Migrating from TinyMCE 5 to TinyMCE 6

The process for setting up a basic TinyMCE 6 instance is the same as TinyMCE 5.

Most configuration changes in TinyMCE 6.0 only affect complex use cases, such as custom plugins and customized user interface components.

This chapter describes the settings that require updating prior to migration; and workaround procedures for deprecated, deleted, and updated features.

It set outs the TinyMCE 6.0 changes that customers using TinyMCE 5 should be aware of as part of upgrading.

For support related to migration, please contact Tiny support.
Open Source users: please report issues in the TinyMCE GitHub Repository.

TinyMCE 6 core changes

Contents

Summary

This section documents the four core changes made to TinyMCE 6.0.

Core changes
  1. Browsers supported by TinyMCE 6.0 have changed. TinyMCE 6.0 supports the current and previous major versions of Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, and Apple Safari. TinyMCE 6.0 also supports the current Long Term Release of each of the above browsers (eg, Mozilla Firefox ESR and Google Chrome ESR).

    In particular, this means TinyMCE 6.0 does not support Microsoft Internet Explorer 11.
  2. Premium Plugins released with TinyMCE 6.0 are not backwards compatible with earlier versions of TinyMCE.

  3. The open source version of TinyMCE 6.0 is now licensed under the MIT License.

  4. Three additional professionally translated language packs are now available for use with TinyMCE 6.0:

    • Hindi (hi);

    • Malay (ms); and

    • Vietnamese (vi)

    These packs are available to all Cloud subscribers and all Premium plan subscribers.

This section also includes four tables that set out the:

  • renamed APIs, Commands, Plugins, Options, and UI & UX elements

  • values changed in a default TinyMCE 6.0 instance.

  • previously deprecated and now removed items.

  • never documented, and consequently never supported, items that have now been removed.

Things we renamed
Old name New name Element Notes

blockformats

blocks

Menu item

No behavioral changes.

formatselect

blocks

Toolbar item

No behavioral changes.

imagetools

editimage

Plugin

NB: Image Tools is now Enhanced Image Editing, a Premium plugin.

imagetools_toolbar

editimage_toolbar

Option

NB: Image Tools is now Enhanced Image Editing, a Premium plugin.

imagetools_proxy

editimage_proxy

Option

NB: Image Tools is now Enhanced Image Editing, a Premium plugin.

imagetools_cors_hosts

editimage_cors_hosts

Option

NB: Image Tools is now Enhanced Image Editing, a Premium plugin.

imagetools_credentials_hosts

editimage_credentials_hosts

Option

NB: Image Tools is now Enhanced Image Editing, a Premium plugin.

imagetools_fetch_image

editimage_fetch_image

Option

NB: Image Tools is now Enhanced Image Editing, a Premium plugin.

images_upload_timeout

editimage_upload_timeout

Option

NB: Image Tools is now Enhanced Image Editing, a Premium plugin.

fire()

dispatch()

API

fire() in tinymce.Editor, tinymce.dom.EventUtils, tinymce.dom.DOMUtils, tinymce.util.Observable and tinymce.util.EventDispatcher has been renamed to dispatch(). fire has been aliased to dispatch but has also been marked as deprecated.

font_formats

font_family_formats

Option

No behavioral changes, but there are related toolbar and menu items changes.

fontselect

fontfamily

Toolbar item

No behavioral changes.

fontformats

fontfamily

Menu item

No behavioral changes.

fontsize_formats

font_size_formats

Option

No behavioral changes.

fontsizeselect

fontsize

Toolbar item

No behavioral changes.

fontsizes

fontsize

Menu item

No behavioral changes.

formatpainter_blacklisted_formats

formatpainter_ignored_formats

Option

No behavioral changes.

getWhiteSpaceElements()

getWhitespaceElements()

Function

This function is part of the Schema API. It was renamed as part of a general renaming that treats Whitespace as a single word. The behavior of the function has not changed.

getShortEndedElements

getVoidElements

API

special and void are hard-coded elements defined by the HTML parsing specification. They can not be changed at run-time. The previous API name did not make it clear it was these, hard-coded, elements being called.

content

html

Command

This mceInsertClipboardContent argument was renamed to better reflect what data is passed. NB: The content argument can no longer be used with mceInsertClipboardContent. If content is used, no data is passed.

