Hallo is a very simple in-place rich text editor for web pages. It uses jQuery UI and the HTML5 contentEditable functionality to edit web content.
The widget has been written as a simple and liberally licensed editor. It doesn't aim to replace popular editors like Aloha, but instead to provide a simpler and more reusable option.
Read the introductory blog post for more information.
You need jQuery, jQuery UI (1.10+), and Rangy loaded. An easy way to do this is to use Google's JS service:
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.9.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jqueryui/1.10.2/jquery-ui.min.js"></script>
<script src="http://rangy.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/currentrelease/rangy-core.js"></script>
The editor toolbar is using jQuery UI theming, so you'll probably also want to grab a theme that fits your needs. Toolbar pluggins use icons from Font Awesome. Check these integration instructions for the right way to include Font Awesome depending on if/how you use Twitter Bootstrap. To style the toolbar as it appears in the demo, you'll also want to add some CSS (like background and border) to the class hallotoolbar
.
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/path/to/your/jquery-ui.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/path/to/your/font-awesome.css">
Then include Hallo itself:
<script src="hallo.js"></script>
Editor activation is easy:
jQuery('p').hallo();
You can also deactivate the editor:
jQuery('p').hallo({editable: false});
Hallo itself only makes the selected DOM elements editable and doesn't provide any formatting tools. Formatting is accomplished by loading plugins when initializing Hallo. Even simple things like bold and italic are plugins:
jQuery('.editable').hallo({
plugins: {
'halloformat': {}
}
});
This example would enable the simple formatting plugin that provides functionality like bold and italic. You can include as many Hallo plugins as you want, and if necessary pass them options.
Hallo has got more options you set when instantiating. See the hallo.coffee file for further documentation.
Hallo provides some events that are useful for integration. You can use jQuery bind to subscribe to them:
halloenabled
: Triggered when an editable is enabled (editable
set totrue
)hallodisabled
: Triggered when an editable is disabled (editable
set tofalse
)hallomodified
: Triggered whenever user has changed the contents being edited. Event data keycontent
contains the HTMLhalloactivated
: Triggered when user activates an editable area (usually by clicking it)hallodeactivated
: Triggered when user deactivates an editable area
- halloformat - Adds Bold, Italic, StrikeThrough and Underline support to the toolbar. (Enable/Disable with options: "formattings": {"bold": true, "italic": true, "strikethrough": true, "underline": false})
- halloheadings - Adds support for H1, H2, H3. You can pass a headings option key to specify what is going to be displayed (e.g. "formatBlocks":["p", "h2","h3"])
- hallojustify - Adds align left, center, right support
- hallolists - Adds support for ordered and unordered lists (Pick with options: "lists": {"ordered": false, "unordered": true})
- halloreundo - Adds support for undo and redo
- hallolink - Adds support to add links to a selection (currently not working)
- halloimage - Image uploading, searching, suggestions
- halloblacklist - Filtering unwanted tags from the content
Hallo is free software available under the MIT license.
Hallo is written in CoffeeScript, a simple language that compiles into JavaScript. You'll need Node.js to to build it. All build dependencies can be installed with:
$ npm install
To generate the JavaScript code to examples/hallo.js
from Hallo sources, run Grunt:
$ grunt build
Hallo development is coordinated using Git. Just fork the Hallo repository on GitHub and send pull requests.
We use the Travis continuous integration service for testing Hallo. Currently we run two types of tests:
- CoffeeLint for ensuring compliance with coding standards
- Some QUnit tests
You can run the unit tests locally by opening test/index.html
in your browser, or with PhantomJS by running:
$ grunt test
or:
$ npm test
Hallo plugins are written as regular jQuery UI widgets.
When Hallo is loaded it will also load all the enabled plugins for the element, and pass them some additional options:
editable
: The main Hallo widget instanceuuid
: unique identifier of the Hallo instance, can be used for element IDs
A simplistic plugin would look like the following:
# Formatting plugin for Hallo
# (c) 2011 Henri Bergius, IKS Consortium
# Hallo may be freely distributed under the MIT license
((jQuery) ->
jQuery.widget "IKS.halloformat",
boldElement: null
options:
uuid: ''
editable: null
_create: ->
# Add any actions you want to run on plugin initialization
# here
populateToolbar: (toolbar) ->
# Create an element for holding the button
@boldElement = jQuery '<span></span>'
# Use Hallo Button
@boldElement.hallobutton
uuid: @options.uuid
editable: @options.editable
label: 'Bold'
# Icons come from Font Awesome
icon: 'icon-bold'
# Commands are used for execCommand and queryCommandState
command: 'bold'
# Append the button to toolbar
toolbar.append @boldElement
cleanupContentClone: (element) ->
# Perform content clean-ups before HTML is sent out
)(jQuery)