Friday Roundup: Summer Fun in the Sun
Blog It for Safari

Beta: A New and Improved Compose Editor

UPDATE: We have acted upon your feedback by addressing some pressing issues with the new composer and have now released it to 5% of all TypePad users, continuing to rollout the composer over the course of the next 1-2 weeks.

EDIT: Thanks to everyone for the initial feedback. We rolled out fixes to several annoying bugs today around link URLs and special characters in other languages. Additionally we've made the 'full justify' option available again. We know you're missing the 'image edit' pop-up and will have that available in the next release.

Today we launched a new Compose Editor in Beta that is powered by a more reliable, open-sourced editor*, one that is widely used around the social web. When we launched the revised Compose Editor two years ago, we introduced many great features such as text and photo justification and font and paragraph break controls (exciting!). With today's release, those features you know and love will remain unchanged. Benefits of the new editor include improved reliability, more responsiveness, and in fact, just plain better formatting. Can we say no to more font discrepancies?

The new Compose Editor has gone through several rounds of internal testing and is now ready for our Beta members. We're looking to you to provide feedback on what works and doesn't work. Remember, you can switch in and out of Beta at any time by going to Account > Summary > Join the Beta Team (at the bottom of the page - don't forget to hit Save Changes). And when you switch to Beta, you'll likely see some other awesome changes.

There are some known issues with the Compose Editor that we'll be ironing out over the next few weeks. Anything you spot out of the ordinary, please let us know in the comments – we’re looking forward to hearing from you!

Best,

The TypePad Team

* For those of you that enjoy the geeky details, the editor of choice that we've swapped in is the tinyMCE editor

Comments

Account Deleted

I don't like this new upgrade. It messes up my whole text editor. There are a lot of unnecessary changes.
Typepad Team---Why you keep changing stuff when they are so functional? Why change when it's not even broken? That is why you're losing customers because of your constant upgrades that customers cannot understand nor adapt or can no longer keep up with.

Your service has gradually become dissatisfying and inefficient because of these constant updates.

Think Tanked

I never had any reliability problems with the old compose editor, so I'm somewhat in agreement here, wondering why these changes were necessary.

The one thing I do see that I like is that blockquote is separate from indenting. I've often wanted to indent text without having to blockquote--so good on that.

The main thing I have not been able to understand for years now is the continued inability to put captions with photos. It almost seems irresponsible for TypePad to unveil yet another compose editor without this capability.

Account Deleted

Where is the 'border' for the images????!!!

A big screw up if that feature is gone. I use it constantly!


Please let me know if I'm missing it somewhere.

Account Deleted

additionally, 'title' for the images also missing. Only title for link is available.

Captive Aquatics

They're losing customers because they change stuff that doesn't need it, and don't add what's requested.

Why was the justify button removed?!

Patricia Traina

Sorry but the new changes are terrible. I'm getting extra spaces when I do a break and I don't like the fact that misspelled words aren't highlighted like they used to be. The one thing I keep hoping you'll upgrade -- the spell check feature which allows us to add custom words to a dictionary -- keeps getting over looked.

Geo

I agree with everything posted previously: there is no need for this change unless it is a *vast* improvement over what presently exists. Having looked at the TinyMCE link, it certainly doesn't appear to be a very substantive change over the current composer. I stopped using your composer over a year ago because it sucked the enjoyment out of blogging for me and I use LiveWriter to do what TypePad's composer doesn't. And this 'upgrade' still fails to offer basic functionality conspicuously missing from the TypePad composer such as captions for photos and the ability to have 'curly' quotes. Nice try though. I hope this upgrade doesn't conflict with those of us who use third party software as a work-around. There will be a revolt if that happens.

Account Deleted

I'm not against change, nor am I against incremental change. The only constant in life is change (and death and taxes, I guess). I welcome any change that is aimed at improving the product.