lineheight_formats

line_height_formats

Option

No behavioral changes.

default_link_target

link_default_target

Option

Changed for consistency with other link and autolink options. The functionality, and the values the option can take remain unchanged. This change applies to both link and autolink plugins.

rel_list

link_rel_list

Option

Changed for consistency with other options. The functionality, and the values this option can take remain unchanged.

target_list

link_target_list

Option

Changed for consistency with other options. The functionality, and the values this option can take remain unchanged.

mceInsertTable

mceInsertTableDialog

Command

Use mceInsertTableDialog to open the Insert Table dialog box. NB: mceInsertTable (with appropriate arguments) still works to insert a table directly into an existing document. mceInsertTable can no longer be used to invoke the Table dialog box, however.

noneditable_noneditable_class

noneditable_class

Option

After upgrading, rename the options in your TinyMCE init configuration to match the new name. For example, noneditable_noneditable_class: 'mceNonEditable' must be renamed noneditable_class: 'mceNonEditable'.

noneditable_editable_class

editable_class

Option

After upgrading, rename the options in your TinyMCE init configuration to match the new name. For example, noneditable_editable_class: 'mceEditable' must be renamed editable_class: 'mceEditable'.

styleselect

styles

Toolbar item

No behavioral changes.

formats

styles

Menu item

No behavioral changes.

textpattern_patterns

text_patterns

Option

After upgrading, rename the options in your TinyMCE init configuration to match the new name. Also, remove textpattern from your plugins list. This name-change is consequent to textpattern being changed from a Plugin to being part of the TinyMCE Core.

tinymce.Env.browser.isChrome

tinymce.Env.browser.isChromium

API

Updated so the API better reflects what it is checking for. isChrome implies it is checking for Google Chrome. However, it is actually checking for any Chromium-based browser (eg Chromium, Google Chrome, or Chrome Edge) so isChromium more accurately reflects what is being done.

tinymce.Env.os.isOSX

tinymce.Env.os.isMacOS

API

Updated so the API now uses the current name of Apple’s desktop operating system when checking to see if a device’s OS is, in fact, macOS.

toc

tableofcontents

Plugin, Menu item, and Toolbar item

This presents in both the menu item and the toolbar’s tooltip text. NB: Table of Contents is now a Premium plugin.

tocupdate

tableofcontentsupdate

Toolbar item

This presents in the toolbar’s tooltip text. NB: Table of Contents is now a Premium plugin.

toc_class

tableofcontents_class

Option

NB: Table of Contents is now a Premium plugin.

toc_depth

tableofcontents_depth

Option

NB: Table of Contents is now a Premium plugin.

toc_header

tableofcontents_header

Option

NB: Table of Contents is now a Premium plugin.

  • Commands are what is passed via the editor.execCommand() API.

    Where a Command name has change, calls to editor.execCommand() API must be changed to match the new name.

  • Configuration Options are what is passed when initialising the TinyMCE editor via tinymce.init.

    Where an Option name has changed, configurations using that option must be changed to match the new name.

  • Menu items and Toolbar items are Options from tinymce.init for UI and UX features, such as the TinyMCE Menu, Toolbar and Contextual Menu.

Default value changes
Element Old value New value Notes

a11ychecker_html_version

html4

html5

assignment operator character

:

~

Changed in the valid_elements and extended_valid_elements schemata.

element_format

no default value assigned

html

Changed as part of modernising TinyMCE’s default behavior.

height

200px

400px

Changed to improve user experience.

link_default_protocol

http

https

Changed as part of modernising TinyMCE’s default behavior.

TinyMCE schema

no default value assigned

html5

Changed as part of modernising TinyMCE’s default behavior.

table_style_by_css

false

true

Changed as part of modernising TinyMCE’s default behavior.

table_use_colgroups

false

true

Changed as part of modernising TinyMCE’s default behavior.

Previously deprecated items now removed

The following elements were previously deprecated and have, with this release, been removed entirely from TinyMCE.

Item Element Notes

$

API

$ was a shorthand function of DomQuery and Sizzle.

addComponents

API

From AddOnManager.

autoresize_on_init

Option

block_elements

Schema option

boolean_attributes

Schema option

Class

API

clearInterval

API

From Delay.

clearTimeout

API

From Delay.

Color

API

content_editable_state

Option

debounce

API

From Delay.

dependencies

API

From AddOnManager.

