I have never been a big fan of Livesite. Though the basic idea of combining open standards like Java en Xsl with a good looking GUI to render your content is charming, the Interwoven implementation of this idea has many issues. Well, let me call them "items to improve":

• the manual for developers is unreadable and almost useless;


• the installation and upgrade process is unnecessary complex. And apart from that, it messes up your existing installation with unwanted templates and workflows;


• the resulting (front-end) html is very messy and far from w3c-compliant or wai-accessible;


• all custom-configuration like components, layouts, etc. have a server-global-scope. It is impossible to limit the use of a specific component/layout to 1 branch only. Yes, your intranet news-component can be placed on a public-facing webpage!


• It is almost impossible to enforce a corporate webstyle. Editors are free to chose any available page-template for your public homepage.


• the preview, workflow & deploy mechanism does not follow the teamsite standards and good-practices. F.i. preview is not routed via the (flexible) iwproxy and uses the built-in tomcat. This has the side-effect that in order to install new java-code your must restart the servlet resulting in Teamsite downtime for other developers.


• an url-management-mechanism is missing. Search-engine-optimised-urls are out of your league.

The good news is that in the coming weeks I plan to post some tips on using and customising Livesite to your needs. I hope this will make your life with Livesite a little easier. Stay tuned.

Darren Ferguson posted a message on his blog about the current state of web-cms and just because I couldn't agree more with what he says here, I wanted to share the link with you:

the-future-of-web-cms-is-(not)

I hope this might trigger some of the cms-vendors to focus more on fixing know problems in stead of adding/buying new functionality.

I've blogged before on how disappointed I was with Interwoven's implementation of TinyMCE. I now found a way to circumvent the problems with it. This trick (or rather a full-blown hack) will enable you to use all of the configuration-options offered by TinyMCE.

But, WARNING, WARNING, this hack comes with a clear price:
- it comes with no support, not from Interwoven, neither from me.
- future patches can/will be overwrite your changes in dc-editor.js

The hack involves making changes to two files:

Changes to dc-editor.js:
1. Open [iw-home] httpd/webapps/content_center/datacapture/dc_editor.js in an editor
2. Locate the function 'IWTinyMCEEditor.prototype.initialize'
3. Add this code to the bottom of this function:

//custom: custom addition 1

custom_tinymce_additional_configuration(tinymce, editorConfig); 

//custom: end of custom addition 1

4. add this code right BELOW this function:

//custom addition 2 (1 line only):

var custom_tinymce_included = true;		//to signal that the custom code is include in this file

Changes to custom_config.js:
1. Open [iw-home] httpd/iw/tinymce/config/custom_config.js
2. Add this code to the file (location does not matter, bottom is most appropriate):

//custom: custom code begin

//test to see if our custom code is included in the dc-editor.js file:

if (typeof custom_tinymce_included == 'undefined') {

	alert('ERROR: custom-tinymce code is missing from dc_editor.js!!! Please contact your admin.');

}



//the function that does all the hard work and that should be called from dc-editor.js

function custom_tinymce_additional_configuration(tinymce, editorConfig) {

	

	//a hash that sets all the default configuration-values

	var defaultConfig = {

		/*the key/values as set by interwoven:*/

		debug: false,			//not sure of the effect of this, use with care!

		//mode: "exact",			//DO NOT SET THIS

		//textarea_trigger: "tinymce",			//DO NOT SET THIS

		//language: "en",					//language pack is managed by the java-code via property; can not be set via custom-config

		theme: "advanced",

		//init_instance_callback: "parent.getDCFrame().IWTinyMCEEditor.instanceInit",			//DO NOT SET THESE

