It been documented that using your browser as a writing tool has its limitations and is painfully lacking in some respects. Jon Udell has covered this better then any one else in his article on the universal canvas. Jon sums the issues up nicely in his review of Radio 8:
Part of the answer is a ubiquitous replacement for the browser's hopelessly primitive TEXTAREA widget. The Microsoft DHTML edit control, exploited by Radio and other web-writing systems, is a flawed solution in several ways — IE-only, producing HTML rather than XHTML or XML. But the fact is that for the 90 percent of users who are running IE browsers, it works well enough — and (to my taste) better than the Java-based alternatives I've tried.
I've been painfully aware of this myself as a developer of several content-oriented sites. I'm also reminded of this shortcoming as I write this post in Notepad because I find the TEXTAREA interface of MovableType too difficult. (There are desktop applications such as w.bloggar or even Radio that make this easier, but I'm a fairly transient person I often find myself at a machine that is not my own.) Like Udell this has lead me to be on the lookout for a better solution.
This search has lead me to consider the possibility of using Flash. Flash 4 added forms support. Flash 5 added XML support. With MX, the latest version of Flash, Macromedia has added interface components and more robust scripting. With these new features and its widespread deployment across multiple OSes and browsers, I theorized that a replacement component may be possible. Just I recently came across Stuart Schoneveld's promising Rich Text Editor that seems to validate my theory. There is no source or documentation to know to what extent the control could be pushed but I find this encouraging based on my cursory knowledge of Flash.
This find has lead me to consider the possibilities of having an extensible editor component that, I think, could potentially bring in-browser authoring to a new level. With the use of an XML configuration file an application developer could create a in-page editor that are specific to the writing task and obscures the user having to understand the semantics of the underlying markup. A user would not have to be bothered in knowing that a title string should be centered, bold and blue or encapsulated in a <span class="title"></span>. They would just have to select the string and select title from the editor's tool bar. The editor would handle the translation. That would be very helpful.
