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ActionScript 3.0 WYSIWYG Text Editor

Hey guys, this is an ActionScript 3.0 WYSIGYG text editor. It loads all of the fonts from your system, includes color-changing, adding links, bold, italic, underline, alignment, and font size.

It’s a complete OOP Class, with Event Listeners built in and ready to go! (Unlimited use).

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Discussion 22 Comments

  1. Ahmed Nuaman says:

    Nice! I think that Flash WYSIWYG editors are defiantly the way ahead as they mark up will stay the same no matter what browser or OS!

  2. Juwal Bose says:

    It will also be great if we can dynamically load fonts from a central location or embed them inside the editor. I will try checking out the code, great work and thanks.

  3. Mabuc says:

    Awesome… I never saw any flash WYSIWYG before but this one is awesome. Nice work!

  4. Nate says:

    Wow, I love this WYSIWYG. I also love your new Flash.XML.editor 2. which by the way is WAY better than rainblow xml eidtor

  5. The question I have with flash apps is when there is a flash update, how will your app respond to this? Also, backwards compatible, can somebody who’s stupid enough to not update his flash version also use the editor?

    But the point of getting the same output, no mather what browser or OS you’re working is really FANTASTIC, so I hope there will come other, more advanced versions aswell, I even wanne pay for it!

  6. James McNess says:

    How Ironic.
    This user complained about my file saying that it was too similar to his own, which prompted Flash tuts to remove it.

    And then they put this up – Gee never seen anything like this before:

    http://www.flashloaded.com/flashcomponents/flashtexteditor/
    http://www.webresourcesdepot.com/flash-rich-text-editor-obedit/
    http://www.tufat.com/s_flasharea_wysiwyg_editor.htm

    Outrageous and “weak”

    • Author

      Hey James,

      I did it on purpose to show you the difference between good and bad business practices.

      1. You placed it under freebies, when there was nothing “free” about it. It only took people to a demo version of your commercial product, which they would need to buy to get full use out of. When I upload a freebie, it’s truly free – no strings attached.

      2. If I remember correctly, you had some pretty negative feedback on that page, so it’s probably better that it’s gone, no?

      I don’t mind that you have your product, even though you admit that it was inspired by mine. But when you come onto a network that I was on first, selling something that I made first, for more than double the price when I believe that mine is better…. you have to know that you’re going to be in for some stiff competition.

      Best Regards,
      Michael

      • James McNess says:

        Michael,
        You can post-rationalise double standards as much as you like, it doesn’t change the fact.

        Rainbow XML editor is in fact a free product: http://www.codeandvisual.com/rainbow I do also promote Rainbow Live – a paid version for a different use (as a simple FlashCMS), but that doesn’t change the fact that Rainbow is a free online XML editor enabling you to edit any XML file on your hard drive. It uses the same name because it is based on the same engine.

        You’ll notice there are a lot of free Flash based online apps available these days, I was trying to add to the fray, look at Aviary for instance, this also works on files stored on your hard drive. I don’t apologise for advertising a paid product next to a free one, it’s a standard business model, and I think having provided a useful free product, it’s not unwarranted.

        You keep making claims of being better or worse, which is debatable and non constructive. Your original file didn’t come close to providing all of the functionality of Rainbow and I haven’t checked out your new version – but I’m sure you haven’t caught up to where Rainbow is in all regards. Either way, your original file couldn’t have been better because it simply didn’t do nearly as much.

        I think your original file was great, it just didn’t go far enough, I was thinking of purchasing it at the time, but I needed a lot more functionality so I decided to build my own. Beinig angry at me for entering the market as a competitor is selfish. It’s like claiming that because the Wright Brothers pioneered with their paper and wood contraptions that Boeing has no right to make aeroplanes.

        It’s also interesting to note that you got my file taken off a day before you released your second version, which apprently tries to match some of the functionality of Rainbow Live. It doesn’t look good on anyone involved.

        JMC

      • James McNess says:

        And sorry Michael, just an addition, I forgot to mention, I never placed the file under freebies, that was done by the flash.tutsplus team.

        The were very happy to accept my offer to give away Rainbow Live licences to readers of their site and came up with the competition idea thmeselves. They also wrote the Freebies entry with out me suggesting or even asking for it, and I’m greatful they did.

        it’s just a shame that after that they did a big backflip.