		//handle_event_callback: "parent.getDCFrame().IWTinyMCEEditor.handleEvent",			//DO NOT SET THESE

		plugins : "table,iwlink,iwimg,searchreplace,iespell,paste,contextmenu,zoom,insertdatetime,emotions",



		theme_advanced_toolbar_location: "top",

		theme_advanced_toolbar_align: "left",

		theme_advanced_path_location: "bottom",

		/*

		theme_advanced_b***ons1 : "whitespace,styleselect,formatselect,fontselect,fontsizeselect,forecolor,|,bold,italic,underline",

		theme_advanced_b***ons2 : "bullist,numlist,|,outdent,indent,|,justifyleft,justifycenter,justifyright,justifyfull,|,cut,copy,paste,pasteword,search,|,undo,redo,|,iespell,anchor,link,unlink",

		theme_advanced_b***ons3 : "hr,removeformat,visualaid,|,sub,sup,|,charmap,|,image,table,help,code",

		theme_advanced_styles : "Header 1=header1;Header 2=header2;Header 3=header3",

		table_styles : "Header 1=header1;Header 2=header2;Header 3=header3",

		table_cell_styles : "Header 1=header1;Header 2=header2;Header 3=header3;Table Cell=tableCel1",

		table_row_styles : "Header 1=header1;Header 2=header2;Header 3=header3;Table Row=tableRow1",

		*/

		//theme_advanced_b***ons1 : b***onRow1,			//DO NOT SET THESE

		//theme_advanced_b***ons2 : b***onRow2,			//DO NOT SET THESE

		//theme_advanced_b***ons3 : b***onRow3,			//DO NOT SET THESE

		//theme_advanced_styles : themeStyles,			//DO NOT SET THESE

		//table_styles : tableStyles,			//DO NOT SET THESE

		//table_cell_styles : tableCellStyles,			//DO NOT SET THESE

		//table_row_styles : tableRowStyles,			//DO NOT SET THESE

		content_css : "/iw/tinymce/config/custom_content.css",

		paste_create_paragraphs : false,

		paste_use_dialog : true,

		

		/*the key/values from the 'general' options (see: /iw/tinymce/docs/reference_configuration.html)*/

		//ask:							//not very useful for templating

		//elements: "",						//DO NOT SET THIS

		doc_language: "en",

		directionality : "ltr",

		//auto_reset_designmode : true,		//not useful for templating

		//auto_focus : "mce_editor_2",			//not useful for teamplating??

		//nowrap: false,					//no wrap seems a little buggy....

		b***on_tile_map: false,		//untested

		//auto_resize : true					//experimental

		//browsers : "msie,gecko"				//not useful for templating

		//dialog_type : "modal"				//not useful for templating

		

		/*the key/values from the 'cleanup/output' options (see: /iw/tinymce/docs/reference_configuration.html)*/

		cleanup: true,					//untested

		//valid_elements : ""					//better not to touch, use extended_valid_elements instead

		extended_valid_elements: "",

		invalid_elements: "",

		trim_span_elements:true,

		//verify_css_classes : true			//not useful for templating

		verify_html : true,

		preformatted : false,

		//encoding : "xml"					//not useful/dangerous for templating

		auto_cleanup_word : false,

		cleanup_on_startup : false,

		fix_content_duplication : true,

		//inline_styles : true					//experimental

		convert_newlines_to_brs : false,

		force_br_newlines : false,

		force_p_newlines : true,

		//entities : ""						//better leave untouched

		entity_encoding : "named",

		//remove_linebreaks : false			//not useful for templating

		

		/* all other options are skipped here */



		/* a dummy to end the hash without a , */

		xxxx: 'yyyy'

    };

	//defaultConfig = {};



	//loop over the hash set above

	for (var prop in defaultConfig) {

		//newvalue: if set in param then use this else use value from hash above

		var newValue = editorConfig.getConfigItem(prop) != "" ? editorConfig.getConfigItem(prop) : defaultConfig[prop];

		

		//set the value

		tinymce.settings[prop] = newValue;

	}

} 

//custom: custom code end

Now you can make your custom configuration of TinyMce in the Teamsite way. Fi:

	IWTinyMCECustomConfig("config-id", "directionality", "rtl");

Note that this code will give an alert to the end-user if your dc-editor.js is overwritten. Further, in IE6 (oh, not yet IE again!), if you have more then 1 textarea with different configuration-names, not all options work a required.

The above has been tested on Teamsite 6.7.1 (at solaris). Later Service Packs and versions have modified TinyMce implementations.

Good luck with it.