We’ve got a big announcement today about two new plugins that will help take your content editing experience to another level in the latest TinyMCE 4.5.2 release.
Let’s start by digging into our Enhanced Media Embed plugin.
Enable a richer content experience with Enhanced Media Embed
Typically, any URL that pointed to a piece of media content was displayed as a hyperlinked URL, like this:
But in today’s world, that’s not good enough. We all want information as fast as possible. Transparency. “Show me what I’m about click on”, is something we’ve all come to expect from popular blogging and social media platforms. If it’s an article, give me a preview. If it’s something I can interact with—whether it’s a YouTube video, SlideShare slideshow, or Spotify playlist—I want to be able to use it within the editor.
Once you install the Enhanced Media Embed plugin, simply paste a URL into your editor, and that URL will resolve into an enhanced media thumbnail whenever possible.
So instead of that plain URL text, you’ll now see something like:
Much better.
We believe the ability to draw on a wide variety of external media sources to create enriched media embeds is a big step forward for both our content creators and their readers.
A note for the developers
Both our Cloud and SDK versions of the plugin work with iFramely to deliver the best possible enhanced media experience. But while iFramely requires a paid subscription, if you use our Cloud plugin, we’ve already covered the iFramely cost for you – and configured the service so that it’s ready to go from day one. Cloud for the win.
If you still prefer to use the SDK, don’t worry. Our documentation will cover all the information you need to get this plugin up and running in no time.
No more broken links
Let’s talk about our new Link Checker plugin. It acts just like a spell checker, but instead of checking spelling, Link Checker will let you know if a link is valid, invalid or questionable.
If it’s valid, it will appear like any other hyperlink – underlined, blue text. Move along, nothing to see here.
But if it’s invalid or questionable, the link will now appear with a red background. Like so:
If you are inserting your link from inside the Insert Link dialog box, you’ll also see a warning icon in the URL field if we think the link is invalid or questionable.
Along with working inside the Insert Link dialog box, the Link Checking plugin will also double-check each hyperlink every time you load the editor. If you’ve enabled our Autolink plugin, Link Checking will also work as-you-type.
This is a huge time-saver for anyone who creates content – no more having to double-check all of the URLs. Not to mention the benefit of no longer frustrating your readers with broken links.
One more thing: you may have noticed that we referred earlier to invalid or questionable links.
So what do we mean by “questionable?”
If our Link Checker service thinks there is any possibility your link might not be valid, we want to flag the link for you so that you can make an informed decision.
If you examine the link and decide that the “questionable” link is what you want, then you can remove that invalid/questionable formatting easily, by selecting “Ignore” from the new contextual menu we’ve introduced as part of this service.
You can also edit, open or remove the hyperlink altogether from this menu.
Want to read more about Media Insertion and Link Checking? Check out our docs here and here.
As always, follow us Ephox and TinyMCE on Twitter to keep up to date with our latest announcements and releases.
