Andrew's ramblings

Coldfusion and fckEditor

Tags: Coldfusion, Ajax UI

Up till recently I had ignored the new ajax UI tags, features that have recently been added to ColdFusion 8. I came across one little problem, and it left me wondering, how did this get added with very little config support.

Now before you start thinking about it, have a read and let me know if you have other problems. Similar to this, or lack of thought that could have been improved much better. Recently I had a situation in that I wanted to Editor to be able to switch its roles, by that I mean I wanted to have 2 editors that allowed for different things. For example take a typical blog application. Generally comments made by subscribers, or viewers.

Is generally left to plain text, however in some cases a point layout or even being able to color or bold words, etc. Now I know this can be done, but it is a pain in the but to actually do it. And makes me wonder that if a bit more thought had gone into the tag, then maybe I would be a little happier.

Anyway, the problem comes down to configuring each instance of the editor, thus allowing for a custom config file that could be passed in to extend, or override default settings.

So in this example scenarion, I would be able to have 2 editors, with the attribute customconfigpath="path" or something that would allow for me to get the instance by name. There is no support for creating an editor under the hood for Coldfusion, which seems to leave the wrapper tag as being a little useless to me.

Anyway, this would also apply to custom templates. Being able to use the default look and feel and then be able to point to a new toolbar config, or skin that overrides a default setting and allowing for easier and better integration.

Currently I see an instance would be currently stored in a new directory, thus having to many maintenace issues.

Anyone else feel the same, or have more similar examples?
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