Wanted: very flexible text editor

[titanium]

I have a client who asks me for a tool which allows him to position portions of text very flexible on the page. They even want to place each line individually. Think of different type of headlines, which can have variations of line height, indent and font style. They are designers, and they have a very high level of typography demand, and they would like to experiment with the text on their website – like they are used to in Adobe Illustrator when they do their layouts.

I have been researching this topic in the past few days, but I have not found a module (like a RTE such as TinyMCE) which comes close. I guess they imagine something like a page builder, and some tool like Fluid Engine by Squarespace may bring them there. But I much prefer ProcessWire!

I think it's not too difficult to build a structured website with ProcessWire, but in this case the demand for a super-duper flexible texteditor seems to be a showstopper. I'm very thankful for every link or any hint how to solve this.

[Stefanowitsch]

@bernhard do you think this is something the RockPageBuilder can handle?

[jploch]

You can also try PAGEGRID, it's a very flexible no-code pagebuilder for processwire. You can try it for free and see if it works for you.

[bernhard]

3 hours ago, Stefanowitsch said:

@bernhard do you think this is something the RockPageBuilder can handle?

Thank you @Stefanowitsch for mentioning RockPageBuilder!

However, it appears that what they need might differ from what RockPageBuilder offers. @FireWire eloquently highlighted this distinction recently:

On 1/31/2024 at 5:36 AM, FireWire said:

I know I've gone on long posts about page builders before, but I've come to really recognize the difference between what people are forced to use with things like WP plugins and what RockPageBuilder is. They say that their plugin is a "page builder", but they're really a page designer and that's their fatal mistake. I think your module makes a pure and important distinction between the two.

So, RockPageBuilder is more about helping developers to build content elements quickly and easily. These blocks enable clients to populate their websites with content seamlessly, without the need to think too much about the technical and visual aspects (because this is our job as web professionals). It's less about designing and more about managing content, which is something I love about ProcessWire and where it really shines.

In RockPageBuilder the design is done in code - CSS, Less, Tailwind, UIkit, Bootstrap. You can choose whatever you like best. If you want a no-code page designer there are plenty of options out there, but RockPageBuilder is likely not your first choice 🙂 

 

[millipedia]

Obviously you should try and educate your client into the advantages of building in PW (and in the difficulties of designing a pixel perfect site that works across all browser and devices) but if they really insist on being able to fiddle then WebFlow is probably the kind of thing they want. Not a PW solution, but it does work well once you get the hang of it. We lost a client of 20 years to it last year 😞

 

[FireWire]

I'll chip in some thoughts here, and this is from a perspective of caring about you @titanium in this situation.

20 hours ago, titanium said:

They are designers, and they have a very high level of typography demand,

Well... they're graphic designers, not web designers. I've lead a web team and trained graphic designers to become web designers because they are not remotely the same.

I always take the route of asking questions- a lot of them- because I wouldn't be able to make an accurate recommendation without understanding their needs. So I'd ask about more specifics about their design, view a mockup if they have one, understand what they're asking for because it does sound to me like they're asking for the moon. It's a moment where people reveal their level of expertise, or lack thereof, in the first sentence of their request.

Sounds like they want * { position: absolute; }

This is why I always operate with this thought in mind: what a client asks for does not have intrinsic correlation with what they need, or even want to begin with. Maybe they actually could achieve what they want using sane tools like @bernhard's builder.

I'm sure there are more specifics to your situation and I'm not sure of the relationship you have with this client, but I would be concerned that they're going to end up trying to do something that isn't possible, or is so remotely possible that it's not worth their time, or yours. It might be worthwhile to ask yourself: Is this client expecting something that can't be done that may get you stuck in a position where you can't deliver?

You're the expert in this field. Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy Website Builder (lol), etc. They all fundamentally build in blocks with all of the standard limitations of the web. If they want to be big kid web designers then the onus of finding a tool that lets them do what we do is their job, in my most humblest of opinions.

[titanium]

Thanks a lot guys for your opinions. It's always good to hear that others are struggling with this kind of weird problems as well ( @millipedia "We lost a client of 20 years to it last year") and that I'm not the only one 🙂

The client is important to me, and I have been doing more research over the last few days. The client even suggested a CMS to me - https://cargo.site. I've been playing with it and it was one of the worst experiences with a page builder (or whatever that thing is called) I've ever had.

I think @FireWire summarized the situation very well in his post: "Is this client expecting something that can't be done that may get you stuck in a position where you can't deliver?" I guess if they really want me to work with this Cargo CMS, I'll have to let them go.

Fun fact: although the client suggested Cargo, it does not seem to fulfill their own demands... Time will tell how this story ends.

[MarkE]

@titanium I don’t know what the Cargo pagebuilder is like, but the website isn’t great. Did you look at PAGEGRID? I think it offers more flexibility than RockPageBuilder, which is good or bad depending on your point of view. I decided to make my own page builder which offers three levels of access: editor, designer, and developer. It’s still experimental at this stage, even though I started it before the two aforementioned page builders were released, but I might release a proof of concept version later this year. There are some difficult decisions to be made between ease of use / consistency and flexibility. For instance, I have (provisionally) decided that someone with designer access needs a certain level of css skills: enabling lots of GUI options for styles is complex to code and to use as well as inevitably not covering everything. 