DomQuery

API

editor_deselector

Option

From EditorManager.

editors

Property

From EditorManager.

editor_selector

Option

From EditorManager.

elements

Option

From EditorManager.

execCallback

API

file_browser_callback_types

Option

filepicker_validator_handler

Option

Superseded by file_picker_validator_handler.

force_hex_style_colors

Option

force_p_newlines

Option

Superseded by forced_root_block.

forced_root_block: false

Option

forced_root_block must be a non-empty string and cannot take a value of false.

forced_root_block: ''

Option

forced_root_block must be a non-empty string and cannot take a value of false.

gecko_spellcheck

Option

Replaced by browser_spellcheck.

images_dataimg_filter

Option

JSON

API

Use the native JSON API instead.

JSONP

API

JSONRequest

API

mode

Option

From EditorManager.

move_caret_before_on_enter_elements

Schema option

non_empty_elements

Schema option

padd_empty_with_br

Option

Replaced, as of TinyMCE 6.6.1, by pad_empty_with_br.

requestAnimationFrame

API

From Delay.

self_closing_elements

Schema option

setIconStroke

API

setInterval

API

From Delay.

setMode

API

setTimeout

API

From Delay.

short_ended_elements

Schema option

Sizzle

API

special

Schema option

text_block_elements

Schema option

text_inline_elements

Schema option

throttle

API

From Delay.

toolbar_drawer

Option

Superseded by toolbar_mode.

types

Option

From EditorManager.

whitespace_elements

Schema option

validate

Schema option

XHR

API

Any remaining XHR uses have been replaced with fetch.

Previously undocumented items removed without prior deprecation

The following elements were never documented and have never been formally supported.

Consequently, they were removed with this release without deprecation notices being provided in earlier releases.

Item Element

editor.editorCommands.hasCustomCommand

API

mceResetDesignMode

Command

mceRepaint

Command

mceBeginUndoLevel

Command

For additional details on TinyMCE 6.0 changes, see TinyMCE 6.0 release notes overview.

APIs

AddOnManager

Previously, when loading a requested resource, the AddOnManager passed a success or failure callback to report the status of the request. In TinyMCE 6, AddOnManager reports this status by returning a Promise.

change editor event

Previously, the change event was triggered by the first modification made to a TinyMCE editor instance. However, subsequent changes did not cause the event to fire until focus was switched away from the editor.

For example, typing a single character into the TinyMCE editor text-entry area triggered the change event. Subsequent typing, or selecting of the entered character and modifying it by setting it to bold or italic, did not trigger further change events. Making further modifications and then switching focus away from the editor did trigger this event, however.

As of TinyMCE 6, the change event is not fired unless and until

  1. focus is switched away from the editor; and

  2. changes have been made in the editor since focus was switched to it.

It is still possible to listen for modification to a TinyMCE editor instance before focus is changed. To do this, listen for the dirty event, rather than the change event.

Dialog redial API

Previously, when a component in a TinyMCE dialog box changed — for example, when a next or previous button was clicked — the entire dialog box was re-rendered.

In TinyMCE 6.0, the initialData type in the dialog redial API uses object diffing for the passed spec. As a consequence, the API now only re-renders the portions of a dialog that have changed.

disabled renamed in all TinyMCE APIs

Previously, multiple TinyMCE APIs used disable or disabled in their function or property names.

In TinyMCE 6, these function names have been changed and configuration changes are required.

  1. isDisabled() functions are now isEnabled() functions.

    Configurations that called isDisabled() must now call isEnabled(). Also, the returned or set value must be interpreted in terms of the new function name. For example, if isDisabled(false) was previously called, the equivalent new call is isEnabled(true).

  2. The enable() and disable() functions are now the single setEnabled(<state>) function.

    Rather than calling the function to set the desired state, call setEnabled() with the true or false value to set the desired state.

  3. The disable(<name>) and enable(<name>) functions are now the single setEnabled(<name>, <state>) function in the Dialog APIs.

    As well, the .disabled property is now the .enabled property in all TinyMCE dialog APIs.