Also: open source FTW. It's great to see a private/for-profit company embracing open source technologies. :-)

Talking about the changes to the compose editor: I'm neutral on the specific changes until I write a blog post, but at first glance it seems perfectly fine for me. Love the inclusion of block quotes. I usually had to hand code those in the HTML.

Something I noticed, and I'm not really sure if this was present before the change, was that the text in the compose editor (the text you type in) is different between my different blogs. For example, one of my blogs is composing in a sans serif font, and another is using a serif font. Near as I can tell, I don't think it affects the font displayed when a post is published, however. I tried it on a test blog, and although the text as displayed in the compose section was serif, the publish post correctly displayed the blog template's default font. While I haven't noticed that it does anything problematic to any of my blogs, perhaps your developers could take a look into it. In the grand scheme of things, it might be a minor bug, but might be worth looking into (I'm not sure, as I'm not a dev).

Thank you!

Anastasia

Let's just say that I have no time to spare on experimenting with Beta features - not when I pay for a Pro account. I'd be the first to welcome new changes but only when they're 100% functional!

@xannov

Erm, just tried to use the new "improved" editor and discovered that I can no longer justify text (the icon has disappeared completely). That completely ruins the look of new articles on my blog, as I have had to manually justify all text added after the 'split extended entry' feature.
I'm also unable to right click on an uploaded image now to make changes to it (size / mousehover name / URL link).
Please put these features back into the editor, I'd rather have those than the ability to choose a new font style, or remove all the formatting.

Kyle Scott

i like how the fonts won't get screwed up any more. but the spacing seems to be off. when i insert a page break, then re publish it, it adds a ton of space between the last line and the break.

and the insert picture popup, when brought up near the bottom of the screen, will sometimes be lopped off and scrolling down doesn't solve the problem. i had to zoom out my screen completely to hit the ok button.

Account Deleted

TERRIBLE! Another thing not working:

Blockquote: It moves the whole body, not just the selected text.


I agree with everyone, there was no need for the change. It's only missing features. Nothing important added except the font size selection is now easier.

You guys should revert to the previous version ASAP until all these things are cleared up.

Ricardo Barrera

The old composer was most assuredly broken. In fact, it was a nightmare. I have had to use other applications and cut and paste into the old editor. While the new beta editor may contain bugs, at least Typepad is going with an editor which is being vetted by countless others - see this link: http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/using.php

There is need for change. Congrats Typepad for electing innovation over stale, habits which users fall into.

Simona Carini

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I found a couple of things not working.
1. If I click on the Save button while in html editing mode, I get the pop-up window that asks me if I really want to exit without committing my changes. So, I either exit without saving or I stay on the same page, but I am not able to save my changes. TO do so, I have to go to Rich text editing mode and then click on Save (same problem if the post has already been published.
2. I used to be able to adjust a photo by clicking on it, and how that functionality does not appear available any more. I guess this has been mentioned above. I use this all the time, so for me this is a big loss.

I like the sub/superscript option on the toolbar.
Thank you.

Account Deleted

I have problems after your update. All Å, Ä och Ö in the swedish language all of a sudden turns up with an ?

To understand what I'm talking about - take a look at this updated post: http://www.signeratkjellberg.se/2010/07/%C3%A4nglag%C3%A5rd-avsl%C3%B6jar-v%C3%A5r-inskr%C3%A4nkthet-d%C3%A5-som-nu.html

All I did was to edit this old post in the bottom. After that the whole post looks like this.

kimmi8

Thanks for the feedback. Issues with the Compose Editor is actually at the top of our Support queue. Can you tell us more about what's not working for you with the new editor?

kimmi8

The missing Image Editor is a known issue that we're working on. Thanks for the feedback!

kimmi8

Compose Editor issues come in at the top of our Support queue. Additionally we always receive feedback about it on Everything TypePad. Thanks for the feedback on the image captions.

kimmi8

We're aware of the breaks issue and are working on that. Thanks for the feedback on the spellchecker.

kimmi8

Thanks for the feedback Simona. We're aware of the missing image edit option and are working on bringing it back in the next release.

kimmi8

Thanks for the feedback. Both of justify option and image editing screen are known issues that will be resolved before we go live to everyone.

kimmi8

Thanks for the feedback Kyle. We're looking into the extra spacing issues.

kimmi8

Oh Frederic! Thanks for the bug report. I'm opening a support ticket on your behalf so that we can keep track of the issue. Do let us know if you find anything else!

kimmi8

Thank you Ricardo. We appreciate the nod of good faith towards change.

