EduBlog Implementation
EduBlog required the modification of a few different areas of Moodle 1.9 with OU Blog. The tinyMCE work may be useful for other XS based web apps and XS Moodle. Remote Blog API is headed for being an independent API that other apps can use for remote blogging.
tinyMCE
TinyMCE was fit into Moodle 1.9 for three reasons:
1) Moodle 2.0 will have tinyMCE as an editor option
2) tinyMCE supports themeing which the standard HTMLArea does not
3) Other XS based apps can make use of the sugary Editor
TinyMCE Integration
The integration of tinyMCE and Moodle is EXTREMELY messy, but should sort itself out with the release of Moodle 2.0. At present, it is based on a weekly build [will find out which one] that has partial support for multiple editors. No core tinyMCE code needed to be modified, but a new Sugar theme was created to model the Write interface. The integration code spans a few files including moodlelib.php to get XO Browse recognized as being able to run the editor. Many files in lib/editor/2 were modified also to trim out extra code spit out on the web pages. Two new files uploadimage.php and uploadwrite.php handle uploads from the sugar theme. Both are in need of standard Moodle security checks. This area should be revisited after Moodle 2.0 is released with multiple editor support.
Future Work with tinyMCE Integration TinyMCE Sugar Theme
The tinyMCE Sugar Theme gives tinyMCE a pretty Write-like interface. The idea was to model the editor after something the kids already know how to use. Most of the implementation is clean, with the exception of the file upload box which should be ripped out and placed in a plugin instead.
Future Work
- IE is not supported. The cause is an annoying issue of how to create an Iframe and change the src with javascript. It is clearly possible since other portions of tinyMCE do this, but it has not been implemented in the Sugar Theme.
- Moodle is not really supported. A few hidden fields need to be put in the forms for file upload in tinyMCE so that Moodle does not need to circumvent its internal security.