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TinyMCE 6.2: Create better content faster – Merge Tags, Autocorrect, & Footnotes

October 2nd, 2022

13 min read

The numbers 6.2 and the phrase better content faster

Written by

John Rau

Category

The Tiny Way

Every day, developers around the world trust TinyMCE to deliver consistent and reliable editing experiences to their users. With TinyMCE 6.2, we’re introducing new features to help your users create better content, faster

Read on to discover these enhancements, and how they can help you unlock new editing experiences within your app.

TinyMCE 6.2 release highlights

Here’s what to expect when you upgrade to TinyMCE 6.2:

  • New Merge Tags plugin: Personalize content at scale by inserting read-only merge tags (also known as personalization tokens, or mail merge fields) into your content.
  • New Spelling Autocorrect plugin: Fix over 1,000 obvious (and not-so-obvious) mistakes before they see the light of day, all in real-time.
  • New Footnotes plugin: Create content that adheres to best practices and standards, giving it more credibility and authority.
  • Improvements to bulleted and numbered list styling: Provide a more predictable editing experience – bullets and numbers are now formatted the same as their contents.
  • And 19 bug fixes to the editor

 

Quick Links

Find out what’s available in this release the latest webinar:

And here’s the transcript:

Hey there it's John from Tiny and I'm joined by Fredrik the product manager for Tinymce today we're going to talk about Tiny mce 6.2 which is all about creating better content faster Tinymc6.2 comes with three new features and one major enhancement as well as several bug fixes okay so let's get into it so the first feature we're going to talk about today is merge tags merge tags is highly requested by the community and customers which is why we're so excited to introduce it the first use case that usually comes to mind with merge tags is email but merge tags can also be really useful if you're inserting dynamic content into a document builder or even a content management system for this example we'll take a look at email because it's the most familiar use case so it's really easy for users to start adding merge tags all they have to do is enter the beginning of the merge tag and start typing whatever merge tag they want to enter the drop down list automatically narrows down the list so they can choose what they want they can also choose the merge tag from a menu item or from an optional toolbar button that they can add which they can also filter through now merge tags are read only which means users can't go in and accidentally mess up their merge tag they can delete it but they can't mistype it or misspell it what this means is there's less risk of render errors when your email is sent out or when your document is rendered another really cool feature about merge tags is they inherit the formatting that you apply to them so for example if you change the font color or adjust the formatting the merge tag will inherit that as well what that means is your users can actually see accurate previews of what the content is going to look like with the merge tags now setting up merge tags as a developer is super easy all you have to do is enable the merge tags plugin specify your merge tag prefix and suffix if you're not going with the default double curly braces and then list out each of the merge tags you want your users to choose from merge tags is also backwards compatible with your content that is to say if you're already using your own flavor of merge tags within your app for example plain text merge tags all you have to do is specify the pattern that's used to recognize the merge tags and Tinymc will automatically apply that read-only formatting to them in the editor this means you don't have to go back and change a bunch of content in your app when you enable the merge tags plugin merge tag is available to customers on our essential plan and above next we're going to talk about the footnotes plugin another highly requested feature from the community and customers footnotes works exactly like your users expect it's great for any content creation use case for example if someone's writing academic content business content medical or scientific content anytime your users have to reference external sources footnotes is great let's take a look at how it works so I'm going to place my cursor here click the add footnotes button and paste in my reference you'll notice that it generates a footnotes table at the bottom and automatically starts numbering each footnote now add in a couple more references so now that i've added a few more references you can see that they're automatically numbered now if i were to delete a reference in the middle the numbering is automatically updated what this means is that your users don't have to go in manually create their own footnotes table and keep changing around the numbering every time they add something less errors and a more enjoyable experience for your users another thing you can do is move the footnotes table around and put content after it so for example if i wanted to include a copyright notice i could do that and there would be no problem adding it after the footnotes enabling the footnotes plugin is super easy all you have to do is enable it as a plugin in the config and then optionally add it as a toolbar button footnotes is available on our professional tier and above okay on to the next one the third plugin that we're introducing with Tinymce 6.2 is autocorrect autocorrect corrects over a thousand common typos in the english language and auto capitalizes words at the beginning of sentences it offers the same experience that your users are used to on their phone or other content creation apps let's take a look at a quick example let's say i start typing a common misspelling of the word the autocorrect will just automatically fix it without the user having to do any further action autocorrect can be used in any use case to make sure that your users don't have to go back and fix annoying typos that they make it saves them time and makes for a more enjoyable editing experience to get auto correct up and running all you have to do is enable the plugin and you're good to go just like footnotes autocorrect is available in our professional plan and above now another major enhancement to Tinymc6.2 is how the editor handles bulleted lists and numbered lists specifically the formatting of the bullets and numbers now when your users have lists the numbers and the bullets inherit the formatting of the text within them so let's say for example i increase the font size of this text the bullet's going to increase let's say i change the color same thing is going to happen in order for your users to benefit from this there's no configuration needed all you need to do is upgrade to 6.2 okay Fredrik over to you to talk about bug fixes thank you John so every day developers trust us to deliver a consistent reliable editing experience for millions of users we put a lot of pride and effort into delivering high quality code and our qa team and our big community ensures that every release are up to our high standards many of the bugs that we receive from customers are about specific edge cases and for every release we allocate a significant amount of time to address these issues for this release we got 19 bullets in the Tinymc 6.2 changelog one of the improvements is that now power paste can handle pasting large documents and i mean large we also addressed a couple of issues around content editable false and how these non-editable elements behave in the editor check out the release notes which you can find inside the documentation through Tiny.cloud here are the ways that you can get your hands on Tinymc6.2 you can upgrade seamlessly from older Tinymc6 versions as 6.2 is a minor version without any breaking changes and if you are using our cloud stable channel you'll get 6.2 automatically if you want to take advantage of all these new plugins just make sure you have them on your plan or upgrade if necessary all plans come with support from our professional support team who are here to help you get up and running quickly thanks Fredrik and of course if you're not using Tinymce yet you can always sign up for a 14-day free trial on our website to test drive all of these features Fredrik how can people find out what's next to find out what's next head over to Tiny.cloud roadmap to have a look at what we are working on you can also help shape future version of Tinymc by letting us know what's important to you and your users awesome so that's it for Tinymce 6.2 stay tuned for the next release

