1345099 - The HTML editor on the new SUMO site is buggy

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(support.mozilla.org - Lithium :: General, defect, P3)

Description

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

OK, I know that everyone dislikes a mixed bag of problems, but here it comes anyway.

1 ===
Just now I tried to send a message to Michał/vesper. I didn't use any formatting, however, I pasted this link into the message:
https://support.mozilla.org/t5/Install-Migrate-and-Update/New-in-Thunderbird-45-0/ta-p/38985

This already resulted in the error message:
Your post has been changed because invalid HTML was found in the message body. The invalid HTML has been removed. Please review the message and send the message when you are satisfied.
I see no reason for this message to be displayed, since I simply typed and pasted a link. There was absolutely zero manual manipulation of HTML.

Maybe this is already covered in bug 1341440 comment #1 (reported problem when pasting link).

2 ===
The next issue is the migrated article
https://support.mozilla.org/t5/Install-Migrate-and-Update/New-in-Thunderbird-45-0/ta-p/38985
I mentioned.

If you edit it, you see this text
  Thunderbird > PreferencesTools > OptionsEdit > Preferences > Composition > General tab.
in the edit window.

This is highly confusing and quite wrong.

3 ===
Being the Thunderbird release manager, I'm trying to prepare an article "What's new in Thunderbird 52" here:
https://support.mozilla.org/t5/Install-Migrate-and-Update/New-in-Thunderbird-52-0/ta-p/1371577/message-revision/1371577:2

I have a few problems with this:

3a ===
As you can see, the <h2> headings are glued to the paragraph before and above, with no top/bottom margin/padding. Pressing "Edit" shows something completely different in the rich text editing window.

3b ===
Switching to HTML view, I see <p>&nbsp;</p>. This occurs a three times on the page, so I'm trying to remove these. Pressing "Save" I get:
Sorry, we were unable to save your changes.
Your post has been changed because invalid HTML was found in the message body. The invalid HTML has been removed. Please review the message and submit the message when you are satisfied.
Looking at the HTML again, the <h2> tags got changed to <p>. So I'd say this is *unusable*.

4 ===
The last problem is that the HTML view is an absolute dog's breakfast. Can Lithium really not present formatted HTML? I'm a Thunderbird Compose peer and author of the add-on ThunderHTMLedit, so I know a little bit about HTML editors. I've also worked on various bugs in Core::Editor (which is the Firefox HTML editor).

Last not least I should mention that I'm working on SUMO using, well, Firefox. Should I be switching to Chrome instead?

P.S.: Michał/vesper asked me to assign(!) this bug to Madalina, so there you go.
P.S.2: Excuse any perceived irony, not offence intended, just my personal style ;-)

Comment 1

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

Sorry, I hadn't noticed that verper had edited the article and added <p>&nbsp;</p> just before the <h2> tags to give then a top margin/padding. Not the best solution. Perhaps we can take a copy of this article for experimentation and let me try to continue working on it.

Comment 2

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

Oh, sorry again,
https://support.mozilla.org/t5/Install-Migrate-and-Update/New-in-Thunderbird-52-0/ta-p/1371577/message-revision/1371577:2
will show you the problem which is solved in
https://support.mozilla.org/t5/Install-Migrate-and-Update/New-in-Thunderbird-52-0/ta-p/1371577/message-revision/1371577:3
by adding <p>&nbsp;</p> before the <h2>.

Really, the site should define a decent style sheet where <p> and <h*> have some padding. Otherwise we're back to the dark ages of the typewriter, where adding a CRLF was the only formatting tool available.

Comment 3

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

Added another paragraph, same error message when saving, lost all <h2> headers again:
https://support.mozilla.org/t5/Install-Migrate-and-Update/New-in-Thunderbird-52-0/ta-p/1371577/message-revision/1371577:4
Finally resorted to using bold in version 5.

Also I forgot to mention problem ...
5 ===
You cannot enable Firefox spell-checking. That's really bad.

Comment 4

[u277459]

(In reply to Jorg K (GMT+1) from comment #3)
> Also I forgot to mention problem ...
> 5 ===
> You cannot enable Firefox spell-checking. That's really bad.

See Bug: 1338018
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1338018

Comment 5

[vesper]

Hi Jorg,

We will be opening new feature requests for the editor that address some of the issues you're reporting, but in the meantime:

(+NI from Roland about ShowFor - see below at "2 ===")
(+NI from Madalina about editor customizations - see below at "3a ===" and "4 ===")

(In reply to Jorg K (GMT+1) from comment #0)
> 1 ===
> Just now I tried to send a message to Michał/vesper. I didn't use any
> formatting, however, I pasted this link into the message:
> https://support.mozilla.org/t5/Install-Migrate-and-Update/New-in-Thunderbird-
> 45-0/ta-p/38985
> 
> This already resulted in the error message:
> Your post has been changed because invalid HTML was found in the message
> body. The invalid HTML has been removed. Please review the message and send
> the message when you are satisfied.
> I see no reason for this message to be displayed, since I simply typed and
> pasted a link. There was absolutely zero manual manipulation of HTML.
> 
> Maybe this is already covered in bug 1341440 comment #1 (reported problem
> when pasting link).