  4. All defaults have been swapped to retain the same logical API defaults.

fire method renamed in all TinyMCE APIs

The fire() method in

  • tinymce.Editor;

  • tinymce.dom.EventUtils;

  • tinymce.dom.DOMUtils;

  • tinymce.util.Observable; and

  • tinymce.util.EventDispatcher

has been renamed to dispatch().

fire has been aliased to dispatch, so existing integrations should still work as expected.

fire has also, however, been marked as deprecated. Using dispatch() in place of fire() is recommended.

new keyword no longer used to instantiate plugins

In TinyMCE 6.0, plugins (and other addons) are no longer initialized with the new keyword.

As a consequence, the plugin initializer value passed to PluginManager.add must be a function. It cannot be a class. (The plugin initializer value is the second argument passed to PluginManager.add().)

This change makes it safe to use both older functions and newer arrow functions when instantiating add-ons.

NotificationManager closeButton and timeout

Previously, using closeButton to disable the close button on a Notification required a timeout value to also be set.

In TinyMCE 6 this requirement was removed; closeButton now shows or hides the close button regardless of whether a timeout value is set or not set. An editor.notificationManager with both timeout: 5000 and closeButton: false set will still present a notification that automatically closes after displaying for 5 seconds.

This does not change the behaviour of existing Notifications.

PluginManager

Previously, when loading a requested resource, the PluginManager passed a success or failure callback to report the status of the request. In TinyMCE 6, PluginManager reports this status by returning a Promise.

ScriptLoader

Previously, when loading a requested resource, ScriptLoader passed a success or failure callback to report the status of the request. In TinyMCE 6, ScriptLoader reports this status by returning a Promise.

SetContent editor event

The SetContent event’s content property has been deprecated.

When the SetContent event fires, any data in content has already been added to the TinyMCE editor instance and cannot be altered, making content essentially moot as an SetContent property.

To alter such data before it is added to the TinyMCE editor, use the content property available in the BeforeSetContent event.

The SetContent content property now returns an empty string in some cases.

StyleSheetLoader

Previously, when loading a requested resource, StyleSheetLoader passed a success or failure callback to report the status of the request. In TinyMCE 6, StyleSheetLoader reports this status by returning a Promise.

ThemeManager

Previously, when loading a requested resource, the ThemeManager passed a success or failure callback to report the status of the request. In TinyMCE 6, ThemeManager reports this status by returning a Promise.

Commands and queries

mceInsertTableDialog

Previously, the mceInsertTable command worked in two modes.

If invoked without arguments —

tinymce.activeEditor.execCommand('mceInsertTable');

— the command opened the Insert Table dialog box.

If invoked with arguments —

tinymce.activeEditor.execCommand('mceInsertTable', false, { rows: 2, columns: 2 });

— the command inserted a table, with the specified properties, directly into the document without opening the Insert Table dialog box.

In TinyMCE 6.0, the mceInsertTableDialog command must be used to invoke the Insert Table dialog box.

The mceInsertTable command is still the command for inserting a table with specified properties directly and without asking for user-input. However, using the mceInsertTable command without arguments now throws a console error: model.min.js:4 Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'rows').

mceAddEditor and mceToggleEditor

Previously, mceAddEditor and mceToggleEditor used the editorManager.settings values to set the id and UI and UX options for a new TinyMCE editor instance.

editorManager.settings is not used at all in TinyMCE 6 and has been removed.

Instead, the mceAddEditor and mceToggleEditor commands use id and options values from an object passed in when the command is run.

For example —

tinyMCE.execCommand('mceAddEdit', false, { id: 'ed-1', options: { readonly: false, toolbar: 'bold italic strikethrough' } })

— finds a textarea with id ed-1 and turns it into a working TinyMCE editor that displays the bold, italic, and strikethrough buttons in the editor toolbar.

Options

element_format

Previously, element_format had no explicit default value. It’s implicit value, however, was xhtml.

In TinyMCE 6.0, element_format now has an explicit default value: html.

This new, and explicit default changes how entered material is serialised. In particular, self-closing elements, such as <hr>, <br>, and <img> no longer present in the xhtml standard fashion, as <hr />, <br />, and </img /> respectively.

If xhtml standard representation is required, explicitly setting element_format to xhtml works as before.

images_upload_handler

Previously the images_upload_handler option passed success or failure callbacks to report the status of an image upload. In TinyMCE 6, images_upload_handler reports upload results by returning a Promise.

The link_default_protocol option sets the link protocol used by links added or edited using the link dialog.

It now defaults to 'https'. Previously it defaulted to 'http'.