[da²]

4 minutes ago, MarkE said:

I don’t know what the Cargo pagebuilder is like, but the website isn’t great

Yes the site is terrible and full of bugs, I even had page freezes, not sure they really want their CMS to be used. 😄

[diogo]

I have to chime in here to say that I love the Cargo website myself 🙂

I think we should take our developer hats off when thinking about this kind of page builder. In the case of Cargo, it's not even aimed primarily at professional designers, but artists in general. We are talking about people with a strong desire to experiment visually on their own website, and who may not have the money to invest upfront on a more robust tool. For them, the subscription plan that Cargo offers is quite nice, especially because they don't have to pay while building the website. Just browse through their site directory, and you will find some real gems — they might not appeal to you, but there are some very interesting solutions.

I actually think the people at Cargo did a pretty good job at simplifying the job of building a website, with some original solutions for common problems. Just as an example, there is no concept of header and footer. Everything is a page (where did I hear this before? 🤔) and if you pin them, they appear on every webpage of the site. Because it works in such a different way then we are used from web dev and other page builders, it needs some tinkering before you get the hang of it. But we have to think that for someone who never built a website before, that doesn't pose a problem at all.

Ok, enough ranting... just want to add that I also love their newsletter (don't expect any technical stuff there), that I open religiously every week, even if I don't use the service 😅

[FireWire]

1 hour ago, diogo said:

I think we should take our developer hats off when thinking about this kind of page builder. In the case of Cargo

I don't think anyone was knocking Cargo per se, just that according to OP, it didn't satisfy the requirements that the client had already stated to begin with. I will second @da² in that I also had pages on the Cargo site that appeared to be broken and wouldn't load for me.

1 hour ago, diogo said:

it's not even aimed primarily at professional designers, but artists in general.

This is definitely an important distinction. It must be stated that the client is asking a professional web developer for a solution, not an artist.

If they want to make an internet art piece, then they can. If they want a website that actually does something, like get new business opportunities, I hardly think that a graphic designer that thinks doing fancy font work could pull it off. I've never met a graphic designer that knew what the optimum width, in character count, text content should be for a user experience. They also couldn't explain when to use a .png or a .jpg. They don't think about things like variable background image size ratios, why text in an image is a bad idea, how people's experience looking at a print postcard differs from a website- simply stated, why something that looks really pretty can actually be a bad thing. Obviously the web doesn't have to be ugly- but the web demands more that aesthetics.

If a client doesn't know about this- we educate them. If after hearing what we have to say they decide they don't care, that's the grave they're ready to dig for themselves. I have a close friend who works for a company that just got sued for lack of accessibility on their website last week. I also know that a manager there demanded that their preferences dictate how the site looked, now they get to deal with the repercussions. Probably going to cost them $10k in settlement money, then legal fees on top of that, and however much they'll be paying someone to fix their site.

I'm on the side of the developer and I believe we have a profession that is constantly challenged by people who have been lulled into a false sense of "my opinion is as good as your facts". Having said all of that- if this is a company that simply does not care about anything other than creating high art on the internet- then they don't need a web designer/developer professional, they need to go find software like they did to create posters- or just put a .jpg up as their home page.

 

 

 

[diogo]

Clearly I didn't make my point efficiently. I would hope the heavy use of emojis could even point out the lightheartedness of what I was writing. I referred to Cargo because people were talking about it, the idea was not to defend it on this particular situation but to try show a different side of it that people might have missed. To make it clear, I do agree that it's not the best tool to use for a client, and I admit that I went on a tangent to the conversation. That said, I would like to point out one or two things:

1 hour ago, FireWire said:

I've never met a graphic designer that knew what the optimum width, in character count, text content should be for a user experience.

Wow, I have to say, I'm finding it really hard to believe this whole paragraph, but this statement is particularly mind boggling. Of course I believe what you're saying is true, but, being originally a graphic designer myself and having worked for the web with many others, all I can assume is that you are meeting the wrong graphic designers.

1 hour ago, FireWire said:

I'm on the side of the developer and I believe we have a profession that is constantly challenged by people who have been lulled into a false sense of "my opinion is as good as your facts". Having said all of that- if this is a company that simply does not care about anything other than creating high art on the internet- then they don't need a web designer/developer professional, they need to go find software like they did to create posters- or just put a .jpg up as their home page.

Graphic design, or design in general, is not just about artistry and creativity, but a very technical craft. I genuinely feel that you are not paying the same respect to another profession as you are demanding for your own.

[FireWire]

16 hours ago, diogo said:

being originally a graphic designer myself and having worked for the web with many others

I think you're making my point here- you're a graphic designer who has learned web. That means you're a web designer. 

Please don't take what I said as a negative towards graphic designers. What I'm explaining is that there are distinct roles. I can design and create a UI but I'm under no delusion that I have the talent of so many graphic designers I've met- and you are probably included in that group of professionals. I've worked with award winning designers at ad agencies for clients across the US, and they are phenomenal but still had much to learn when we worked together on web projects. This is by no means any insult or speaking badly of them, and they understood the work we needed to do together. 

I'm referencing graphic designers who aren't web designers. One is not more important than the other whatsoever!

We can agree that a graphic designer doesn't have to test the poster they designed to make sure it works on mobile. I would never expect that printing a website I made out on a poster would be even remotely the same thing. In fact, please don't. It would look really bad. 

So when I say that I haven't met a graphic designer who knows web design, it's because if they did- they would be a web designer, in context of designing a website.

Please don't take what I've said in a conversation about a web implementation on a web developer related forum as something that it isn't, and I apologize if I came off as aggressive or insulting. My comments were meant to address the original post and nothing more. So, I apologize if my comments came off as rude or dismissive.