Personalize content at scale with Merge Tags

You spoke, and we listened: Merge tags were one of the most requested features from our customers and the community. And from today, a new Merge Tags plugin is available for developers. It’s designed to make it easy for users to personalize their content, while at the same time minimizing embarrassing and costly render errors. 

Merge Tags lets users insert predefined, read-only merge tags (also known as mail merge or personalization tokens) into their content. This type of functionality is very popular in email use cases, but is also applicable to any use case where content needs to be personalized at scale – for example in document builders, content management systems or even learning management systems.

How Merge Tags works

The first step is to add the Merge Tags plugin to your config. Next, specify your list of merge tags and optionally, their user-friendly names. If you have a lot of merge tags, you can also categorize them:

mergetags_list: [
  { value: "Contact.FirstName", title: "Contact First Name" },
  { value: "Contact.LastName", title: "Contact Last Name" },
  { value: "Contact.Email", title: "Contact Email" },
  {
    title: "Here is a category",
    menu: [
      { value: "Sender.FirstName", title: "Sender First Name" },
      { value: "Sender.Email", title: "Sender Email" },
    ],
  },
];

Once configured, all your users have to do is start typing a merge tag and the autocompleter dropdown will help them narrow down their choice. They can also select it from the menubar or optional toolbar button.

TinyMCE merge tags working in a demo

Key features of the Merge Tags plugin:

1. Merge Tags are read-only, which means users can’t accidentally edit them. 

If you’re currently using, or have used plain text merge tags in the past, you’ve probably had a situation where a merge tag has become unintentionally malformed by the user, and the rendered content ends up malformed as well (for example [[FIRST.NAM]] showing up in all your sent emails because the merge tag was mistyped). With TinyMCE’s Merge Tags plugin, this risk is eliminated.

2. Merge Tags are backwards compatible with your content. 

For example, if you’re currently using plain text merge tags, all you have to do is specify their text pattern, and TinyMCE automatically applies the special formatting to that pattern and makes them read-only. No need to go back and make changes to content already in your database:

mergetags_prefix: '[[', // Your merge tag prefix
mergetags_suffix: ']]', // Your merge tag suffix
3. Merge Tags inherit the formatting applied to them.

