Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

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Textarea editing in desktop text tools

Author:	Dave Winer
Posted:	3/19/1999; 8:33:07 PM
Topic:	Registry Hack for IE5's "Edit with..."
Msg #:	4329 (In response to 4318)
Prev/Next:	4327 / 4330

Boy that's tantalizingly close to what I am looking for.

I would like an editor to hook into the part of a web page.<p> Let's say that part of a <textarea> control would contain a column of program icons immediately to the right of the vertical scrollbar, or immediately to the left of the <textarea> box, above it or below it, I don't care. There would be a place in the Registry where a program could link itself into this group, a program would have to opt-in for this specific feature. On the Mac, a program would place an alias of itself in a folder that the browser checks whenever a form is being opened.<p> Now in the browser, when I see a <textarea> box and click on one of the icons, the program launches and a copy of whatever I had already typed into the <textarea> would show up in the editing window. I do my thing, and every time I save, the result goes back into the <textarea>. Bring the browser to the front and click on the Submit button and the text goes to the server.<p> The key new feature for the editor is that it has to be able to save thru a COM message on Windows, and an Apple Event on the Mac. The browser has to have a receiver to get the event. But with this feature, we hook the browser into the desktop editing environment at a level that many users will be able to grok. <p> It also takes a burden off the app developer, they can leverage the browser, without having to support WebDAV or XML-RPC. Everyone has a web browser, right? It already knows how to send stuff to a web server. (That's what web browsers are for.) <br><br> <br><br><hr>This page was archived on 6/13/2001; 4:48:55 PM.<br><br>© Copyright 1998-2001 <a href="http://www.userland.com/">UserLand Software</a>, Inc. </blockquote></blockquote> </body> </html>