FreeTextBox update

By BylineJohn Dyer on

A few months ago I had planned to do some upgrades to FreeTextBox for a 2.1 release. Since then, I’ve recoded the entire javascript engine and a lot of the .NET code. The new version is much faster since it uses the OOP featuers of JS rather than a lot of eval() function calls as in FTB 2.x. The code is much more flexible and allow a whole lot more customizing as far as how buttons and dropdowns handle updating themselves to reflect current state of the code.

Also, a while back I added table functions. A lot of this code came from the guys over at HTMLArea (http://www.rezonance.ch/htmlarea/) who were cool enough to give me permission to use their button code. I mentioned this in some release notes, but I wanted to formally mention them again here.

I’m going to release this one as a 3.0 version since there’s now a pretty complete JavaScript API. More info and preview code coming soon.

15 thoughts on “FreeTextBox update”

  1. This is a very very good news!

    I have used your FreeTextBox control in many web projects. It’s very cool.

    I will wait for the version 3.0 of from now….

    Thanks for that news.

  2. Hey Jon,

    Best of luck with that cutey of yours 😉 !!! Might wanna hide her !!!

    Anyway, been using your control for some time now. 2.0.7 seems a bit buggy still, and causes IE to crash. Also, had to modify some of the JS to get certain functions working, as well as implementing an image control… but don’t get me wrong because these aren’t complaints!!! I love this thing!!!

    Looking forward to v 3.0 – hopefully you’ll release it soon!!! Keep up the great work and I’ll have to make a donation soon 😉

    Josh Withrow

    Web Applications Developer.

  4. 😮 WOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! That’s MUCH faster!!! So… timeframe 😉 ?

    btw, if you goto http://JoshWithrow.com/test.aspx – do you see how the page bugs out when you scroll down? You may have to reduce the size of the window to be able to scroll the page. The dropdown lists get unreadable? What causes this? I notice that your pages don’t have that problem and I wonder just what it is that you’re doing differently…

    Josh

  5. Jon, this looks like a very promising update!

    Just make sure you take out these bugs before you release the 3.0:

    * The first time you view a page with FTB on it, the toolbar contents start too far to the right, or put otherwise, there is empty space at the left from the buttons/dropdownlists! (and this messes up your entire layout of course).

    This problem occurs with all the links on your dev page. Once the page is cached, the layout is ok when revisiting or refreshing.

    * undo/redo doesn’t seem to work yet, although i see it in strike-through on your to-do list! 😉

  6. I’m not sure I understand #1 other than that all the images are not explicitly sized so depending on what your browser does when it doesn’t yet have an image, you can get some resizing. I may just have to explicitly size the ends of the toolbars.

    RE: #2, I am trying to see if it’s worth implimenting a undo/redo array that would override the default undo/redo functionality. My little notes aren’t entirely clears as the strikethrough was for extracting the buttons from using the default executeCommand to being an API available command.

    You can now do a lot of things with this syntax:

    FTB_API[clientID].Focus();

    FTB_API[clientID].InserHtml("<b>sweet!</b>");

    … and so on. The ‘clientID’ is the ASP.NET clientID.

  7. Hello,

    I was wondering when do u plan to release 2.1 version?

    keep up the good work

    a.s.

  11. Anything? Man you guys must be hard at work. That’s cool… just checking about every day, man!!! Great stuff!!!

  12. When Michaelangelo was working on the sistine chapel the pope was constantly asking him when he would be finished. You must have thousands of little popes asking you the same thing and I add my voice to the chorus. ;~>

    I’m really needing the image gallery feature and checking everday for a release.

    Keep up the good work, you are the man!

  13. We are really really close… Got an issue with modalDialogs in IE and some image gallery work to do…

  14. Write more, thats all I have to say. Literally, it seems as though you relied on the video
    to make your point. You definitely know what youre talking about, why
    waste your intelligence on just posting videos to your blog when you could be giving us something informative to
    read?

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