The Business Component Framework for PHP

A very quick and dirty faq about AreaEdit. This faq will be improved, eventually. If you have questions or are running into problems with AreaEdit please join us in the forums.

General

Where can I get support?

The primary method of getting support for AreaEdit is through the discussion forums at http://www.formvista.com/forum.html.

AreaEdit is not a profit center for us and as a result it tends to be last on the priority list. The more you can help us track down a problem the more likely your issue will get resolved.

When posting a support question please include:

the version of AreaEdit
whether you are using one of the examples or your own page
what plugins you are using
what browser you are using
what version of PHP on the server side
any javascript errors
any errors from the web server logs

In addition, if you can make a page available somewhere we can get at it it will help. If we can reproduce a problem here, generally speaking we can fix it.

In general, we are willing to fix things that can be demonstrated in the standard distribution of AreaEdit when running in the supplied examples. If you've made modifications to the code base or are using it in your own pages and cannot replicate the problem in the provided examples we're going to have a difficult time helping you.

As a last resort, if you are really stuck and want to use AreaEdit instead of another editor control, we are available at an hourly rate for support. To discuss paid support please contact us at http://www.formvista.com/contact.html.

What is AreaEdit?

AreaEdit(tm) is an open source fork of the popular Xinha editor (http://www.xinha.org) which is a fork of the original HTMLArea code base.

We needed an appropriately licensed wysiwyg control for our formVista (http://www.formvista.com) business component framework and our MOBIE (http://www.mobie.biz) content management/business information exchange platform.

We tried to use Xinha but found that the rapid development and "many hands in the pot" model of Xinha development made it difficult to work with.

Reluctantly, we decided to rework the codebase to make it more readable and added a debugging trace system to make it easier to debug and support. In addition we centralized all the client to server communications through a single entry point (to make it drop-in compatible with the formVista(tm) callback mechanism).

Thus AreaEdit(tm) was born.

Will you support ASP, Python, Perl backends?

The AreaEdit(tm) fork was created specifically to support the PHP server side language. We use AreaEdit(tm) primarily for our formVista(tm) component framework and MOBIE(tm) information exchange platform which are both currently developed in PHP.

See the What is AreaEdit question for more information.

Having said that, there is nothing preventing someone from creating a separate backend request router in another language. See the areaedit/backends/backend.php file.

Implementing and supporting separate backends for different server side languages (ASP, Python, Java, Perl, etc) is a large amount of work

At DTLink Software, we currently have no need for these other languages so are not likely to do such development unless we have a paying client that needs it.

Will you support browser X?

The current version of AreaEdit only supports MSIE and Gecko (Firefox, Mozilla, etc).

At the present moment we have no plans to support Safari, Opera or other browsers unless they are significantly similar to Gecko.

Configuration

Can I just run the client side?

PHP is not strictly needed to run AreaEdit. The PHP backend is only used for a few plugins such as the Linker, ImageManager and SpellChecker plugins. These are loaded based on instructions on the calling page.

If you don't include these plugins, then you do not need to run Configure and you do not need the PHP backend.

I don't have access to my web server.

If you cannot log into your web server to run the Configure.php script from the command line, you can create the configuration file by hand.

Copy areaedit/backends/backend_conf.php.in to areaedit/backends/backend_conf.php after editing it according to the instructions below.

There are two settings that you will need to change. The first is:

define( "AREAEDIT_INSTALL_ROOT", "[@@AREAEDIT_INSTALL_ROOT@@]" );

Change [@@AREAEDIT_INSTALL_ROOT@@] to the full path in the servers filesystem to where your AreaEdit files are installed. For instance, on our server this is set to:

/usr/local/WWW/formvista.com/html/uploaded_html/demos/areaedit

The second setting is:

define( "AREAEDIT_INSTALL_URL", "[@@AREAEDIT_INSTALL_URL@@]" );

replace [@@AREAEDIT_INSTALL_URL@@] with the URL of the areaedit install directory. For instance on our server this is set to:

/uploaded_html/demos/areaedit

Once these edits are made you can upload the newly created backend_conf.php file into your areaedit/backends directory. Make sure the permissions are set so that the web server can read the file.