Account Deleted

It's comforting to read that other users have had the same problems as me. As I read these comments, apparently I am not the only one. The Rich Text editor is so faulty that I thought there was an issue with my computer. I've used TypePad for 3 years and it is incredibly inconsistent. Some days, certain tabs don't work. Layouts in the compose editor often times have a different look than what is displayed when clicking Preview. Occasionally when clicking on the tab "Blog"s to pick which blog I want to work on, the menu does not open. I could go on and on.

@xannov

Good to hear :o)

Account Deleted

Thank you!

Fredric Kjellberg

Account Deleted

Agree with this. I see on that list there two pretty popular blogging platforms, including one of the most popular in the world. I think it's a good idea to go with an open source text editor, there's no need to reinvent the wheel, and Six Apart could be spending their time developing and improving other features instead of working on an in-house text edito.

Account Deleted

This is slightly tangential, but because these new features are in beta, people should expect bugs. If folks don't want to use features that are in development/in beta, perhaps it may be an idea to withdraw from the Beta Program? Just a thought. I mean, the subject of the post clearly refers to feature that are in the beta/testing stage--in other words, it's not a launched feature, and bugs are part of the entire beta testing process.

David Berkowitz

Will this one work in Chrome? That's my biggest pet peeve with the current editor.

Scott Fox, Click Millionaires

I dont see any advantage to this new editor either.

Also, it would be nice if you notified us Beta team members when you roll out something like this so we dont waste time querying your Support team about what looks like bugs!

Are we permanently losing the Header font pulldown menu or is that another "known issue"? How about the ability to increase/decrease font sizes one point at at time? (jumping from 14 to 18 pt is more than I like)

If you are changing things how about finally removing the automatic creation of a link to a popup of every image posted (even when you DONT check the box that offers to create a popup)?

I would also vote for easier entry/editing of photo captions and the ALT and TITLE tags for both links and images. These are important SEO tools where Typepad lags Wordpress big time.

Also, is there someplace where all the "known issues" are posted so we dont have to keep stating the obvious?

Thanks.

Werner Patels

You don't really need it. Just customize your CSS to have your posts justified.

Werner Patels

I love it, especially because you restored the blockquote feature (one of the top 3 functions any blogger MUST have!).

JOHN LOBBAN

Can I make a suggestion?

Temporarily give us a tab to switch between the standard editor and the beta editor, without having to dump the other beta functionality we're already used to.

—NCISfanatic dot com

Account Deleted

Just as I start to use the thumbnail gallery option when uploading multiple images to great effect, this change stops it working...

Surely more effort could have been put into ensuring existing features were working before this change was unleashed upon us poor beta testers?

On a positive note, I hope this update will mean an end to the automatic "no scroll-bars in a new window" issue when linking to other web pages from an image?

Cheers,

Barb

I appreciate the improvements in text editing, but I really miss being able to edit photos. That's a step in the wrong direction.

steve

The old editor as very bad for anyone who relied on cut and paste. But I agree with several of the comments on changes being negative.

I really need tighter control over font size and line spacing. Also where is Palatino?

NebraskaPatriot

The changes I've used have been great. The prior version was a nightmare when you wanted to change Fonts. Much cleaner. I do miss the "Justify" as I'm just someone who likes the cleaner edge look but I see you are going to add it when you officially release.

James Grahame

Someone has to call you out for this, and it might as well be me. Your post enthuses, "With today's release, those features you know and love will remain unchanged..."

