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Recommended Configuration for htmlArea
Lucas describes some of the less appetizing side effects of WYSIWYG editing, discusses how to configure and use the htmlArea TYPO3 extension to say what you mean and mean what you say.
Note from the editor: the htmlArea extension has introduced several new version since this article was written, and the configuration provided may not be the best ever anymore. Nevertheless, all the of the supplementary information is still useful and valid.
WYSIWYG is dead. Or at least it should be. The infatuation with creating unique styles for every header, paragraph and word has created not only some hideous websites, but has also kept poor-quality, non-compliant HTML far too commonplace. In the age of CSS, quickly and painlessly creating sitewide styles and organizing our web documents semantically should be a walk in the park. For web editors using TYPO3, though, it isn’t. The configuration of htmlArea is at first completely baffling, and it can take some time for this feeling to wither down to mere irritation. Part of this is because there is a LOT going on behind the scenes with rich text editing, and thus, a lot to configure. Transformations occur on the way from the editor to the database and vice versa, and these transformations are controlled by the configuration. I’ll provide some links to documents that discuss these configurations and transformations, but first let’s cut to the chase by looking at a htmlArea configuration that works pretty well to cut out most of the non-semantic garbage while leaving a certain amount of flexibility.