IE - Cannot determine which cells are selected in a table

[Lynne Kues]

Go to CKE demo. Insert a table. Attempt to select the cells to do something, like change background color. There is no visual indication of what cells are selected.

[Jakub Ś]

There is no visual indication of what cells are selected.

This is actually true only for IE and only if there is no data in cells. In all other cases user can see either cell's border or cell selected - this differs among browsers.

To make it clear - in IE, when there is no data in cells, it is not about not indicated selection but about the fact that it is impossible to select multiple table cells.

Ticket has been reproducible from CKEditor 3.0.

[Garry Yao]

The table selection feature is to be planned in v4.

[Eugen]

this is a very important case especially since cell merging with tabletools is completly broken a the moment and it is very hard to explain what happen when using the cell-properties-way to merge.

It is possible, e.g. tinyMCE proves it: ​http://www.tinymce.com/tryit/basic.php for both, IE8 and IE10

[Eugen]

Our issue is most probably here ​https://github.com/ckeditor/ckeditor-dev/blob/master/plugins/tabletools/plugin.js#L9 regarding empty cells in IE. an empy cell has an <br> inside and this might not get properly selected

[Jakub Ś]

#10569 was marked as duplicate.

[Jakub Ś]

The problem is that IE doesn't allow selecting empty table cells. I have prepared workaround that some of you will perhaps find usefull. Please see attached file.

[Jakub Ś]

Here is the code ​https://github.com/tinymce/tinymce/blob/master/js/tinymce/plugins/table/classes/CellSelection.js Basically they just add class on mouseDown + mousover

Please do not suggest copying code from other editors. This is not how we do things.
As you probably know IE doesn't allow selecting empty table cells. You must either have something inside them or use your own table wrapper to handle such things.

As for selecting whole cell - we had this idea long time ago but didn't really see it as solution but cheat. I see that users can be happy even with such cheats thus it might be worth to rethink this solution and implement it after all.

[Eugen]

Should i be honest? The current implementation of tables in CKeditor is a complete mess. Its bugged, close to absolutely being useless and is rather dedicated to developers then to end users if at all being useful.

You rather should open your eyes and look for solutions instead of ignoring the outer world - especially when looking at this kind of quality. The code of tabletools can be honestly seen as reviewed a single time, neither have been ever tested in a single case.

Eventhough this are harsh words, being ignorant about tinyMCE have beeng doing will just throw you back even more. I like the CKEditor, but iam very shocked about this attitude. The code i provided is to be seen as "this is how is done", nobody asked you to copy&paste it.

The solution of TinyMCE works for every browser and is the _only_ possible solution at all. Even Firefox will drop the multiple-selection behavior in the next releases, leaving you with no support at all ( no other browser support this anyway and will never do this ).

[Mike Gifford]

Why has this issue stalled? Seems like a pretty critical one for many organizations using it.