Rubbish. I've been using Typepad for over five years to run a site that gets over 3,000,000 visits a year. The first clue that you'd switched over to the new editor was an email from one of my team that said, "What's wrong with typepad? The editor doesn't work any more and looks different."

You claim that several rounds of internal testing occurred before rolling the new editor out to beta testers, yet there's absolutely no way we could write and publish one of our posts without having to hand hack the HTML.

A list of glitches:

1. I can no longer double click on hyperlinks in my document to check or edit them.

2. Images automatically link to themselves.

3. We can't edit or define image title and alt parameters.

4. Can't hyperlink an image. Well, unless it's to itself.


davidinnv

One of my very few gripes about TypePad is that while improvements are made in the compose capabilities on an incremental basis, NO attention seems to be given to adding improvements to the commenting feature. When composing comments, there is no spell-check available, no ability to distinguish text with font changes, bolding, italics, etc. In addition, blog owners should have long ago been given the capability to move a reader's comment posted to an incorrect posting thread over to the appropriate thread. -- I am waiting for one or more of these improvements to appear, but I am not holding my breath any longer. Meanwhile, thank goodness for Windows Live Writer. It is an absolute godsend, though it lacks the ability to embed mp3 files and upload PDFs as TypePad does.

Lisa Johnson

I can't get my shortcuts to work. That's making it take much longer to compose articles. (ctrl + l to add a link etc.) Yuck! Will this be something that is recovered?

Jesus Hoyos, CRM en Latinoamérica

New Editor is messing up my Spanish charecters... More at Get Statisfaction: http://gsfn.us/t/18yd1

Please bring back the old editor...

IHahn

why can't I edit links and images anymore with the right-click?

Again, you have rolled out a beta too early!

IHahn

Yes, but there are bugs and there are bugs

IHahn

Okay, so I go to Account Summary to switch out of beta and do my editing.

Hopefully, this will not be for too long ...

Amy Flynn

This new compose editor sounds awful! Why didn't you just fix the issues with the font discrepancies in the current one? Finally the old "new" compose editor is working smoothly for the most part and now TypePad decides to launch a new one full of new bugs? I have to agree with the Beta testers and others who ask, WHY are you continually "fixing" something that is not broken only to make a MESS?

The last compose editor release was a mess for so long. There are many other areas that can be improved upon, besides constantly putting out a new compose editors.

The bugs being reported here are major ones for people trying to publish a professional or attractive looking blog.. why did you release it to Beta IN THIS SHAPE? If the bugs were known, they should have been fixed before it was released to Beta testers.

Please do not release it to the publishers UNTIL ALL bugs are fixed. Please do not do it like the last compose editor, that was a disaster.

Whitney

I like that font size selection can *finally* be done through a drop-down field (there was VERY wonky behavior with the old spin controls the drove me up the bleedin' wall). So the new font size field makes me happy.

What would make me happier would be to

1) have the font size selection remain a drop-down field, AND
2) have a larger range of font sizes to choose from (e.g., 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 22, 24, 28, 30, 32).

btrott

"Why didn't you just fix the issues with the font discrepancies in the current one? Finally the old 'new' compose editor is working smoothly for the most part and now TypePad decides to launch a new one full of new bugs? I have to agree with the Beta testers and others who ask, WHY are you continually 'fixing' something that is not broken only to make a MESS?"

That's a really interesting question! So, here's the broader context: as Kimmie's noted above, the rich text editor is the source of the largest volume of issues affecting our bloggers (as you'd expect, given that's one of the primary purposes of TypePad). If the previous editor was working great for you, that's fantastic; and we'll work really hard to make sure that the new editor works even better for you.

(And, by the way, if you'd like to actually try out the new editor to give us feedback on what's working and what isn't, you can switch to Beta at any time.)

