BBComposer : News

Indeed, the recent Firefox 3 Beta version is coming and the addons update system has changed. So, we have to do an update before Firefox 3 final version.

The new BBComposer is complety different than the precedent version. It has been completly rewrited with many factors in mind :

First, it's now Object Oriented. Every editing features has been groupe in the BBComposer object and every User Interface features has been enclosed in the BBComposer Manager object.

In addition, i tried to rewrite BBComposer to be comptatible with Javascript 1.7and DOM 3.

Why ? I simply want BBComposer to be adaptable with minimum efforts with any browser that is compliant with those standards. By that way, BBComposer integration in other browser would consist on the BBComposer Manager object rewrite without doing any change to BBComposer object.

I need help for detecting bugs on this beta version, here are those i already saw :

• On block change, focus should be maintained inside the block.
• On list to text block change, list item should be turn into line (with <br>).
• On text selection and deletion, focus should stay on his place (he currently go to the begin of the block). --> Fixed
• Copy and paset action should clean-up HTML. Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V should copy and paste. --> Partially fixed
• When removing a block, the cursor should go to the more previous or next block.
• When the last letter of a block is deleted, maybe it should be replaced by a space. What do you think about it ?
• When indenting block, and deindenting block, style attribute should be cleaned instead of setted up to 0px.
• When deleting the last letter before a br at the end of a block, the br should be automatically deleted OR the last letter should be replaced by a space.
• Problems when deleting text at the end or the begin of a list item. The text of the previous item, when at begin, should be combined with the currently selected item. Same thing at the end of a list item.

Ok, this list will be revised soon. I'll try to resolve some of those bugs before making the Beta version available. Thank for yor help !

Validation, manual and forum button were disabled. I did some changes in the multiple BBComposer management.

I implemented the indentation functions, an XHTML error was generated with imbrications lists. Feel free to report me bugs !

Download the new alpha version (no automatic update).

This alpha version allow the open of more than one BBComposer in the same window/page. It's also the first alpha version of BBComposer.

That due to the fact that every code lines has been modified, so it possibly contains a few bugs. I expect you to tell me when you find one of them.

Here is the link to download this alpha version.

BBComposer 1.0 alpha will soon be available for download. Main change is a complete code review for allowing multiple BBComposers in the same window or in the same page :).

But, according to the fact that BBComposer has now something like 2000+ code lines and that I'm alone to review it, there's a lot of chances for bugs presence.

That's why i'm looking for alpha testers, with some knowledges in extension development to help me to fix main bugs before launching beta version. The job is to test every BBComposer functionalities and to tell me what's not running exactly like the current BBComposer.

If you're interested by this experience, please contact me.

For the next Mozilla Developer Day that will take place in Paris, a new release has been launched.

The BBComposer main developer will be there to ask any questions about BBComposer and KGen.

In this version, some bugs has been fixed, like some toolbar customization problems. That links auto completion is now done with the bookmarks and the browser historic.

If you want, you can take a look at the XPCom Javascript component used to do that.

Have a nice day !

Data recovery

You can now save and load BBComposer content to a specified directory.

An automatic save and a backup button has been added to secure the content even if your computer or Firefox is closed.

New tags

New tags like blockquote, ins, div, h1, address, pre are now available.

New look

The CSS has been modified to be more user friendly. You can also specify the URL of your own CSS.

After a few days of development BBComposer 0.7 begins to come true. Some bugs probably needs to be detected.

If you wanna help us, you just have to download the beta version béta and go to the forum for reporting problems. Warning, if you prefer work with a stable product, don't use this version.

The beta version is only available in English and French.

XHTML (no-blocs)

Can be used for comments on blogs. It's the same then XHTML but with new lines instead blocks than paragraph and titles.

Drag and drop

I installed a script on some of my old free hosting accounts to allows the test of the drag and drop with local images upload. It's now possible with the default options. I recommend you to not use it for final productions.

Links auto completion

The URL field in the link popup is now auto complete by the browser historic. Links created are often already visited so i thought it could help.

You can now, with a simple search, find images to illustrate your message on forums or your blog entries with a the openclipart.org clipart collection (6000+ PNG images).

A test

But it'a only a beta version and need a lot of improvement. So don't use it on important websites because images are hosted on a very old account i kept on a free hosting provider and i cannot be sur it will stay here for the eternity.

A quest

So, i'm actually looking for away to improve this extension and to get enough monney to host this correctly.

I'm thinking on an exploitation of the BBComposer upload system for adding new images and a vote system. If you think that you can help or you can make a business of it, contact me.

To download it

The clipart gallery can be found here.

The BBComposer improve himself with :

Fields auto detection

Don't want to right click on each fields to enters in the edition mode ? Choose Edit and save. If the fields is accessible (has a id attribute), than, next time you'll come on this website, BBComposer will automatically load the WYSIWYG editor. Some fields has been saved for example (Blogger.com, Invision Power Board, XCMS, wordpress, drupal...).

Sidebars improvement

The sidebars can now open only if the are compatible with the language in use into the edition session.