RichTextEditor text entry on IE (9 and 11)

[mbain]

SmartGWT version: 4.1p20141022
Browsers: IE 9 and 11

After moving up to version 4.1p20141022 we have noticed that the RichTextEditor behavior when using IE is not the same as it was on our previous versions of SmartGWT. When pressing enter to go to a new line the control is double spacing the result and adding additional space above the first line of text. Shift-enter will single space like a WYSIWYG would, but previously enter would on its own. When we try in Chrome the enter key produces single-spacing as well.

Also, the Home and End keys do not work for navigating to the beginning and end of a line. Ctrl-Home and Ctrl-End do still work and move the cursor to the beginning and end of the entire text. Again, these work in Chrome but not IE.

Finally, I found information in the forums regarding the border around the entry area in IE. This makes the cursor extremely difficult to find within the control. I saw a post that stated we could change the CSS to remove the border (for the "normal" class:

.normal {
outline-width: 0;
}

This is a much broader change than just the text area entry. Are there any other solutions, or are there any adverse conditions that this change would bring about?

All of these behaviors still appear to exist on the current showcase as well. Any insight would be appreciated.

[Isomorphic]

Firstly, when you say "moving up", what do you mean? It seems like you've upgraded to a build of version 4.1 from 11 months ago.....

If you're involved in new development, you should upgrade straight to 5.0, which is the current live version of SmartGWT - development builds of 5.1 are also available.

Either way, you will need to get a more recent build of whichever version you use - there have been a number of IE-specific fixes for RichTextEditors in the last few months.

You can get nightly builds from smartclient.com/builds.

One other thing - when you say "current showcase", which one do you mean? Do you have the URL for it?

[mbain]

Agreed, it isn't a current release, it is a point in time build that was stable and that we upgraded to in October last year for the release that was being actively developed at that time. As a released version we can't update that instance, but we do try and update to the latest with our major release cycles.

As far as the "current showcase", I am referring to the 5.0 showcase at http://www.smartclient.com/smartgwt/...trols_richedit

When I work in this example the same symptoms occur.

[Isomorphic]

We've made a change to work around your first IE-specific point - extra line-spacing when pressing Enter.  We added a style to the skins, .richTextEditor - this is applied to the contentEditable element created by IE and suppresses the extra line-spacing.

This should also address your third point - you can assign your CSS to this class instead, affecting only the bodies of RichTextEditors, and only in IE.

On your other point, Home and End seem to be working fine for us in 5.0.

Note that these changes have only been backported to the current live version (5.0) - we don't currently plan to port them back to 4.1 or older.
 

[mbain]

Thanks for the reply and for looking into and fixing the issue. I'll wait until the changes are posted on the showcase and see if home and end start working for each line in IE then as well. They currently do not, but I know your changes have not been propagated as of yet.