      • James McNess says:

        Actually, do you want to know something even more ironic, I just remembered, I didn’t even send the file to flash.tutsplus. This is the best – I actually sent the file to FlashDen!

        They wrote back and told me they hoped it was alright for them to send Rainbow on to one of their partner sites, which ended up being flash.tutsplus…

  7. XemmeX says:

    Hey Mike,

    Very cool and I will include in the CMS 2.0 of yours that I just buy this week!

    Great job!

  8. James McNess says:

    And sorry Michael, just an addition, I forgot to mention, I never placed the file under freebies, that was done by the flash.tutsplus team.

    The were very happy to accept my offer to give away Rainbow Live licences to readers of their site and came up with the competition idea thmeselves. They also wrote the Freebies entry with out me suggesting or even asking for it, and I’m greatful they did.

    it’s just a shame that after that they did a big backflip.

  9. Author

    James,

    I never told anybody to pull the articles, they were probably pulled because your file was getting horrible feedback (not easy, not fast, no good GUI) . I actually love and welcome competition. To mention, however, that I would in any way try to “match” the functionality your file is laughable. I’ve never even heard of it before seeing the article, and have been building my v2 for a year and a half.

    I’m not going to continue with this nonsense. The buyers will speak for themselves, as it should be.

    Best Regards,
    Michael

    • James McNess says:

      Agreed.

      But please stop with the hyperbole about all the ‘horrible’ comments. I’ve had many many more positive comments then the enevitable one or two unimpressd ones. The reason Rainbow was pulled was the ‘controversy’ to do with your file. I also know flash.tutsplus were relaying information from my emails back to you because of the comments you’ve made.

      The facts of the events remain and for whatever the reason, it reaks of inconsistancy that Rainbow should have been removed. Real shame.

      Good luck Michael, looks like you’ve claimed your turf.

  10. Nick says:

    would it be possible to add a print function to this editor? any suggestions?

  11. Scott says:

    Hi,
    Firstly id like to say this is brilliant. its exactly what iv been looking for!

    i am a bit of a beginer at this and would like to know if its possible to set up a “text area” on a “next page” (still within the same flash file) so that the user can see the text with all its formatting on the “next step” of the system i am trying to build.

    i hope this makes sence. any help would be appreciated.

  12. Eric says:

    Really nice editor (except I would reverse the selected/unselected look of the buttons…they look depressed when pressed)!

    Although I never used AS3 before, I edited the files to add a bunch of new functions (e.g. bullets, indents, leading, spacing, etc…). I also got it to check for the format when you move the caret like it would in a commercial word processor.

    There seems to be one small flaw in the original design in terms of how the selecting text triggers a check of the text format…you’re listening for a mouse up on the main text area (_mainText.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_UP, checkTextFormat);). The problem with that is if for instance you highlight from right to left and go past the bounding box, the listener misses it since you’re no longer over _mainText’s hit area.

    Anyone know how to solve this?

  13. will says:

    nice… might use this for small jobs like news blog or posts.

    i wonder if it will work better than text editor lite. i used it on my cms test site and the html it generates is kinda hard to read… but it does the job.

    http://code.google.com/p/as3texteditor/

    thanks

  14. Very nice and useful!
    I’m actually just not sure how I would integrate this into a small website.. Any ideas anyone??

  15. Support says:

    Hi Michael:

    What are the right steps to wrap this up as a .SWC (or import it) and include it in another Flash AS3 project?

    I’ve been trying with the .swc; or as importing the .fla into the library; creating a stage instance and deleting it (leaving just the library reference).

    The TextEditor then displays with the code below; but the buttons (B, U, I, Color, etc) have no effect. Save doesn’t trace out anything. Even the black/white background buttons are un-hooked.

    var textEditor:TextEditor = new TextEditor();
    textEditor.name = “textEditor”;
    textEditor.scaleX *= 1.5;
    textEditor.scaleY *= 1.5;
    textEditor.x = (stage.stageWidth * 0.5) – (textEditor.width * 0.5);
    textEditor.y = (stage.stageHeight * 0.5) – (textEditor.height * 0.5);
    addChild(textEditor);

    textEditor.addEventListener(“ON_TEXT_SAVED”, fire);

    function fire(e:Event):void
    {
    textEditor.visible = false;
    trace(textEditor.mainText.htmlText);
    }

  16. Very nice, thanks for that very cool demo, I have been looking for a good AS3 implementation,

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