Update: This blog post is outdated. Use TinyMCE Advanced WordPress Plugin instead.
Chris Kasten has found an Easter egg in WordPress 2.1 which enables many advanced buttons and options in your WYSIWYG editor. To get these advanced buttons you need to press alt-shift-v in Firefox or alt-v in IE. Pressing the same keys again hides it. Nice find right? But it will only work if you have enabled visual editor in your user profile.
After reading about it I was trying to find out whether it is possible to enable it by default. After some googling I found this thread in WordPress Support forum. To enable these advanced buttons by default, you need to fiddle with some files in the wp-includes folder. The tiny_mce_config.php file in the wp-includes\js\tinymce directory to be exact. You need to open the file directly and remove the ‘wp_adv_start‘ and ‘wp_adv_end‘ present on line 31. (Do this only if you are brave at heart 😉 ).
When I was testing the change I noticed that WordPress 2.1 also missed the ‘Edit HTML source’ button which was available in the previous versions. This made me to search the TinyMCE documentation and there I found that TinyMCE has lot of other formatting options too. And after some fiddling I have picked up all those buttons which I may use.
This is how my editor looks now. If you want all these options start editing your tiny_mce_config.php file or just grab my file and put it in the wp-includes\js\tinymce directory. (Be warned I am not responsible if something breaks 😉 and don’t forget to backup your original file). Also remember that next time you update your WordPress installation this file could be over written.
The new buttons which I like are
- Paste as simple Text
- Plase from Word
- Format cleaner
- Insert Customer Character
- Subscript, superscript
There are still some more buttons and options available and if you want to use them, then have a look at TinyMCE manual and change your config file accordingly. Meanwhile I will try to find out whether it is possible to have a WordPress plugin do it so that you don’t need to edit your file manually and till then happy hacking 😉
It seems like a plugin would be simple.
I started one… http://www.solo-technology.com/blog/2007/02/11/wordpress-21-more-on-those-editor-options/
but hit a snag on some of the formatting. Feel free to run with it!
Hi Chris,
Nice to know that you have taken the lead and tried to convert it into a plugin. Will surely look into the code once I get some time.
Cheers,
Sudar
Nice! Almost certainly gonna use TinyMCE now in my webbased FTP 😉
Thanks for this Sudar. This is very useful for my poorly trained contributing authors.
On similar subject, do you have a recommendation for a good alternative to quicktags (using now) i.e. easier formatting option for comments?
Thanks
Cliff
Hi Cliff,
Nice to know that it was useful to you.
I looked at the url which you have given and found that it points to a blog, can you give me the url of the exact post of quicktags which you are referring so that I can give you my opinion?
Cheers,
Sudar
Hi Sudar,
Thank you. I currently use quicktags on my personal blog here.
Is it possible you are not receiving my e-mails from M1.
I’ve sent three.
Pls advise
tks
Cliff
Cliff,
I didn’t receive any mail from you. If you want to contact me then you can send them to Sudar {at} SudarMuthu.com
Cheers,
Sudar
I have been using that address. Will try again right now.
In the meantime, please send me an email to cliff.lyon ‘at’ corp.manyone.net
I have sent an e-mail to your gmail address. check in spam folder.