What's new in the WYSIWYG editor

Cascade CMS has an updated WYSIWYG editor. This first release stays close to the old look and feel on purpose. Most of what you already know about editing content works the way it always has.

This article covers what is new, what has changed, and what to check if something does not behave the way you expect.

If you are not sure whether your instance has the new editor yet, these signals will tell you:

• The menu names have no arrows beside them, and Formats, font and size sit in boxed dropdowns.
• Misspelled words are underlined as you type, without running a separate spellcheck pass.
• Clicking into a table shows a toolbar in place, instead of sending you to the Table menu.

If none of those match what you see, you are still on the previous editor. Contact support to have the new one enabled.

The toolbar, menus, and dialogs have been restyled. Buttons sit in the same general places, so muscle memory carries over. Icons are cleaner, spacing is more generous, and contrast is improved.

Dialogs were rebuilt as well. They size themselves to their content instead of using fixed dimensions.

Misspelled words are underlined as you write, rather than appearing only when you run a separate spellcheck pass. Right-click a flagged word to see suggestions, or add it to your dictionary so it stops being flagged.

Checking runs in English, and works the same way in every browser. To check a whole field at once, use Tools > Spellcheck.

Content pasted from another application usually carries markup you do not want. Power Paste cleans up content from Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Google Docs, and other web pages, stripping the markup those sources carry while keeping the structure you want: headings, lists, tables, and links.

There are two ways to paste. Pasting normally is the right choice most of the time.

The table plugin has been rebuilt. Most table work now happens in place, without going through the Table menu.

• A context toolbar. Click into a table and a toolbar appears in place with the operations you need: table properties, delete table, and insert or delete rows and columns. No hunting through the Table menu. Merging and splitting cells stay under Table > Cell.
• Unchanged The grid picker. As before, insert a table by dragging across a grid to pick its dimensions, or use the dialog to type exact numbers.
• Unchanged Restyled property dialogs. Table, row, and cell properties each get their own dialog, with basic settings on the General tab and styling on Advanced — the same split as before, in the new styling.
• Headers, footers, and captions are still fully supported, and still the right thing to do for accessibility.
• Classes still work. Table, row, and cell classes configured for your site remain available. The menu path has changed slightly; the classes themselves are unchanged.

The link dialog now supports query parameters on both internal and external links. Previously you could set only the path; now you can append parameters without switching to the source code view.

This matters most for campaign tracking, for linking to a pre-filtered view of a listing page, and for any internal link that needs to pass a value through to the destination page.

Internal links otherwise work the way they always have. Cascade still tracks the relationship, still updates the link if the target page moves, and still warns you if the target is deleted.

Notifications and dialogs are now fully keyboard reachable. Every notification carries a visible close button you can reach with Tab, and dialogs follow standard focus behavior.

TinyMCE has had several accessibility releases between the two versions, so screen reader support in menus and dialogs is improved.

• WYSIWYG Editor Configurations still control which buttons and formats appear for your users.
• CSS classes made available through Formats still work the same way.
• Unchanged Image, file, and page choosers behave as before. You still browse to assets in Cascade the same way.
• Internal link tracking is unchanged.