Question

I am very, very new to Rails development. I have read the arguments against using Rich Text editors that are WYSIWYG. For the purpose of making a CMS for my portfolio site, I can understand RedCloth and implement it.

My question is what happens when there is a lengthy post to be written, how does RedCloth make my job faster? Is there a scenario where Rich Text editors would be preferable?

Pardon me if this sounds ignorant. I want to understand what the best approach is to my situation.

Thank you,

Rishi

Answer 1

just initiated a little pro/cons list of both alternatives, feel free to contribute

WYSIWIG editors

pros:

• really easy to set up (check ckeditor and this little gem for instance)
• easy to use for anyone able to use Word… to some point
• lets you insert any html code / script you want

cons:

the Redcloth site gives sound reasons why you shouldn’t use WYSIWYG editors ; among them :

• often generates bad, redundant, semanticaly incorrect html code
• often lets your users mess up with your site’s look and feel by defining their own styles, stuffed in html style attributes
• may confuse your users, beacuse they don’t know what happens “under the hood”, in html (“why can’t i just place this picture where i want, in the middle of this page ?”)

Textile, Markdown, etc.

pros:

• easy to learn, easy to use
• usually a good incentive on users to produce semantically correct, structured documents
• easy to sanitize, unless you need the html not to be escaped
• does not mess with your sites style, unless you allow the user to use advanced features of the format
• raw content is readable and well-structured
• slightly less storage space needed for raw content

cons:

• your users have to learn it, and some don’t love it (but WYSIWYG-style UIs do exist to help them ; just look at the good job StackOverflow did with theirs)
• for advanced features you have to know the format well