The link_default_protocol value is only applied to an edited or inserted link if the protocol is not explicitly specified.

Text Patterns

As noted in the TinyMCE 6.0 Release Notes, the textpattern_patterns option:

  • Was renamed to text_patterns;

  • Had its functionality moved to the Core of TinyMCE 6.0.

As well, the textpattern API has been removed.

Finally, and unlike in previous versions of TinyMCE, text patterns are now on by default. text_patterns: false turns the functionality off.

Using text_patterns: [] to turn text_patterns off is not supported. It sets text_patterns to an empty array. Having, consequently, no patterns to match, it presents as if text_patterns is off. Appearance is not reality, however. Setting text_patterns: false is the only supported way of disabling text_patterns.

After upgrading:

  • Rename any options in your TinyMCE init configuration to match the new name.

  • Remove textpattern from your plugins list.

Plugins

plugins option

Previously, the list of configured plugins could be retrieved by calling editor.getParam('plugins') and returned the configured plugins as a string.

As of TinyMCE 6, the list of configured plugins is retrieved by calling editor.options.get('plugins') and now returns the configured plugins as an array.

Plugin loading format change

TinyMCE 6.0 allows plugin loading in any of three formats:

  1. An array of strings:

    plugins: [ 'advlist', 'lists', 'image', 'help', 'wordcount' ]

  2. A space-separated string:

    plugins: 'advlist lists image help wordcount'

  3. A comma-separated string, with or without spaces:

    plugins: 'advlist,lists,image,help,wordcount'
    plugins: 'advlist, lists, image, help, wordcount'

Previously, one other format was allowed: arrays of space-separated strings. This format is no longer accepted in TinyMCE 6.0.

Removed plugins

All references to any of these plugins should be removed from plugin configurations.

Leaving references to removed plugins in a plugin configuration will cause console errors documenting the plugin failing to load. TinyMCE 6.0 should, otherwise, work without error. If, however, TinyMCE 6.0 is ‘installed' incorrectly — by being unZipped onto an existing TinyMCE 5.0 instance for example — the old plugin will not be removed, it will load and, since a TinyMCE 5.x plugin is attempting to work with a TinyMCE 6.0 instance, error notifications will almost certainly present to the end-user.

See below for specific documentation of potential migration issues, if any, regarding these removed plugins.

Five plugins were removed as per the previous TinyMCE 5 announcement:

  1. fullpage

  2. bbcode

  3. legacyoutput

  4. tabfocus

  5. spellchecker

Four plugins were removed because their functionality is now a Core part of TinyMCE 6.0:

  1. hr

  2. noneditable

  3. paste

  4. print

The functionality from these plugins is now enabled automatically, except for paste which as previously announced no longer supports cleaning Microsoft Word content.

Three plugins have been empty stub plugins since TinyMCE 5.0, and were removed in TinyMCE 6.0:

  1. colorpicker

  2. contextmenu

  3. textcolor

The Premium plugin, Spell Checker Pro, which offers equivalent functionality and more, is available.
No Premium Plugins released with TinyMCE 6.0 are backwards compatible with earlier versions of TinyMCE.

Enhanced Image Editing (was Image Tools)

As noted in the TinyMCE 6.0 Release Notes, the imagetools plugin is no longer included as part of the Free editor.

Image Tools is now Enhanced Image Editing, a Premium plugin.

The imagetools_proxy option has been renamed to editimage_proxy. However, when setting up Tiny services the recommended configuration is now editimage_proxy_service_url and will be used in favour of editimage_proxy if both are set.

Users of the Free version of TinyMCE 5.x who rely on the removed imagetools plugin should not upgrade to TinyMCE 6.0 without a subscription plan that provides access to Enhanced Image Editing.

No Premium Plugins released with TinyMCE 6.0 are backwards compatible with earlier versions of TinyMCE.

Media

As noted in the TinyMCE 6.0 Release Notes, the media plugin no longer uses the SaxParser.

As a consequence the iframe, video, audio, and object elements are no longer marked as special, and cannot be marked as such. Put another way, the DOM parser does not preserve embedded content.

Instead these elements, and their contents, are validated against the TinyMCE schema.

This validation is generally done by the valid_elements, valid_children or extended_valid_elements config.

The schema must, therefore, be configured to allow usage of the media elements, and the media element attributes.

