By David Baumwald

This is the first in a series of weekly osCommerce articles aimed to give suggestions to store owners on how to easily enhance and make more efficient both sides of the platform for themselves, as well as the customer. The topic we'll discuss this week is how to greatly improve your product descriptions by adding one simple module, the WYSIWYG Editor.

WYSIWYG stands for "What You See Is What You Get". The WYSIWYG Editor is a very popular add on for osCommerce and is used by thousands of store administrators across the globe. These editors are mostly open-source, and can be embedded within practically any textarea form input on osC's back-end. For now, however, we're going to concentrate on just the product descriptions.

We've all used word processing programs like Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, AppleWorks, etc. for creating all sorts of documents. These programs always have toolbars, at the top or side of the screen, for formatting any element within a document. These toolbars allow the author to quickly perform such tasks as formating text, inserting and formatting tables, inserting images, adding hyperlinks, and the like. Well now, these actions have been neatly assembled into one toolbar for use with product descriptions. If you've created rich, creatively displayed documents for print, you can now do the same in osCommerce for your products!

The WYSIWYG Editor comes in many forms, but the most common are HTMLArea and FCKEditor. Both have the same basic look and functionality as your favorite print publisher. I, myself, do not use these modules, as I am faster and feel more comfortable hand-coding my HTML. That being said, not everyone is well-versed in HTML or CSS, and many shops turn to this powerful feature to greatly enhance their products' descriptions. From basic formatting like font changes or inserting a horizontal line all the way to creating complex product data tables, administrators use the editor in a variety of ways. The contribution also you to insert an unlimited amount of images right into the description! This can be very useful since a fresh version of osCommerce allows for only one product image. Of course, modules are available to increase the number of images per product, but these WYSIWYG Editors kill two birds with one stone.

Perhaps the most convenient application for this is copying and pasting product information from vendors directly into the text area, especially if the information is pre-formatted and contains complex specifications. Just open the document in your preferred word processing application, select everything, copy it to the clipboard, and paste it in the editor. It's that simple.

Of course, as with all web-based scripting, there are downsides to using these types of editors. First of which is browser compatibility. HTMLArea only works in Microsoft Internet Explorer, and doesn't work in Mozilla FireFox or Safari. However, the FCKEditor does work in all three browsers. The second pitfall is W3C compliance. If you're picky about having perfect HTML and/or CSS, these editors tend to use some depreciated (out-dated) elements when translating the formatted text into HTML. Thirdly, due to the nature of open-source programming, some of the core code for these modules must be modified to work properly on your specific osCommerce installation and your server. For instance, some hyperlinks are inserted as an absolute URL instead of a relative one. This can produce browser warnings for the customer on SSL pages.

My personal opinion is that anything you as a store owner can do to separate your osCommerce store from all the others is a huge gain. If you aren't experienced with HTML and CSS, this small investment is well worth it to provide your customers with professional and, perhaps most importantly, consistent product descriptions that are visually appealing and easy to navigate.

Cordially,
David