For instance, any font and color changes to the text also affects the style of the merge tags. This means that your users can see accurate previews of how the content will be rendered, as they’re creating it.

Note: Merge Tags makes it easy for your users to select and insert merge tags, however your app is responsible for merging data fields into the content when it is rendered and/or sent.

Availability

Merge Tags are now available in the TinyMCE Professional plan and above for self-serve customers. If you're on a custom plan, contact your Account Manager to find out if it's on your current plan.

Create credible content with Footnotes

Another highly requested feature, the new Footnotes plugin helps users create content that adheres to best practices – through the use of citations and/or additional information. This practice gives the content greater credibility and helps establish an authority position. 

It’s a great plugin for any use case where external content needs to be referenced: academic, medical, scientific or other content.

How Footnotes works

Footnotes work exactly like your users expect, and once enabled, it’s ready to use. Users place their cursor where they want to add the footnote, press the footnotes button in the toolbar or in the menubar, and start typing their reference.

A table is automatically created at the bottom of the content, with numbers instantly added, removed and reordered as (or if) footnotes change. 

TinyMCE footnotes running in a browser

When the content is published, the superscript numbers (e.g. 2) automatically link to their entry in the footnotes table, and the caret (^) in the footnote links back to the content where it is referenced. This allows easy navigation, and is particularly helpful in longer documents with multiple footnotes. 

The footnotes table can be placed anywhere in your content. For instance, if you wanted to place copyright information under the footnotes table, you can move it with a click and drag action, and place more information under the table.

We anticipate the Footnotes plugin will ease a lot of frustration for users who currently manually create and maintain their own footnotes tables, by speeding up content creation and eliminating any mismatched footnote numbers.

Availability

Footnotes are now available in the TinyMCE Professional plan and above.

Fix obvious (and not-so-obvious) mistakes with Spelling Autocorrect

The new Spelling Autocorrect plugin fixes 1,000+ common typos (like “teh”) and auto-capitalizes at the beginning of sentences, all in real-time. It mimics the experience that your users are used to when writing on their phone or in other popular content creation apps.

Best of all, your users don’t have to waste time going back to fix annoying mistakes – resulting in a more efficient and satisfying content creation experience.

How Spelling Autocorrect works

If you’re on the Tiny Cloud, simply enable the Spelling Autocorrect plugin. There are two config options available to optionally turn off auto correcting typos, and capitalizing first letters of sentences – autocorrect_autocorrect and autocorrect_capitalize.

TinyMCE Autocorrect working in a browser

Availability

Spelling Autocorrect is available in TinyMCE Professional plan, and above.

Improved list bullet and number formatting

Another popular request was to update the way TinyMCE styles list bullets and numbers. 

When creating a list, the bullets and numbers in the margins now inherit the style of the text they contain. This is the same way that most other content creation apps handle list formatting, so this enhancement will help you deliver a more predictable experience to users.

To take advantage of this change, there’s no configuration needed – you just need to upgrade to TinyMCE 6.2.

TinyMCE bullets and numbered list styling

TinyMCE 6.2 Bug fixes

Every day, thousands of developers trust TinyMCE to deliver a consistent and reliable editing experience to millions of users. We take this responsibility seriously. 

With every release, we commit a significant percentage of engineering resources to tackle bugs reported by our customers and the TinyMCE community. 

TinyMCE 6.2 carries with it 19 bug fixes across the user experience, content formatting and other categories. One notable improvement is to the PowerPaste plugin, where users can now paste in very large documents without any issue.

How to get TinyMCE 6.2 

If you’re already on any version of TinyMCE 6, you can upgrade seamlessly – TinyMCE 6.2 is a minor version without any breaking changes.

If you’re on the TinyMCE Cloud and on the “6” channel, TinyMCE will automatically update to 6.2.

If you don’t currently have these new plugins available in your TinyMCE plan, contact our customer success team for assistance.

You can also sign up for a FREE TinyMCE API key that comes with a free trial of the Premium Plugins for 14 days.

To find out what’s happening in the future for TinyMCE, head to our Public Product Roadmap to see what’s under development, and let the team at Tiny know what's important to you. 

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byJohn Rau

A former developer, John works on the Marketing team at Tiny. When he's not spreading the word about TinyMCE, he enjoys taking things apart and *trying* to put them back together (including his house and anything else that looks interesting).

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