But the previous editor was causing enough problems for other TypePad bloggers that we took it very seriously. And when we looked into the issues that our bloggers were reporting to find the root cause, we found that many of these problems were fairly core issues in the previous rich text editor we were using.

So, we evaluated two options: the first option was to upgrade the previous editor (part of the YUI library), then port all of our patches to the editor to the new version, then test to see which formatting bugs have been fixed in interim releases, and then try (once again) to fix the lingering formatting issues; the second option was to switch to a different editor, since our hunch was that we could find an editor with a more stable baseline profile than the latest YUI editor. [1]

So, we evaluated a couple of editors, among them TinyMCE--which is what we ultimately chose--and we confirmed that we could find an editor that gets the basics right more consistently than our previous editor; for example, the types of formatting bugs that've long been an issue in the previous editor simply aren't a problem with TinyMCE. And so, given the amount of effort required to switch to the TinyMCE editor, vs trying to improve our previous editor once again, we chose to switch editors.

That's not to say that this has been an easy transition! We've put a significant amount of work into making the move to the new editor feel as transparent as possible for all TypePad bloggers. But we're making a lot of progress thanks to the members of our beta team, and we'll be shipping some fixes to the editor in the beginning of next week; and, in parallel, we'll be continuing to improve the editor, and get more feedback, within the coming weeks, all before we ship the new editor to non-beta customers.

[1] BTW, this isn't to disparage the great work that the YUI team has done over the years--we're still heavy users of YUI in TypePad.

Rev Stan

I can't get any pictures to upload at all which is bit annoying. It freezes up the whole page and I have to refresh to go back to the post.
Any news on when this might be fixed?

Amy Flynn

Well thank you for clarifying all of that. It sounds like it is a better solution. Yes I have been having DREADFUL font and formatting issues in the old "new" compose editor, but I learned to work around it, I basically did no composing in the the compose window. I compose elsewhere and paste it in.

It sounds like this new one is hopeful. I think the problem is after the nightmare of the last "new" compose editor no one is rushing to be excited about another "new" compose editor.

I'll just be very happy with an editor that works and doesn't decide it is going to change my font or reformat my posts because it obviously has has an ego that tells it that it know what looks best! ;-)

Thanks too for the offer to switch to Beta, I don't have the time to play, I need to know that I can get my posts and pages done quickly. Copy and paste works well. It's been a long time since I've been able to actually compose in the compose editor! If I find some extra time, maybe I'll give a test run.

Think Tanked

Actually, the more I use it, the more problems I have. Sorry, guys, too many problems to stay on the Beta Team--had to take myself off.

-my default font has changed.
-when I try to change a draft and re-save it, I get prompted that I'm going to lose all of my changes.
-severe spacing problems that, when I try to fix them, reformats everything in the post.

Again, I don't understand the continual changes in the compose editor when:

a) they make things worse rather than better
b) still don't address the basic problems that TypePad users have been requesting/complaining about for years. One example: we absolutely need to be able to credit images used in our posts. This is not a new request. WHY HAS IT NOT BEEN ADDRESSED?

I would like a genuine explanation (not the canned corporate response about appreciating the feedback) of what is so great about this compose editor that it's worth putting up with all the problems we're all experiencing, while we still can't get the basics we've asked for years on end.

Michael

These changes are not "awesome". You folks at Typepad have your heads I don't know where, but you're not listening to your customers.

David M. Gottlieb

Justify. Why would you take it out? I know you intend on putting it back, but why did you remove the button?

Bas Booister

Sorry but I don't think that the changes are good. I cant make a line arround my pictures anymore.

Geo

Amen!

MELANCHOLIA

I'm running 6 weblogs on Typepad. I pay Typepad every month expecting to get quality. Without going into details, I just want to say that I deserve an excellent compose editor. Stop re-inventing the warm water.

Captive Aquatics

The CSS changes don't justify text above the HR link, so I still have to manually write the code to justify that.

We can get an entirely new editor, but still no customizable post footers?

