Is this indication of formatting helpful for you in the Rich Content Editor?

[KataKeri]

I was wondering how this information on underling HTML is useful for plain Rich Content Editor users - especially if the formatting is present in the toolbar too in a way which is more insightful. Do you have a specific reason or use case why this would be beneficial for you? In the attached screenshot below - there's a 'p' indicating that the current text is formatted as a paragraph. Does the 'p' help you in any way?

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Hi @KataKeri,

The p itself may not be super helpful since that's indicate elsewhere, but the genenral structure that bottom-left area indicates is incredible useful, especially when trying to troubleshoot issues with copy/pasted content.  Attaching a quick example here that I made on the fly that shows the content is inside two div tags.  That's not apparent anywhere else (without going into html mode), so I'd hate to see that area go away as someone who provides support.

-Chris

[melodyc_lam · Accepted solution]

@KataKeri As someone who has found malformed HTML on pages to cause issues with course exports and rendering in Canvas, having the HTML tags there is useful to figure out where I should start checking for any issues.

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Hi @KataKeri,

The p itself may not be super helpful since that's indicate elsewhere, but the genenral structure that bottom-left area indicates is incredible useful, especially when trying to troubleshoot issues with copy/pasted content.  Attaching a quick example here that I made on the fly that shows the content is inside two div tags.  That's not apparent anywhere else (without going into html mode), so I'd hate to see that area go away as someone who provides support.

-Chris

[valentinesking]

Kata,

Personally, I go into the HTML if I need to view the formatting so I do not rely on what you highlighted with a rectangle (but I can easily use DesignPLUS to check on formatting). Given that not everyone has access to DesignPLUS- I do not want to discount @chriscas point for those that do use it.

Thanks for asking.

Val King, the ID
Sr. ID Project Leader, The Wharton School at UPenn

[melodyc_lam · Accepted solution]

@KataKeri As someone who has found malformed HTML on pages to cause issues with course exports and rendering in Canvas, having the HTML tags there is useful to figure out where I should start checking for any issues.

[ProfessorBeyrer · Accepted solution]

Thank you @KataKeri for asking this question. In addition to the excellent reasons already stated, another one that I find helpful is when I copy and paste content from another webpage (including Canvas pages), it often includes an unnecessary <div><div>. If I catch that before I save the changes I made, I can go into the code and remove the extraneous stuff, which can be a button (that goes nowhere) or duplicate text (from the id attribute). Seeing the HTML tags underneath the RCE window helps a lot with this.

While you're thinking about this, I hope you bring back even more utility to that tag. I have a memory that tag indicator used to be active so that I could click on it and the tag would be selected within the RCE window. I found that very helpful when trying to delete content from the RCE without accidentally deleting other stuff, which is easy to do when I click-and-drag with my mouse.

[Gabriel33]

Most of the previous answers are about finding issues with the code (whether just unnecessary tags or actual errors).

But it can also be helpful for things that are both needed and working, for example detail/summary tags.

In the RCE, without the indication in the bottom, the only thing you'd notice is the triangle ▼ (which could be just plain unicode as I used here).

When the first row (summary) is selected, we get:

When the second row selected:

In short, it may be helpful not just to indicate that something is wrong or unnecessary, but that the representation of the text will likely be different than what the RCE edit view shows (I have another use case with a content-box in a page, but that'd take longer for me make a minimum example to share).

[james_whalley]

@KataKeri I know I have seen that at the lower left before, but I do not think I have actively relied on it or even used it. That may just be me though and I may adopt use of it after reading what others have written.