challenge – I completely agree.
The MyTouch and the Kindle both report to be a regular Linux (Kindle) or Macintosh (I couldn’t believe it, and tested this numerous times in different ways) AppleWebKit browser – no notion of “mobile” or “Android”.
Also on the myTouch, when pressing a button on the menubar of tinyMCE behaves very odd.
These findings basically tell me that Fancy Editor is useless for mobile visitors (thanks for bringing it up!).
So either we have to revert back to “just text” for mobile users or find an alternative editor that actually does behave properly.
I agree we need to look at this a bit more… I was using copy and paste with ‘Note’ on the iPad (3rd Gen) the other day to post here as noted above for Android ‘it will let me type, but nothing appears in the editor’ was the same behaviour I had with the iPad.
Can you create a ticket on trac so we can start to get some detailed device tests on how the editor is behaving for WordPress, bbPress and bbpress.org and go from there… It may be a core issue with WordPress that bbPress then inherits.
https://bbpress.trac.wordpress.org/
I agree; this is more something bbPress inherited from WordPress I’m assuming, since WP brings us tinyMCE. The issues at hand appear common knowledge in the tinyMCE community – and it appears that most WYSIWYG editors have similar problems.
2 WYSIWYG editors stood out so far for me to consider doing some testings with:
– TinyEditor (super small and very responsive)
– Redactor (little bigger but much more functionality, yet still responsive
As for a bug/issue ticket; where do we do that? and wouldn’t this a bug/issue for WordPress?
Never mind Redactor – it’s commercial.
Great editor but it wouldn’t fit in the license model either WordPress or bbPress.
I’ve made some good progress with TinyEditor. It’s indeed very fast and implementation has not been super complicated (so far).
But again; mobile browsers are not the greatest browsers.
Typing and submitting works fine on iOS. Formatting however is lost somehow.
Kindle (Android) still claims it can’t load wp-comments-post.php.
With both selecting text, and applying formatting is a disaster. Often the selection “hint” (Select, Select All, Copy, etc) overlaps the buttonbar of the editor.
Note: At this moment (to keep things easy) I’m only testing this in WordPress comments. Once that works OK I’m going to try to use it for bbPress posts.
Defaulting to plain-text, like bbpress.org now does, seems like a perfectly good compromise to me.
