I did a bit of research while trying to figure out what I was going to move my blog to. I felt I was just too constrained at BlogSpot, and the ability to add tools / widgest / themes or to otherwise customise the blog was just too limiting.
Anyway (#1) I elected to go with WordPress because it seems open enough, powerful enough and simple enough (some oxymoron going on there) for what I wanted.
But the editor!!! Jeez. WordPress ships with a thing called TinyMCE which is actually pretty feature-powerful. But, a couple of postings in and the pain shines through.
Biggest gripes are;
#2 constantly having to switch between View and HTML mode to get the effect you want
#1 then when you switch the HTML mode, autosave kicks in every 0.0000000001 seconds and, when it does, the cursor is returned to the top left
Now, I know you can download and install plugins to disable / turn down the autosave but the seems like plastering over the cracks. Ya wonder whether the authors actually use their own tool.
Anyway, after a whole bunch of googling and some R&D I've now installed "Dean's FCKEditor for WordPress" and, so far, it's fab. So thumbs up; http://www.deanlee.cn/wordpress/fckeditor-for-wordpress-plugin/
Might give FCKEditor a try, I found with TinyMCE I could enter html in html mode and save = everything fine, then re-open post, have a look in 'view mode', not touch anything, resave and it'd strip the html I added the first time out!! Like getting your wrist slapped, lol. Infuriating if you're trying to wrap text round images.
Cheers, Ewan. Agree entirely, and it doesn't look like we're alone in being frustrated with TinyMCE.
Actually, I hadn't realised that CKEditor is very well known outside WordPress – "Dean's FCKEditor" has done an excellent job of tying it into WordPress (as I now know as I type my first comment response into fckeditor).
Cheers,
Scott
Dean – I found your post when I was trying to solve a problem dealing with WordPress. Your site's apostrophe in the title looks bad in Google.
Dean’s FCKEditor for WordPress = Excellent! « Scott's code …
Nobody at wordpress.org will listen and I'm amazed that nobody has tried to fix this big wordpress formatting problem – and it isn't the editor.
Think you may be confusing me with the code editor's author?
I agree with your view on the WordPress editor – it's pretty crap.
I've not seen an issue with the apostrophe in Google Analytics but, then again, the question of WordPress Editor ain't my most pressing concern
Thanks for posting
Scott