Katie Skiff

I am not liking this. When I add pictures, they all go at the top and not where I want them, then I have to change my text. Second, somtimes I can publish and others times I can't and then I lose everything. Boo!

Marc R. Masferrer

Accent marks, ñ, etc are not working in the text.

Dhananjay Parkhe

Why fix what ain't broke, guys. The earlier one was well and functional. There were opportunities for improvements ( OFI) which could have be gathered thru a feedback from users. I am sure, good sense will prevail soon and normalcy will be restored.

Catching The Waves

This year has seen TypePad add many social media functions, such as "retweet", "follow" and Facebook "like" buttons. These are all well and good, but the core of blogging is writing, editing, typesetting and posting. When those core functions are difficult or awkward, these Web 2.0 options become irrelevant and TypePad becomes self-defeating.

I urge the TypePad team to concentrate on the text editor, the importing and arranging of images and the uploading of articles to the net. Everytime I post, it feels as though I'm having to fight the (various) text editors.

It's even happened with this comment: the cursor has disappeared and I'm having to guess where it is. It's the same when I'm writing a post - there are many minor bugs that should have been ironed out by now. The TypePad editor is a relatively basic word processor and should not be causing such problems.

I'm all for blogs having the latest whizz-bang technology, but please get the basics right. Best of luck! :)


Peg

I am having many problems with this new format. I cannot insert photos where I wish - my screen sometimes jumps around for no discernable reason, etc.

Is it possible to go back?? Thanks!

Birdbabyface

I'm new to type pad as I don't often use it but finding since i used it my natral listings have shot up !

Ams

So far, I like the new editor...however, thus far I have one huge beef with it!! It is with the image editor. I can no longer get the image editor to allow me to put two images side by side centered on a line by themselves. I can do this with the old editor, and I like the option in the new editor to put images in as a thumbnail gallery, but what if I want to simply display all the photos side by side so that my readers don't HAVE to click through thumbnails?? I think we should be given ALL the display options for images and not just some of them...it should be our decision how our images are displayed in a blog post, not the image editor's. Give me back the option to display my images side by side centered on a line please!!!!

Ams

Oh yah, one other problem..I like the text color options of the old editor better. Now the color that I used to use for text is no longer available, and if i click on "more colors", nothing appears in the little pop-up window. Not cool....

Account Deleted

One more issue; the editor seems to be blocking the browser from displaying misspelled words. the only way to find them is to run the spell check. Another extra step...So

Dear beta team, we love you, and your hard work, but with all these complaints, and no real advantage to the new editor, maybe it's time you revert back to the old one.

kimmi8

Thanks for the feedback Scott. We posted this to Everything TypePad instead of the Beta blog because most people are following the TP team and we wanted as many eyeballs on this as possible.

Do you frequently use the header font pulldown menu?

I couldn't agree more on the font sizing and will see if we have an open bug for that. We'll be updating the blog with a known issues list soon.

kimmi8

Thanks Werner, great to hear you're loving it!

kimmi8

Thanks for the feedback. Can you provide more info as to what's not working in the thumbnail gallery? And it'd be great to know the browser that you're using.

kimmi8

Image Editing is on the list to be fixed in the next release!

kimmi8

Thanks for the feedback. We brought back 'full justify' in a patch release today. Let us know if you find any other issues.

Account Deleted

Hi Kimmie,

I am using the latest version of Firefox.
With regards to the gallery, it now only shows thumbnails of the first 4 images while you are uploading them although you can keep going with no confirmation of a successful upload.
When viewing the gallery, it all looks fine with all thumbnails present and the first image on show, however when you click on the next thumbnail, the large image (500px in this case) dissappears and does not come back no matter which thumbnail selected.

Hope this is clear enough?

Cheers,
PropertyProfit

kimmi8

Thanks for the feedback James. The editor is only in Beta at the moment. Your editors can switch out of that by going to Account > Join the Beta Team.

