Using WYSIWYG Editors in a Microsoft Word World

Track: 
Implementation and Config
Experience: 
Intermediate

What you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) editors are all the rage because they present a familiar interface, hopefully making it easy and inviting to write content.

The fact is, no matter how great your Drupal site is, one thing will always be true: people writing content for your site will probably compose their thoughts in a program that they are comfortable with, and, chances are pretty good that program is Microsoft Word. So, once they're done writing, they just copy and paste from Word in Drupal and the results can be disastrous: messed up fonts, exposed code, insane errors in Internet Explorer. It's terrible.

This session is designed to help you navigate the tricky business of selecting a good WYSIWYG editor and configuring it so that its bulletproof, even from Word.

Intended audience: 

Intermediate implementers who have set up at least one Drupal site for an organization that loves Microsoft Word.

Questions answered by this session
Question 1: 
What is a WYSIWYG editor and how do I get one on my Drupal site?
Question 2: 
Which WYSIWYG editor plug-in should I use?
Question 3: 
How do I keep Microsoft Word formatting from ending up in Drupal with copy and paste?
Question 4: 
Is there a way I can use a browser's built-in spell check?
Question 5: 
What can I use as a fail-safe when things break?
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Comments

Just so you guys know

I gave this presentation at the DrupalCon Ignite stage.

The notes from my presentation are here:
http://thomasmaclean.com/blog/using-wysiwyg-editors-microsoft-word-world

The FlexiFilter preset is here:
http://thomasmaclean.com/blog/word-formatting-flexifilter

and a video of the presentation is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwYsI17l3iI

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