WYSIWYG News: HtmlArea Discontinued!

[adam2003w]

WYSIWYG News: HtmlArea Discontinued!

This monday (02/28/05) I went to the htmlarea.com forums to ask a question on a mod I was working on, and to my suprise, the forums were closed with the following message up:

The forums are temporarily closed while we update our website. htmlarea.com will be re-launching soon with a directory of wysiwyg editors from all over the web. Please try back in a few days.

Opensource projects are always tentative and may close at any time, but I was shocked the forums were down. They have a good community actively developing mods and such. So I shot interactivetools.com an email:

Interactive Tools - When will htmlarea forums be up again? I'm working on a slight mod for it and need to post some questions for help on the forum. Let me know. Thanks. - Adam

And they wrote me back with this to say:

Hi Adam,

Thanks for your email!

While htmlArea has always been an open source script, we've decided to
discontinue it so the forums are going to remain closed.

The good news is we'll be relaunching htmlarea.com in the near future, and
this time as a directory of WYSIWYG editors. So instead of being able to
choose from just htmlArea, you'll have an entire directory of WYSIWYG
editors to choose from.

If you want you can join the interactivetools.com newsletter and we can let
you know when htmlarea.com has been relaunched as a WYSIWYG directory, or
feel free to visit htmlarea.com occasionally and see the changes as they
unfold.

In the mean time, if you have any other questions please feel free to let me
know!

Best Regards,
Cliff Stefanuk - Product Specialist
interactivetools.com, inc.

Wow. Not only are the forums down but their going to remain closed. And add to that, htmlarea is discontinued! Ouch. If anyone had the itch to start a spike development of htmlarea and a community for modding. Now is the time. Well, I wrote them back:

Cliff,

Discontinue HtmlArea! Ouch. Give us some warning.

How and when do you plan to implement the new forums/site? Will it be days, weeks, months? Will you have a forum on there for htmlarea? What is your plan? You guys had a pretty good community going there. Put some ad words up and down the side and I'm sure you could at least pay for hosting the forums.

I certainly have benefitted from htmlarea and although others have said there are more advanced editors out there, I have yet to find any wysisyg editor with as good an image manager or file manager as those available as mods for htmlarea3. It was good to have a place to have a community available to contribute to and ask questions of.

Please give me a summary of what's going on. Thanks.

Adam

Man, I'm a bit bummed out. The image and file manager mods for htmlarea are so awesome. Anyone got any clue where we can start a htmlarea and htmlarea mod development community?

[someonewhois]

Is one still able to download the files? I'm sure somebody'll take the source (with permission, even though it IS open source) and develop it further for the public.

[adam2003w]

Originally Posted by someonewhois

Is one still able to download the files? I'm sure somebody'll take the source (with permission, even though it IS open source) and develop it further for the public.

I downloaded the latest release of HtmlArea-3.0-RC3 off of their forums is dated January 2005 and I don't know where else you can get it.

If you want it, you can download the copy I downloaded at the following link:

http://master.paradigmprint.com/mast...7.0.0.0.0.html

I'll be hosting a copy until a forum has popped up again that will support HtmlArea and it's mod community.

[Bleys]

You can still download the last stable release from: http://www.htmlarea.com/htmlarea_2/download.html

[adam2003w]

Originally Posted by Bleys

You can still download the last stable release from: http://www.htmlarea.com/htmlarea_2/download.html

That maybe true. You can download HtmlArea2. However HtmlArea3, although beta, was pretty good and had some cool mods (like image and file manager mods that rocked). And you could only download HtmlArea3 in the forums, which are now closed. That's why I'm hosting a January 2005 copy of HtmlArea3 on my site for anyone who wants it.

Anybody else got any ideas about forming a new support community for this hanging opensource project?

[Bleys]

I was just posting the link for everyone's general information on the subject. I think the idea of creating a new community to continue support and development for HTMLArea is a great one.

[adam2003w]

Originally Posted by Bleys

I was just posting the link for everyone's general information on the subject. I think the idea of creating a new community to continue support and development for HTMLArea is a great one.

Thanks, Bleys. I didn't even know you could download HtmlArea2. I panicked and thought they were removing all versions. Good of you to find that and let me know.

As for a new community. I hope one pops up somewhere. If no place does, I might have find some cheap space and put up a site with forums.

[adam2003w]

P.S. Bleys, your ForumTrack, Creative Roster, GFXGallery, ForumGFX and mockriot sites aren't loading. I try to launch the links and after a long time, the browser times out and says "not found".

[Bleys]

Yeah, sorry about that. I just updated my sig with a link to the thread about that. In short: my servers got erased somehow (still not sure how). Not sure when things will be back. CreativeRoster, ForumGFX, and GFXGallery are the top priority, along with EpicMania.com, which isn't listed. Mockriot will probably be discontinued, and no decision on ForumTrack yet.

Anyway, I don't mean to hijack your thread.

If you just wanted to set up a forum, www.p4host.com offers pretty good cheap web hosting. I have used them before. And you could always used SourceForge.net for download space.

[GORF]

I'll donate the space (for now) if someone wants to grab a name.

Available:

htmlareasupport.com
htmlareaforum.com
htmlareaforums.com
htmlareahelp.com
htmlareatalk.com

[adam2003w]

Originally Posted by GORF

I'll donate the space (for now) if someone wants to grab a name.

Available:

htmlareasupport.com
htmlareaforum.com
htmlareaforums.com
htmlareahelp.com
htmlareatalk.com

Thanks, Gorf. I've been reading around the net and it looks like Xinha ( http://xinha.gogo.co.nz/ ) is the new resource for HtmlArea. It's basically just a fork of HtmlArea, even using the "htmlarea.js" as it's functioning root file and support HtmlArea plugins as "legacy plugins". I don't know how good it would be to start a whole new community for HtmlArea when it infact exists in Xinha.

I don't know maybe it would be a good thing. Infact, Gorf, I'm buying the domain name and will PM you with the info. Thanks.

[Bleys]

Perhaps you should contact the Xinha people. That's not the most memorable name, afterall. And now that HTMLArea is kaput, maybe the HTMLArea people would give up the name... who knows. Or maybe Xinha would register a .com

[GORF]

Hosting is set.

Ready to launch in 5 . 4 . 3 . 2 . . . . well it might be a few days

[adam2003w]

Originally Posted by Bleys

Perhaps you should contact the Xinha people. That's not the most memorable name, afterall. And now that HTMLArea is kaput, maybe the HTMLArea people would give up the name... who knows. Or maybe Xinha would register a .com

I think it says on the HTMLArea web site that you can continue developing HTMLArea as a seperate project as long as you don't call it HTMLArea. Infact Xinha stands for "Xinha Is Not HtmlArea". I plan to continue comunity support of HTMLArea at htmlarea.com as a "fan site".

GORF has sent me the information for the hosting and I've bought the domain name. Let see if I can get a site up in the next couple of days.

[adam2003w]

Originally Posted by GORF

Hosting is set.

Ready to launch in 5 . 4 . 3 . 2 . . . . well it might be a few days

BAM! Got it.

[Bleys]

Let us know when you get all set up and how it goes.

[adam2003w]

For the curious, I've just launched the site for htmlareaforum.com seen here:

http://www.htmlareaforum.com

I'll be hosting a forum and file downloads within the forum with various htmlarea files, forks, and mods. Drop on by! Thanks.

Also, thanks to Gorf for offering to host the site. I've decided to host the site myself, but without his initial offer, I never would have put the effort forth to do a site like this. Thanks, Gorf.