I believe the double clicking on links is something that we built on top of the old editor. It may be possible for us to bring it back, I'll check with the team on that. Editing the image title and alt parameters will be fixed in the next release.

kimmi8

I forgot to also mention that you can hyperlink an image. You need to select the image and then click on the link icon. Though that's an extra step similar with editing the link URL so I can see if we can make it better.

kimmi8

We pushed out a fix for this today. Let me know if you're still having problems with Spanish characters.

kimmi8

Thanks for the feedback. A few folks have asked for a larger range of font sizes so we'll try to get that into the final release.

kimmi8

What browser/OS are you using when trying to upload photos?

Jeff Korhan

The word count feature is the best addition for me as a business blogger. The spell check auto-complete on the mobile editor is nice too!

Jeff

Account Deleted

New compose editor doesn't even work on iPad in safari.
I'm outta the beta crew as of now.

kimmi8

Good to hear Jeff!

Susan @ Raisin Toast

Well, the compose editor was just fine until you changed it today. I noticed I can't put a border around my images with the editor now, something that I have been doing for some time now. Also, the HTML is all messed up. Whereas with the editor before, when I switched over to the HTML to add breaks between text and images, they were easy to find, now all the text and HTML is crammed together. I know the old editor wasn't the greatest, but this one is even worse!! PLEASE FIX THIS SOON!!

Susan @ Raisin Toast

Thank goodness! I just realized that if I go to my account and get out of being a Beta tester, that I get my old compose editor back. Yay! Although this old editor isn't the best, as I said before, it is still tons better than what you just gave me to use in Beta. Come on guys - we're going backwards here!!

Account Deleted

The new compose editor has now borked my feedburner feed and both RSS and emails have stopped going out because it inserts some weird characters in the html, invalidating the feed :((((.

This is despite composing my posts in Text Edit and pasting the simple text into Typepad. A borked feed really sucks when you have nearly 1500 subscribers who are no longer receiving your posts, especially as they are potential business customers.

Fixing Feedburner and getting the emails to go again is a horrid nightmare.

I'm all for change for the better, but change for the worse is a backwards step none of us need.

Teresa Boardman

The like button doesn't work on my blog. once someone likes then it shows up on all posts. Comment moderation is a disaster. i either have to moderate and then I have to approve my own comments or if I leave it open I get spammed into oblivion. I have been using typepad for 5 years. it was cutting edge when I started but not it has fallen behind. It is hard to move blogs to word press becasue I have no ftp access to my photos.

JimF

At a more temperate level than the prior flames, I can understand why you'd move to open source rather than pay programmers, but from a customer perspective, I'm uncertain as to whether you're moving in the right direction.

My list:
* Better image editing.
* captions / credits
* anchors without HTML.
* "blog it" applett doesn't mangle formatting.
* comments facilitate replies/ threading.

Separate from the editor, improved, integrated reporting (if I want Google analytics I'll use Blogger, for free).

Thank you and good luck! / jim

Disengaged Judi

There was nothing wrong with the old compose editor. I'm experiencing similar issues that folks have previously addressed.

I come from the school of "if it ain't broke - don't fix it."

kimmi8

We're working on that bug. Thanks for the feedback. You can switch out of the Beta composer at any time by going unchecking the Account > Summary > Join the Beta Team setting.

Brian Hines

I heartily agree with all the commenters who want TypePad's focus to be on improving core blogging functions, rather than social networking niceties and "fixing" a compose editor that really isn't broken.

Every day I get a bunch of spam comments. I dutifully mark them as spam. Then the next day, the same spam comes from the same spammers. TypePad's spam filter needs a lot of work.

Every day I get valid comments on my two blogs. For quite a few years I've asked for improvements to the comment functions, such as (1) allowing more than ten comments to show up in the sidebar; (2) being able to click on one of the sidebar comments and going right to the comment, rather than just to the post (this is deeply irritating when a post has over a hundred comments extending over multiple pages); (3) allowing blog visitors to sign up for an email notification when a comment has been published on a post they're interested in.

