Feature request part #1) enable the Media insert/embed button in the ckeditor UI. Right now out-of-the-box the only media option is to attach media as a field in each content type. Steps necessary to enable the ckeditor button are captured here: #2202363: ckeditor 'edit appearance' GUI has gone haywire, starting around comment #3.

Now that I have the media button in the ckeditor, it makes me wonder why is the default in DC3.9 to have media/images/video attached to content, rather than in the body? Aside from technical reasons I don't know about, I suppose it has to do with being able to add media from the mini-browser without having to go to the full node/add form. For myself and my users though I think I might prefer to have only the option to add media to the body, in case i want to style it to fit with my text, but to do so from the mini-browser. (I can see this going either way though) But really I think the most detrimental part of the media attachment thing is how big and clunky the interface is, every time you want to make a quick post whether you want to add media or not, compared to having a nice sleek ckeditor button that is just a few px big and does the same functionality of getting you to the media browser dialog box.

Feature request part #2) reduce the size of the media interface in the mini-browser

Feature request part #3) consider switching to having media go in the body rather than as an attachment.

Comments

WebSinPat’s picture

WebSinPat commented

I suppose another issue at play here has to do with security implications of allowing users to embed videos and iframes and the like, in the body of a post where they might have access to muck with the code. I'm pretty newbie so I don't know what is safe to allow and what is introducing a security hole.

Issues I'm running into with trying to use the Media Button to embed media in the body of a post:

  1. in Full HTML mode (trusted admin user), I can embed media fine, see it preview in my ckeditor, and create a post with the video displaying properly. Yay. But when I go back to edit the same post, some of the embed code/markup has been stripped out. In the ckeditor, I no longer see a preview of my videos, and if I go ahead and save the post without making any changes, some of my embedded video content has been stripped out. (Apparently the youtube embed makes it through; the vimeo embed does not. weird. those are the only two platforms I've tested so far.)
  2. in Filtered HTML mode (for my regular users) I am running wysiwyg_filter, which explicitly blacklists any of the tags needed for embedding media. I know wysiwyg_filter is not in ootb commons, but I figure the similar issue would come up for the standard Filtered HTML text format that has only a very basic set of tags allowed.

I'd appreciate guidance on how to proceed without introducing security holes.

@FunkMonkey, can you confirm issue 1 with editing content in full html mode?

WebSinPat’s picture

WebSinPat commented

(note to myself, I might use #1783966: Allow altering of blacklist to enable support of forms, embeds, etc. for issues with wysiwyg_filter. but first I want to know what I'm doing...)

FunkMonkey’s picture

FunkMonkey commented

I would agree with OP Feature Request #1 to enable the Media button (and functionality) by default in the CKEditor UI. Devin and Ezra, is there a reason that is not enabled currently? Is the functionality not quite there yet? I need to play with it more but it appears to be working fairly well for our uses.

I do not agree that the Attach functionality should be removed though. Perhaps removed from the mini-browser but not entirely. In our non-Commons site we have use cases where we have embedded and attached media on the same node. On our Commons site I am going to try to remove the mini-browser functionality entirely. We don't want Facebook like posts.

On Feature Request #2 I think that would be great to reduce the size of the Attach Media area. But again, removing it entirely might be a better idea. It seems the mini-browser is used for super quick 'What's on my mind' type posts. If the user wants to do more than that they can just go to the Full Form.c

@WebSinPat - I will look at the issue with editing content in Full HTML as you mention in comment #1.

FunkMonkey’s picture

FunkMonkey commented

@WebSinPat - I am seeing different behavior than you are for your issue #1 in comment #1. In my Filtered HTML the video tags seem to be stripped out entirely and after saving I get no video. In Full HTML the videos save, view, and are re-editable just fine. I'm guessing this has to do with how we have various filters setup in our Text Formats and what order they are in. In my case, I use HTML Purifier on Filtered HTML but not on my Full HTML. That's probably why Full works and Filtered does not. I will need to allow exceptions in HTML Purifier to get it working in Filtered HTML I think.

I'd suggest trying to turn off all of your filters and see if things work correctly. Then turn one on and see what happens. I think the oEmbed filter needs to be on for the embedding to work but most or all of the others could be off. You may not be using any extra filters in Full HTML though.

I also wanted to suggest moving the items you have in your Comment #1 into a separate issue. Since this started as a Feature Request it's possible the Commons maintainers won't even see the extra issues that are attached to it.

I'm going to keep playing around with my settings and see if I can get Media embeds working with my Filtered HTML. If I figure anything else out I will let you know!

Doronro’s picture

Doronro commented

hi,
i'm struggling with the same..
i'd like to allow users to just paste a link and have it preview. this seems to be quite standard these days, and it's what people expect...
using the built in media button to browse, then choosing web... it's too many clicks..
perhaps someone could point me in the right direction? i've been going around in circles for a few days and still can't embed. there must be some configuration that i'm missing or doing wrong.
any help greatly appreciated,,
d

...commons-7.x-3.46