It’s been 18 months since I first released the editinplace Javascript code. And many months since I’d really done anything new with it.
So I finally put together two things, a new version and new home for EditInPlace. First, the new home, editinplace.org. There’s documentation, a blog, downloads and forums. The main push for me to do this was to try out the forums. I’m still amazed at the number of people contacting me expressing interest in this, so I’m hoping that the forums will provide a better way for people to ask questions and get answers. If nothing else it moves from my inbox and out on the web, where Google can index it for all to see.
Next, a new version, 0.5.0. This is a rewrite based on the 0.3.3 code that uses more Prototype specific features. If you’ve used EIP before you’ll want to review the example.html and save.php files to see how things have changed in the new version. Nothing earth shattering, but it is different. You can get it now at the download page.
Go check it out and let me know what you think.
I got an email from Ryan Wilson noting that he’d modified the EditInPlace code to work with DWR.
After reading Avoiding Bloat in Widgets I’m pondering a re-write of Edit In Place in a similar style so that something like Script.aculo.us could be optionally used to supply transitional effects. So those that are looking for a smoother looking Edit In Place could have it, while not forcing the extra weight on those who don’t want it.
There are a number of other things that I’d like to get hammered out in the Edit In Place code as well. I’m hoping to resume work on it after the new year.
Javascript is starting to remind me of the Perl slogan, “There’s more than one way to do it”.
I’ve been getting lots of great feedback on Edit In Place. As time permits I hope to fix problems and round out the feature set a bit more. To that end I’ve rolled out version 0.2.1. Here’s a list of what has changed since version 0.2.0:
- The bundled version of Prototype is now 1.5.0_rc0. This was mostly to make sure that my code still worked with 1.5.0_rc0.
- Attempt to deal with editing, updating and saving empty strings in a reasonable way
I’ve updated the example page to include editing a string that starts out empty. The example now has a link to my Edit In Place blog entries, the edit.php source (assuming your web server knows what to do with .phps files) and the main link at the top now goes http://josephscott.org/code/js/eip/.
Two new options have been introduced to format empty strings: empty (which is the css class to apply to empty strings, defaults to .eip_empty) and empty_text (the text to put in place of empty strings, defaults to ‘Click To Edit’). These options are valid for all types (text and textarea).
So go to the example page and click on the grey ‘Click To Edit’ string and you’ll get an empty text box. Type in something and you’ll get the new string instead. Then delete the string and you’ll get the grey ‘Click To Edit’ string again. You can do the same thing with the original text and textarea examples.
I think that I’ve covered the empty string condition, but if you find a bug please drop me a note. Include a patch if you are really feeling generous :-)