Errors

I'm getting Operation Aborted under MSIE

Short Answer: Upgrade to at least AreaEdit 0.4.5 and see the RELEASE_NOTES.txt.

Long Answer:

There is a known bug in MSIE having to do with the <body onload=".."> handler. Under some as-yet-to-be-determined circumstances, the onload= handler is being fired BEFORE the DOM heirarchy has been completely built.

To work around this bug, AreaEdit now implements a timer in the calling page "areaedit_init()" function that checks whether or not the page has been completely built as in:

if ( HTMLArea.is_ie && document.readyState != "complete" )
   {
   setTimeout( function() { areaedit_init()}, 50 );
   return false;
   }

In addition, the HTMLArea.init() call that used to be present at the bottom of htmlarea.js has been moved into the areaedit_init() function on the calling page. After the timeout code above add:

HTMLArea.init();

See the source of the Simple Example for more details which is available at:

http://www.formvista.com/uploaded_html/demos/areaedit/examples/simple_example.php

Exceptions under MSIE under Win2K

If AreaEdit is throwing exceptions under MSIE make sure that you are not running version 5.1 of the Microsoft Scripting Engine.

To figure out what version of the scripting engine you are running open a command window and enter the command "cscript". It should be version 5.6. If it list 5.1 you need to upgrade in order for AreaEdit to work.

The update can be downloaded from here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c717d943-7e4b-4622-86eb-95a22b832caa&displaylang=en

See this thread for more information:

http://www.formvista.com/forum.html?COMP=forum&cmd=view_thread&(fvs)cs_forums_threads_ref=39

AreaEdit runs slow under FireFox

FireFox seems to have an issue with AreaEdit and other HTMLArea forks. After some use, it tends to become "sluggish". Shutting down your browser and restarting it works around this issue.

I'm getting Operation Aborted or Page Expired under MSIE 6

There seems to be a bug in MSIE that, on some servers under some as-yet-to-be-identified circumstances, causes MSIE to generate either Page Expired or Operation Aborted when posting back to the same page hosting AreaEdit.

The workaround is to post to a separate page.

Urls from AreaEdit are being escaped.

If you submit content and links are coming through as in:

<a href=\"/test.html\">Test</a.

check your "magic_quotes" setting in your PHP install.

Development

How do I turn on debugging?

There are two debugging trace systems in AreaEdit, one on the client side and one on the server side. Both are called "DDT".

The client side debug system can be turned on simply by uncommenting the "ddtOn()" call in htmlarea.js near line 2671.

NOTE: turning on debugging in the config class is currently broken.

There are separate ddtOn() calls in each plugin that we have worked through. This currently includes the EnterParagraphs, Linker, and ImageManager plugins. As we go through more plugins we will add debugging trace messages to those as well.

Once the ddtOn() calls are uncommented, turn off any popup blockers, clear your browser cache and reload AreaEdit. You will see a popup window with extensive debug messages in it. This is an excellent way of seeing how the code works.

A similar DDT setup is available on the server side. It works the same way. Simply uncomment the ddtOn() calls to turn on debugging messages. NOTE that especially in the linker plugin you want to log debug messages to a file instead of to the browser to prevent the linker plugin from getting confused. See the areaedit/plugins/Linker/scan.php file. There is a _setDebugLog( "/tmp/debug_log.txt" ); call that tells DDT to log messages to a file.

Misc

About DTLink Software

See http://www.dtlink.com

How was this FAQ created?

This FAQ was created using FAQTool(tm), one of our desktop utility products for Windows(tm). It is the companion to a desktop customer support utility called AnswerTool(tm). See http://www.faqtool.com and http://www.answertool.com respectively.