As of this release, there are no known cases of this change causing media objects to not work as expected. But, also as of this release, not every potential or possible use-case has been tested.

Mentions

The getUsers API was a part of the mentions plugin and was used to retrieve a list of mentioned users in the current editor session.

This API has been deprecated in TinyMCE 6.0.

Refer to the TinyMCE 6.0 Release Notes for an alternative to the getUsers API.

Paste

As noted in the TinyMCE 6.0 Release Notes, the paste plugin’s functionality is no longer provided as a plugin. It is now a core part of TinyMCE 6.0.

In conjunction with this change, three changes have been made:

  1. A paste default has changed. The paste_data_images option now defaults to true.

    When paste was a plugin, this option was, by default, set to false, which prevented images being pasted from the local machine.

  2. The mceInsertClipboardContent argument, content, has been renamed. It is now html.

    The new name is a more accurate reflection of what sort of data the argument passes.

    The content argument can no longer be used with mceInsertClipboardContent. If content is used, no data is passed. mceInsertClipboardContent only attempts to pass data if the html or text property is used.

  3. The, now built-in, paste functionality no longer supports pasting from Microsoft Word.

    There is an open request for maintainers should someone in the community be interested in taking over maintainance of this particular functionality as a separate plugin.

    If a community-maintained version of the paste plugin becomes available, we will link to it from here.

The Premium plugin, PowerPaste, is available. It provides the capability to accept data from Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel, and clean-up the received data before pasting it into place.
No Premium Plugins released with TinyMCE 6.0 are backwards compatible with earlier versions of TinyMCE.

Tabfocus

The tabfocus plugin has been removed. It is no longer part of TinyMCE 6.0. And it is not otherwise available.

The tabfocus_elements option, which relied on the tabfocus plugin, no longer functions.

As per standard web practice, the tabindex attribute should be used instead of the tabfocus plugin or any of the tabfocus plugin’s options.

The tab order of a page’s elements, including TinyMCE, is configured by setting the tabindex attribute on the relevant HTML elements. The browser then natively handles the tab order.

To configure tabindex for the TinyMCE editor, set the attribute on the target element for the editor. For example:

 tinymce.init({
   selector: 'textarea'
 });
 ...
 <input tabindex="1">
 <textarea tabindex="2"></textarea>
 <input tabindex="3">

In iframe (classic editor) mode, TinyMCE copies the tabindex attribute from the target element to the editor’s iframe, to allow this to work correctly.

Table of Contents

As noted in the TinyMCE 6.0 Release Notes, the toc plugin is no longer part of the Free editor.

Table of Contents has been updated and is now a Premium plugin.

Users of the Free version of TinyMCE 5.x who rely on the, now deprecated and removed, toc plugin, should not upgrade to TinyMCE 6.0 without a subscription plan that provides access to Premium plugins such as Table of Contents.

The new Premium tableofcontents plugin also changes the names of several elements.

Old name New name

toc

tableofcontents

tocupdate

tableofcontentsupdate

toc_class

tableofcontents_class

toc_depth

tableofcontents_depth

toc_header

tableofcontents_header

Any configurations or logic that use the old element names must be updated to the new names after upgrading to TinyMCE 6.0 and installing the new tableofcontents plugin.

No Premium Plugins released with TinyMCE 6.0 are backwards compatible with earlier versions of TinyMCE.

Schema

Default schema is HTML 5

  • TinyMCE 6.0 instances now explicitly use HTML 5 as the default schema.

    The previous default was, for practical purposes, also HTML 5, but no specific schema was set. This change formalises and makes explicit what was, previously, only implicit.

    There is only one functional change consequent to this explicit setting of a default schema.

    Previously, if you did not explicitly set the schema to anything, b and i elements were automaticlly transformed into strong and em elements respectively.

    If, however, you explicitly set the schema to html5, b and i elements were preserved.

    With this release, html5 is explicitly set as the schema by default, and b and i elements are automatically transformed into strong and em elements.

    That is, the element transformation persists even though the html5 schema is now explicitly set.

    html5-strict is still an available schema option and is unchanged from TinyMCE 5.x.
  • The assignment operator character — : — has been changed to ~ for the valid_elements and extended_valid_elements schemata.

    The : is also used to assign an [xlink:href] rule and this was not possible in these schemata because the colon character was acting as an assignment operator.

