Related discussions:
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=122460#p546841
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=130470

Attached: TinyMCE init code that will produce the editor in the screenshot. Note that this change does not require changing the code of TinyMCE but just of the JS code that calls TinyMCE.

Still required: Integration as Moodle default. I could not find out how to do this.

The goal of this change is to reduce the three row toolbar in TinyMCE to two rows, making it resemble the legacy HTMLarea more. There are two reasons for this:

• the HTMLarea toolbar design seems to have seemingly good defaults for everyday use, and
• since users in 1.9 are used to it, there is no risk in keeping the same toolbar (= WOW. for once we actually know what many users will expect).

On the other hand, the TinyMCE default of three rows is really a usability disaster.

I did regroup the buttons a bit from what they are in HTMLarea, to have related items grouped together and unrelated ones separated - and to accommodate the elements that were removed or replaced.

Removed vs. the TinyMCE in Moodle HEAD atm:

• The style menu that was broken
• citation,abbreviation,acronym
• select all - there is a quite ubiquitous shortcut key ctrl+a and this can be emulated with the mouse too
• preview (this should be provided by Moodle and not within TinyMCE - perhaps as a quick javascript like TinyMCE does now, or just a plain old slow preview POST button - if the content of the form is more complex than one editor, Moodle can preview the result of all the fields in a composite preview, whereas TinyMCE can only show the preview of that one rich field, which is kind of pointless since it is a WYSIWYG editor anyway)
• visual control characters on/off
• edit css style
• insert new layer (the layer created is positioned absolutely so there is usually no way for the user to know where on the page the layer will end...)
• insert/edit embedded media
• create anchor
• insert/edit embedded media (removed due to lack of space, can perhaps be put back)

Removed vs. HTMLarea

• Clean Word HTML (paste from word is there though)
• Lang menu (was not in tinymce full featured),
• fullscreen
• Justify both left and right - rarely needed and often considered harmful for legibility for reading onscreen

Added vs. HTMLarea

• remove formatting
• cut,copy,paste,paste word, paste plain text
• cleanup messy formatting
• non-breaking space - according to Joseph Rézeau http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=130470#p570242 , required by the French
• find

Instead of the popup window in HTMLarea, fullscreen in TinyMCE takes up the entire viewport for the rich text editor.
Was there an equation editor? Where has that gone?