Luckily 37signals released a WYSIWYG editor last year called WysiHat, the “eventually better open source WYSIWYG editor”, so we tried it out. It was simple, no fancy themes or color schemes, just the backend code.

After playing with it for a while, we found a lot of hidden and undocumented features like including images or adding unordered lists. We decided to fork the project to write some more examples.

WysiHat is a great project and has a lot of potential, but probably hasn’t got the attention it deserves for a while now. There are some missing features you’d expect from a WYSIWYG editor, but the general idea is very, very good.

Joshua Peek told us the project is on hold; “We’re planning to revisit the wysiwyg stuff in early 2010. So you can expect me to jump back in then.”, but we hope there will be more activity from the rest of the community before that.

The Engine

We built the standard stuff like image uploading and html editing using WysiHat for a project we’re working on and we thought others could use it so we built the “WysiHat Rails Engine” and released it to the world.

The goal for the engine was to quickly and easily be able to implement WysiHat editors in a project and doing so as pretty as possible. We extended the Rails Formbuilder to add the wysihat_editor form field. We added facebox and some other javascript goodness and worked out an easy to use uploader. This means you could do something like this, which would give you a fully functional WYSIWYG editor:

<% form_for(@page) do |f| %>
  <%= f.error_messages %>

  <p>
    <%= f.label :content %><br />
    <%= f.wysihat_editor :content %>
  </p>
  <p>
    <%= f.submit 'Create' %>
  </p>
<% end %>

This will give you a full editor. The Engine also includes stylesheets and a bunch of icons so it looks good out of the box:

There’s a complete installation guide and an examples page in the github project wiki if you want to check it out.

Like WysiHat, this project is in a very early stage and like WysiHat, we would love you to help out and make this a great piece of software.

So if you have any issues, suggestions or ideas, don’t hesitate to create an issue on github, fork the project or contact us directly.

UPDATE – October 3

I got a lot of work done on the Engine yesterday. It’s a gem now and it’s hosted on gemcutter. The installation guide is updated, so that shouldn’t be a problem.

The ugly rake task is removed and I built a little generator, so all the stray folders in the root — like /public — are gone. I also removed the included plugins to add gem dependencies (paperclip and resource_controller) and added the responds_to_parent plugin installation to the generator, so you don’t have to worry about that. Installing the gem and running the generator is as simple as:

sudo gem install wysihat-engine

script/generate wysihat

While I was working on this, I realized the resource_controller gem is an unnecessary dependency. It will be removed as soon as possible to make place for a good ol’ controller. I think this will help users understand and use the gem better in their applications.

And let me say this one more time; have issues, ideas, suggestions or want to help out? Be sure to let us know!

Dear recruitment companies, you may stop calling us to offer your services (which are undoubtly worth 25% of an annual salary…). No, seriously. Stop.

The Monday before, June 29, there are a bunch of side-events. We will be attending the Amsterdam.rb Ruby BarCamp, taking place at Escape (Rembrandtplein) from 12.30pm to 6pm. There’s no admission, also if you’re not attending the conference, but you do need to register.

Since we know listening to all this cool Ruby chatter will make your thirsty, we’re the official Amsterdam.rb BarCamp drinks sponsor. The venue is sponsored by
Rock & Code & Wes Oldenbeuving (thanks guys).

Our start-up ConfNetwork is once again responsible for the The Next Web Conference Network.

NUik.nl just launched, the latest addition to the family of NU.nl websites. It’s an iGoogle-like application which displays content from the NU.nl network and some external content (more in the future). Users can create new pages and add widgets to them, which are often highly customizable. Widgets also work on iGoogle (click the “settings” icon to find out the URL for the gadget, as Google calls it)!

Widgets are built by several parties. We made the TV guide, NUjij and RSS widgets and gave extensive support to the other developing parties.

Credits
Client: ilse media
End client: NU.nl
We did: HTML, CSS, JavaScript & PHP (the widgets are rendered by Shindig)

We developed the new online shop for beachwear retailer Shiwi, as requested by SisterAct. It uses a custom front-end and the generic back-end we developed for shops like this (which is under on-going development). We used it for LaDress too.

To promote the website, Shiwi has sent a mailing to over 5,000,000 Dutch households.

Credits
Client: SisterAct
End client: Shiwi
We did: Ruby on Rails for front-end & shop back-end

For Creative Monkeys we did the technical development for On the Loose, a site to accompany a series of programs about the worlds #1 kite boarders. Since it’s a blog, we decided to use Wordpress and built a custom theme.

Credits
Client: Creative Monkeys
We did: Wordpress theme (HTML, CSS, JavaScript & PHP)

For ilse media we did the development of a totally new version of Familie.nl, a website to connect with your family. Share calendar events, photo’s and video’s and stories. Build and share your family tree and put events on your map and timeline.

In the near future, a lot of new features will be added.

Credits
Client: ilse media
End client: Familie.nl (Schoolbank B.V.)
We did: HTML, CSS, JavaScript & PHP (the family tree component was not built by us)