    This change allows both schemata to set attribute values for the valid_elements and extended_valid_elements options using the ~ character and assign [xlink:href] rules as expected.

    Existing configurations using either of these schemata must be edited so the ~ character is used for valid_elements and extended_valid_elements options configurations. The : character should no longer be used to set attribute values in these configurations.

    Also, when assigning [xlink:href] rules, the colon character is no longer escaped. [xlink\\:href] can now be written plainly, as [xlink:href].

    Existing configurations that included escaped colons will continue to work as expected. Editing such configs to remove the escape characters will improve readability but is not necessary for functionality.

UI and UX elements and components

buttonType

buttonType is a new property available for button components used in dialogs. It replaces the, now deprecated property, primary.

The primary property was boolean, allowing for only two states: true and false.

The new buttonType property can take any of three states: 'primary', 'secondary', and 'toolbar'.

Setting buttonType: 'primary' is the same as setting primary: true.

Setting buttonType: 'secondary' is the same as setting primary: false.

Editor height

In TinyMCE 5.x, editors without a height value specified in the TinyMCE configuration defaulted to a height of 200px In TinyMCE 6.0, editors without a height value specified in the TinyMCE configuration default to 400px.

As was the case in TinyMCE 5.x, this new default only applies to editors in iframe mode, not inline mode.

The new default can be overridden by explicitly setting a height value in the TinyMCE configuration. So setting this to 200px will recreate the previous default presentation.

Also, setting the CSS height of the element replaced by TinyMCE to a value larger than 400px will increase the editor height. Setting the element’s CSS height to a value less than 400px will not reduce the height of the editor, however.

To prevent the editor UI from disappearing during manual, end-user re-sizing, min_height now has a default value: 100px.

This default can be overridden as part of an initialization configuration. Setting min_height to > 400 will increase the height of the initial TinyMCE editor.

But setting a value below 100 makes it possible for manual, end-user re-sizing to reduce the TinyMCE editor to a horizontal sliver (or, potentially, make it disappear entirely). Setting min_height to < 100 is not recommended

formatting user interface name changes

The names of the following user-interface and user experience elements were changed.

UI or UX element Old name New name

Option

font_formats

font_family_formats

Toolbar item

fontselect

fontfamily

Menu item

fontformats

fontfamily

Option

fontsize_formats

font_size_formats

Toolbar item

fontsizeselect

fontsize

Menu item

fontsizes

fontsize

Toolbar item

formatselect

blocks

Menu item

blockformats

blocks

Toolbar item

styleselect

styles

Menu item

formats

styles

Option

lineheight_formats

line_height_formats

The behaviour of these elements is unchanged.

primary

The primary property was a boolean property available as a basic panel component of dialogs.

It has been deprecated and replaced by the new buttonType property.

Tables are now positioned using margin, not float

TinyMCE previously used float to position tables to the left or right of the viewport (the working area available to the TinyMCE editor). This caused multiple layout and UX problems.

For example, consider a TinyMCE document that included a table that took up less than 100% of the viewport and a paragraph of text below that table. If both the table and the paragraph were selected and their alignment was changed to left or right, the paragraph of text moved up beside the table.

As another example, consider a TinyMCE document containing a table that is wider than the viewport. If you selected this table’s contents and set the alignment to right, the portion of the table that was outside the viewport disappeared to the left, and no scrollbar presented allowing you to bring that portion back into view.

As of TinyMCE 6.0, tables are positioned using margin rather than float. This prevents these layout and UX problems occurring.

However, when upgrading to TinyMCE 6.0, there are two things to be aware of:

First, TinyMCE 6.0 does not alter existing documents. Extant TinyMCE documents with tables that were aligned to either left or right will still have the float property assigned when opened and edited unless and until their alignment is altered.

If an extant TinyMCE document with an aligned table is opened using TinyMCE 6.0 and the alignment of the table is re-set, TinyMCE 6.0 will remove the float property and use the margin property to set the alignment.