This was an issue with permissions and should be fixed by now.
 
> 2 ===
> The next issue is the migrated article
> https://support.mozilla.org/t5/Install-Migrate-and-Update/New-in-Thunderbird-
> 45-0/ta-p/38985
> I mentioned.
> 
> If you edit it, you see this text
>   Thunderbird > PreferencesTools > OptionsEdit > Preferences > Composition >
> General tab.
> in the edit window.
> 
> This is highly confusing and quite wrong.

This is an issue with ShowFor not working as expected. The code used for this is: 

This new behavior can be switched off in the <span class="menu"><span class="for" data-for="mac">Thunderbird &gt; Preferences</span><span class="for" data-for="win">Tools &gt; Options</span><span class="for" data-for="linux">Edit &gt; Preferences</span> &gt; Composition &gt; General</span> tab.</li>

It should be showing different text for different platforms.

I am escalating this to Roland, who's working on the ShowFor feature working correctly across all of the KB
 
> 3 ===
> Being the Thunderbird release manager, I'm trying to prepare an article
> "What's new in Thunderbird 52" here:
> https://support.mozilla.org/t5/Install-Migrate-and-Update/New-in-Thunderbird-
> 52-0/ta-p/1371577/message-revision/1371577:2
> 
> I have a few problems with this:
> 
> 3a ===
> As you can see, the <h2> headings are glued to the paragraph before and
> above, with no top/bottom margin/padding. Pressing "Edit" shows something
> completely different in the rich text editing window.

This probably requires customization of the way the editor handles Rich Text <-> HTML conversion. Escalating to Madalina for handling & prioritization.

> 3b ===
> Switching to HTML view, I see <p>&nbsp;</p>. This occurs a three times on
> the page, so I'm trying to remove these. Pressing "Save" I get:
> Sorry, we were unable to save your changes.
> Your post has been changed because invalid HTML was found in the message
> body. The invalid HTML has been removed. Please review the message and
> submit the message when you are satisfied.
> Looking at the HTML again, the <h2> tags got changed to <p>. So I'd say this
> is *unusable*.

This was an issue with permissions and should be fixed now. 

> 4 ===
> The last problem is that the HTML view is an absolute dog's breakfast. Can
> Lithium really not present formatted HTML? I'm a Thunderbird Compose peer
> and author of the add-on ThunderHTMLedit, so I know a little bit about HTML
> editors. I've also worked on various bugs in Core::Editor (which is the
> Firefox HTML editor).

This probably requires customization of the way the editor handles Rich Text <-> HTML conversion. Escalating to Madalina for handling & prioritization.


> 5 ===
> You cannot enable Firefox spell-checking. That's really bad.

This is a separate issue handled in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1338018

> 
> P.S.: Michał/vesper asked me to assign(!) this bug to Madalina, so there you
> go.
> P.S.2: Excuse any perceived irony, not offence intended, just my personal
> style ;-)

Thanks for filing and keeping a positive outlook with this :-)

Comment 6

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

Since this bug was filed, there has been an update to the HTML editor used by Lithium, for example spell checking works now (bug 1338018).

I haven't edited the article since, but I've edited some messages and didn't not experience the problems reported here. Let me summarise:

1)  Error: Your post has been changed because invalid HTML was found ...
    Not seen any more, assumed fixed, apparently something to do with permissions.
2)  Thunderbird > PreferencesTools > OptionsEdit > Preferences
    I haven't retested, you call this "ShowFor", being escalated.
3a) <h2> with not enough margin/padding: Still an issue.
3b) Apparently same as 1). I've added <h2> tags successfully since.
4)  HTML view is not "pretty printed": Still an issue.
5)  Spell check: Fixed.

So open: 2) "ShowFor", 3a) padding/margin on h2, and 4) Pretty printing of HTML.

> Thanks for filing and keeping a positive outlook with this :-)
Positive outlook: There has been progress ;-)

Comment 7

[Roland Tanglao needinfo please :rolandtanglao, :mohnkuchen, :adobo, :sinigang, :roland]

4) filed as a separate bug 1351292

Please don't file multiple bugs in one bug in the future :-) (you software developers should know that :-) ! but hey we all have to put our non developer hats occasionally LOL)

Comment 8

[Alice Wyman]

Resolving as "WONTFIX" since we've rolled back to Kitsune and there are no plans to switch back to Lithium.