How-To: Change Text Editor

For those who have access to the Movable Type back end of BG Views, there are two different text editors to chose from. We like to give you the choice, maybe you will like the one I do not. First we will go over the steps to changing the Text Editor, then we will go over the differences between the two.

Hit the jump to read the how-to.

Step 1. In the upper right corner of the MT admin, click on your user name. This will take you to your Edit Profile screen.

Step 2. Scroll down to the Preferences section where you can change the Rich Text Editor settings. Click on the select box and change it to YUIEditor for a more advanced text editing environment.

Step 3. Click the Save Changes button at the very bottom of the screen. Now you can click on the System Overview tab in the upper left of the Edit Profile screen and go back to your blog. If you create a new Entry or edit an old one, you will see the new Text Editor.

Movable Type Default

YUIEditor

The main differences to point out are the link editing, font and color editing. All other buttons are duplicated on both editors. The YUIEditor just lets you do more stuff. You can also chose web safe fonts, though I would strongly suggest not using the Font menu save for Courier and let the site's CSS style the rest.

On the geekier side of things, the YUIEditor produces better HTML code. After studying the Yahoo Developer documentation on YUI, it also seems pretty darn easy to extend. I have not decided if I am going to add table editing or not.

Anyways, I encourage you to try out the YUIEditor. If you do not like it, you can always change it back.