Add a Rich Text Editor Alternative to Markdown in Flex Components

[joshpappas]

Is it possible to offer rich text as an optional alternative to markdown for text blocks within the components? This might be an edge use-case, but I have an Image and Text section where I'm including some information about industry organizations our company is a member of, and am including some small logos of those organizations right under the text in a little banner. However, markdown has very limited image support and there's no way to style it as max-width:100%, so it breaks the layout on narrow screens by forcing the paragraphs in that section to be too wide. The rich text editor would give me access to the HTML in that text block to refine these types of details. Or to add rel=nofollow tags to links, stuff like that.

[Nick]

joshpappas Technically that can be done in Miva today but you would need to duplicate the flex component and update that field to use the rich text property instead of the text area.

Here is a link to how to duplicate components: https://github.com/mivaecommerce/fle...-components.md

Currently the Image and Text component is using the type of textarea for the body text area. If you update that value to use the texteditor value then it will include the rich text editor for that section.

Later this afternoon I will run through the duplication steps and update the component to make a custom component for you then post it here so you can see if it works for your needs.

[joshpappas]

Thanks, Nick. I've done some duplicating/tweaking on the components before, so that would be an easy enough tweak to try. In general, I'm seeing how much I can do without making custom versions of components where I can help it, and since there's already and option to turn markdown on or off for the text blocks, I was thinking an additional rich text option might be a nice enhancement in a future release.

I am encouraged to see the improvements in the current versions compared to the original release, because initially, it seemed like I had to create custom versions of everything just to update styles, but that's much easier now in general. As a related "dream feature," continuing to add more CSS style variables and parts labels into the components would give more things that can be adjusted using the mmx-customizations code.

Thanks again!

[Rick Wilson]

10.12 is going to be full of Page Builder updates as well, FYI

[lesliekirk]

10.12 is going to be full of Page Builder updates as well, FYI

Woohoo!

[lesliekirk]

joshpappas Technically that can be done in Miva today but you would need to duplicate the flex component and update that field to use the rich text property instead of the text area.

Here is a link to how to duplicate components: https://github.com/mivaecommerce/fle...-components.md

Currently the Image and Text component is using the type of textarea for the body text area. If you update that value to use the texteditor value then it will include the rich text editor for that section.

Later this afternoon I will run through the duplication steps and update the component to make a custom component for you then post it here so you can see if it works for your needs.

I'm going to tag in here too. I know I keep being told "it's easy" and I come back and ask but is it "Leslie proof"? Make it Leslie proof and storeowners (who like to do this type of stuff will love it!)

[joshpappas]

Thanks for the insight, Rick Wilson. Connecting flex content to price groups or other conditional logic is another big one we hope to see in the future.

[Nick]

joshpappas You should be able to use the new Page Fragment feature for some of that functionality. Page Fragments are available within the new product list component, but more importantly in the API, https://docs.miva.com/developer/deve...s/#api-support

For example, if you are using the product list component, within the Product Card section you can add fragment that has template code with the conditional logic and that fragment will be called in the Runtime_ProductList_Load_Query function that the component uses and the template will be rendered in the results.

Feel free to shoot me an email for more information on the new feature.

[joshpappas]

Nick I'll have to look into that further, thanks. At the moment, this all seems like a lot of extra steps vs just editing a template, and I'm concerned that reaping its benefits will eventually require completely rebuilding existing sites. That said, this also still seems like a massive work in progress, so it's hard to make that kind of commitment to it yet. I'll occasionally check whether it makes sense to replace some chunk of template code with a flex component, but so far, I've only used it in production for an About Us page and a couple of marketing landing pages. I initially thought the idea was more for those types of content pages, but seeing it spread into whole product listing pages makes this a whole new paradigm for Miva site design that I guess I'll have to really invest the time in learning eventually.