I agree with those who feel that TypePad has lost its way. You need to look at Apple as a model. Offer a blogging service that has a simple interface, is easy to use, offers user friendly features, and is rock solid. After that is accomplished, and only then, play around at the margins with Facebook this and that, or subtle improvements to the compose editor.

Randall Grass

I really wish you had not made these changes or if you were going to make changes you could have given us warning.
right now my biggest problem with the new set-up is that there
doesn't seem to be the "pages" option, which allowed me to post a line or two of my latest blog on the home page of my website, replacing any previous excerpt. Is there a way to do this now?
Currently I can publish a new post and it goes into my blog section.
But I have no way to delete a line of my previous blog from my homepage and them replace it with the line from my new blog.
Please advise

Adam

FWIW, I've been getting this problem intermittently in the WebKit-based browsers (Chrome and Safari), both on Mac OSX 10.6.

Account Deleted

So, I haven't looked through every comment but has someone pointed out to you that when you spell check a widget to add a word appears directly over the list of alternate spellings? It's clumsy. Can you merge the two widgets.

Also I prefer to see words appear misspelled as I'm typing them. How does everyone else feel?

Lastly, can you PLEASE add 'transgender' to you basic dictionary. It's really offensive not to think that you don't recognize that word.

P.S. My blog is most assuredly NSFW.

@xannov

I see that the Justify icon is now back :o). Seems to work for normal text, but anything indented or quoted doesn't respond to it. It works (temporarily) as you compose the post, but as soon as you publish it, the formatting is lost on all quotes.

Elaine

I have signed off being a member of the Beta team at the moment as I cannot cope with all the ups and downs. There I was, composing a post, all was well and suddenly my screen did a wobble, my task bars disappeared, pictures could not be entered etc etc all of which have been suffered by others who have left comments here.

I fully understand that when a new program is rolled out, bugs and wobbles will occur. Always does though it has always been a mystery to me why. Surely everything should be fine before you decide to change what was already perfectly OK already.

I have been bombarding you with tickets over my various probs, which I now see are not unique thank goodness, but I do agree with the various comments on why Typepad keeps updating all the time? I work on the premise If it Ain't broke don't Fix it.

OK and after this moan, could I say, however, that all you guys in the Help Team are gret at getting back to me and sorting things out. My thanks to you for that

Ian Murray Photography

I second that - when will we get the ability to caption and credit photographs!

Come on Typepad Team - this is sorely needed!

Andy Orrock

I depend a lot on showing in-line code, XML, programmatic output (etc.) examples. Lots of times I paste that into the HTML tab. Under the old 'Compose' editor, that would maintain all the line breaking and spacing. In the new Compose editor, if I go from the HTML tab to Rich Text and back to HTML, all my formatting is gone...and my SyntaxHighlighter add-on shows everything as one line.

Back on old 'Compose': everything looks fine.

I've removed myself from the Beta program.

candy

Auto save feature NOT working yet again! And I've lost ANOTHER post this evening! Ugh. Not happy, Typepad.

Zviki

It will be nice to have the "full screen" feature in the HTML editor part as well.

Michelle Denise Norton

Where did the font colors go? And can they come back please.

Michael Gat

The editor wipes out custom HTML that I add in.

I make use of Amazon product boxes, which require an iframe. Never had a problem inserting them in the past and having them stick. This editor seems to wipe out HTML that it isn't familiar with or which it didn't add itself. What's the point of an "HTML" mode if the editor is just going to wipe out the HTML that you insert or modify?

Example of this here: http://thoughtsingrey.com/2010/05/confidence-lost.html

The old editor allowed me to insert that extra html. This one won't.

Otherwise, I generally like it. I haven't had any of the freezes that I was encountering previously.

Michael Gat

I said above that I have the same problem. The editor seems to wipe out custom html that you might insert. This is a major problem for those of us who need to embed stuff into entries.

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