O'Reilly Network: Extending the Mozilla Editor | Linux Today

O’Reilly Network: Extending the Mozilla Editor

Written By
Web Webster
Web Webster
Jul 1, 2000

“As browser vendors have added proprietary tags to their
spec in order to extend their capabilities, web page designers have
been caught in the middle
of these browser wars. HTML editing
tools had to ultimately address this issue. Another cause of
concern was the corruption of existing markup when opened in
editing applications.
Users found that finely tuned markup was
mangled, sometimes beyond recognition, when opened in another
editor. The Mozilla Editor seeks to address both of these
issues.”

“The Editor module has been completely rewritten, along with the
rest of the Mozilla code base. For example, there’s better table
editing. You can select elements using Ctrl/Cmd/Shift keys and
using the mouse click-and-drag combination. Once selected, you can
easily add text formatting or background color (from a menu or
toolbar color picker) and perform other operations.”

“The Editor outputs HTML 4.0 standard markup, except in the
circumstance where the authors define their own tags. It’s still
tolerant of nonvalid markup, yet tries to “do the right thing” when
possible. … The Mozilla Editor is currently a tool for creating
noncomplex, content-heavy web documents. It’s also useful for
playing directly with markup because of the new “HTML Source” mode.
The tables support is excellent, as I touched upon earlier. But I
would not, for example, use it for a forms-heavy site.”


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Web Webster

Web Webster

Web Webster has more than 20 years of writing and editorial experience in the tech sector. He’s written and edited news, demand generation, user-focused, and thought leadership content for business software solutions, consumer tech, and Linux Today, he edits and writes for a portfolio of tech industry news and analysis websites including webopedia.com, and DatabaseJournal.com.

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