Second, if the previous behavior is required, a custom format will need to be created. Specifically, the following format (the table-specific code from TinyMCE 5.x’s DefaultFormats.ts) must be added to the format configuration:

alignleft: [
  {
    selector: 'figure.image',
    collapsed: false,
    classes: 'align-left',
    ceFalseOverride: true,
    preview: 'font-family font-size'
  },
  {
    selector: 'figure,p,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,td,th,tr,div,ul,ol,li',
    styles: {
      textAlign: 'left'
    },
    inherit: false,
    preview: false,
    defaultBlock: 'div'
  },
  {
    selector: 'img,table,audio,video',
    collapsed: false,
    styles: {
      float: 'left'
    },
    preview: 'font-family font-size'
  }
],


aligncenter: [
  {
    selector: 'figure,p,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,td,th,tr,div,ul,ol,li',
    styles: {
      textAlign: 'center'
    },
    inherit: false,
    preview: 'font-family font-size',
    defaultBlock: 'div'
  },
  {
    selector: 'figure.image',
    collapsed: false,
    classes: 'align-center',
    ceFalseOverride: true,
    preview: 'font-family font-size'
  },
  {
    selector: 'img,audio,video',
    collapsed: false,
    styles: {
      display: 'block',
      marginLeft: 'auto',
      marginRight: 'auto'
    },
    preview: false
  },
  {
    selector: 'table',
    collapsed: false,
    styles: {
      marginLeft: 'auto',
      marginRight: 'auto'
    },
    preview: 'font-family font-size'
  }
],


alignright: [
  {
    selector: 'figure.image',
    collapsed: false,
    classes: 'align-right',
    ceFalseOverride: true,
    preview: 'font-family font-size'
  },
  {
    selector: 'figure,p,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,td,th,tr,div,ul,ol,li',
    styles: {
      textAlign: 'right'
    },
    inherit: false,
    preview: 'font-family font-size',
    defaultBlock: 'div'
  },
  {
    selector: 'img,table,audio,video',
    collapsed: false,
    styles: {
      float: 'right'
    },
    preview: 'font-family font-size'
  }
],

Alternatively, the Formatter API can be used to register a custom format using editor.formatter.register(<name>, <format>).

Security

Sanitizing HTML input to protect against XSS attacks

Previously, before HTML content was passed to TinyMCE 5.x, it was parsed using an in-house developed API, SaxParser.

The SaxParser API was developed in the then-absence of alternatives.

When this API’s validate setting was enabled — validate: trueSaxParser removed elements and attributes that did not fit the declared schema.

And, over its lifetime, SaxParser was extended. For example, as of TinyMCE 5.9, the SaxParser API marked attributes with certain names or IDs as unsafe, because some names or IDs can cause the host browser to overwrite existing properties or functions.

Since TinyMCE 6.0, this basic parser was removed and replaced with two significantly more thorough alternatives:

  1. the native browser API, DOMParser(); and

  2. the Free and Open Source XSS sanitizer for HTML, MathML and SVG, DOMPurify.

TinyMCE uses DOMPurify 2.x up to TinyMCE 6.7.3. This was updated to DOMPurify 3.x in TinyMCE 6.8, which was current at the time TinyMCE 6 was developed.

Before HTML (or XML) content is passed to TinyMCE 6, the DOMParser API parses the HTML (or XML) string into a DOM object. As part of this process, DOMParser attempts to correct malformed HTML.

For example, the following string:

<p>
<a href="https://example.com">Click here.
</p>

When this string is passed in, the DOMParser API adds the missing closing anchor tag:

<p>
<a href="https://example.com">Click here.</a>
</p>

Next, the, now correctly formed, DOM object is passed to DOMPurify.

DOMPurify runs a security-focused ruleset over the DOM object to sanitize the HTML and protect TinyMCE, and applications using TinyMCE, against XSS attacks.

Turning DOMPurify off

DOMPurify sanitization is on by default, and prior to TinyMCE 6.4, it could not be turned off.

As of TinyMCE 6.4, however, it is possible to turn DOMPurify off using the xss_sanitization option.

xss_sanitization is set to true by default. That is, TinyMCE specifically sets the xss_sanitization option to true, even if this option is not declared in a TinyMCE configuration.

Type: Boolean

Default value: true

Possible values: true, false

Example: using xss_sanitization to turn DOMPurify off and no longer sanitize HTML against XSS attacks
tinymce.init({
  selector: 'textarea',  // change this value according to your HTML
  xss_sanitization: false
});
Turning DomPurify off leaves TinyMCE, and any application using TinyMCE, extremely vulnerable to XSS attacks. Only turn DomPurify off if alternative and equivalently capable HTML and XML sanitization and XSS protections are in place.