It was late 2002 when we decided to turn our internal WYSIWYG editor control into an open-source project. So we’ve spent some time reworking what was initially developed for our internal use only into a publicly appealing product.

On April 3, 2003 we’ve created a project at Sourceforge.net, moved our codebase there and released the first public version of SPAW Editor. The rest is history.

Here we are 5 years and 42 releases later with a completely rewritten SPAW Editor v.2.

We would like to thank all of you who helped us make SPAW what it is today, either by pointing out bugs, suggesting useful features or supporting the project financially by purchasing commercial licenses. THANK YOU!

There’s not much we can do for you except releasing new and improved versions of SPAW (and the next one is coming really soon). What we can do is give a substantial discount to those who were thinking of purchasing a commercial license.

So, if you are interested in commercial license for SPAW Editor head straight to our purchase page, select a license that suits you and enter SPAWIS5 promotion code while ordering to get a 50% discount on any commercial SPAW Editor license. And make sure that you do this before the end of April, 2008.

Recently I’ve been working on a product called “ASP.NET Controls for amCharts“. For those who don’t know - amCharts is the best interactive web charting software available and ASP.NET Controls for amCharts make it easier to generate and customize the charts from ASP.NET/Visual Studio.

Today we have finally released version 1.0 of the controls.

Download ASP.NET controls for amCharts.

We are extremely happy to announce that, after several months of planning, couple more months of coding and another couple of beta-testing and bug fixing, stable version of SPAW Editor v.2 .NET Edition has been finally released!

We have released all of our plugins ported for ASP.NET Edition a couple of days ago and we are releasing additional themes simultaneously with this release.

Download links:

• SPAW Editor v.2.0.6 .NET Edition
• Plugins
• Themes (skins)

About SPAW Editor v.2

For those unfamiliar with SPAW Editor - it’s a web based WYSYWYG HTML editor control for ASP .NET and PHP. Here’s a list of major features of SPAW Editor v.2:

• modular architecture
• tabbed multi-document interface
• floating/shared toolbars
• resizable editing area
• context menu
• file manager plugin
• support for Internet Explorer, Firefox/Mozilla/Netscape, Opera 9 and Safari 3 browsers
• XHTML rendering
• design time support for Visual Studio 2005
• and many more

Change Log

Here’s a list of changes in this release from previous v.2.0.6 Release Candidate release:

• BUGFIX: Exception was generated during saving of state when editor with single page was invisible
• BUGFIX: substitute images for flash content were missing
• BUGFIX: Theme class was attempting to use default CSS style when actually default CSS class was defined in theme config
• BUGFIX: Toolbar class was attempting to use custom CSS style when actually custom CSS class was defined in theme config
• DOCUMENTATION ADDED: Plugin Developer’s Guide
• DOCUMENTATION UPDATED: updated integrator’s guide

We have finished porting all of our plugins for SPAW Editor v.2 to ASP.NET and just released them. You can download them through our Extend page.

Have a Happy New Year!

During these winter holidays you have a rare opportunity to purchase commercial SPAW Editor licenses with massive discount of 28%. To get the discount just use the coupon code year2008 in the coupon code field in the purchase form.

The offer is valid until January 1, 2008. Applicable to all currently available editions of SPAW Editor. Buy now!

We have just released SPAW Editor v.2.0.6. This is the first simultaneous release of both PHP and .NET editions. Though .NET edition still has RC (release candidate) moniker due to unfinished documentation, not ported themes and plugins and other minor side issues. But generally both editions are now totally equivalent in terms of features and user experience.

Globally this release adds CSS class setting in image properties dialog and quick links in hyperlink dialog. It also fixes a long standing bug when invalid HTML was causing content to multiply under IE each time you resubmit it (or switch to HTML). Lots of smaller bugs were fixed too and several language files were added and updated.

You can get the latest release through our download page.

Here are complete changelogs…

PHP Edition:

1. FEATURE ADDED: Quick links in hyperlink dialog
2. FEATURE ADDED: CSS class in image properties dialog
3. BUGFIX: fixed (hopefully) long-standing bug with content doubling under IE in some invalid HTML cases
4. BUGFIX: calls to getPageHtml were destroying DOM tree
5. BUGFIX: in some cases <br /> was multiplying empty lines in source code under Firefox
6. BUGFIX: html mode textareas where set to zero width when switching between tabs
7. BUGFIX: spaces between tags were completely removed
8. BUGFIX: inputName variable name was mistyped in editor.class.php
9. BUGFIX: SpawFm plugin: fixed uploaded image height checking
10. BUGFIX: SpawFm plugin: fixed failing files listing when current directory has a single quote in it’s nam
11. CHANGE: SpawFm plugin: files/directories list sorting changed from sort() to  natcasesort()
12. LANGUAGE FILE UPDATED: German (Martina Greiner)
13. LANGUAGE FILE UPDATED: Bulgarian (Stoyan Dimitrov)
14. LANGUAGE FILE UPDATED: French
15. LANGUAGE FILE UPDATED: Czech (Radek Uhlir)
16. LANGUAGE FILE UPDATED: Finnish (Teemu Joensuu)
17. LANGUAGE FILE UPDATED: Arabic (Mohammed Ahmed)
18. LANGUAGE FILE ADDED: SpawFM: Bulgarian (Stoyan Dimitrov)
19. LANGUAGE FILE ADDED: SpawFM: Arabic (Mohammed Ahmed)
20. LANGUAGE FILE ADDED: Spaw FM: Finish (Teemu Joensuu)

.NET Edition:

1. FEATURE ADDED: CSS class in image properties dialog
2. FEATURE ADDED: added SpawFMConfiguration class to streamline access to File Manager configuration
3. FEATURE ADDED: pages (documents/tabs) could be added through designer/markup
4. BUGFIX: substitute toolbars were not used
5. BUGFIX: there were errors when maintainScrollPositionOnPostback=”true” was set globally in Web.Config file
6. BUGFIX: Floating/shared toolbars didn’t work as expected when several SPAWs were inside naming container (like master pages etc.). They still have to be inside single parent to set controlling toolbar through ToolbarFromID property. ToolbarFrom could be assigned from code to overcome this limitation.
7. BUGFIX: it is now possible to use application root-relative paths (~/) in file manager configuration
8. BUGFIX: it is now possible to use application root-relative paths (~/) to specify stylesheet
9. BUGFIX: .NET framework was trying to apply themes to spaw.js.aspx file and failed in websites using application wide themes
10. FIX: made Text property bindable (can’t find a reason why can’t set bind expression through “Edit Bindings” dialog)
11. BUGFIX: fixed (hopefully) long-standing bug with content doubling under IE in some invalid HTML cases
12. BUGFIX: calls to getPageHtml were destroying DOM tree
13. BUGFIX: in some cases <br /> was multiplying empty lines in source code under Firefox
14. BUGFIX: html mode textareas where set to zero width when switching between tabs
15. BUGFIX: spaces between tags were completely removed
16. BUGFIX: inputName variable name was mistyped in editor.class.php

We have just published a custom dropdown plugin developed by Franck TABARY of eAccelerator team. Basically it’s a dropdown version of custom button plugin which could be customized to insert any content into editing area when item is selected from the dropdown list.

It is available for immediate download through our Extend page.

We are happy to announce availability of SPAW Editor .NET Edition version 2.0.5.1 Release Candidate. This release fixes all the major issues found in the 2.0.5 Beta and now should be stable enough to be used in production sites. You can download it through our download page.

Here’s the change log for 2.0.5.1 RC:

1. FEATURE ADDED: Quick links in hyperlink dialog
2. BUGFIX: Text property wasn’t updated when SPAW was used with MasterPages, etc.
3. BUGFIX: paths were not correctly calculated when SPAW was used in applications residing in web site root directory
4. BUGFIX: it wasn’t possible to use SPAW when session state was stored in State Server or SQL Server (non-serializable data was stored in Session)
5. BUGFIX: on some installations there was “The Controls collection cannot be modified because the control contains code blocks (i.e. <% … %>).” exception generated in all dialogs.
6. INTERNAL CHANGE: only “secure” configuration settings are saved in Session now
7. LANGUAGE FILES FIXED: html entities were not defined in Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese and French language files

Please note that the current price for the Enterprise license will stay until the end of November and then go up. So make sure you reserve your copy this week with the 30% discount.

I’ve written a post in my personal blog about a way to ease ASP.NET control development using Express editions of Visual Studio.

Check it out if you this is something you are interested in. And don’t forget to “kick it” if you like it

It has come to our attention that whenever you use SPAW 2.0.5 .NET Edition Beta on a page with master pages you can’t access submitted content with the Text property of your SpawEditor object.

This is one of the most important and annoying issues in the beta but luckily there’s a workaround. While we are working on the next release you can access the submitted content through Request.Form[”editor_id”]. Obviously this is not an elegant solution and we apologize for the bug, but it works for now.

Thanks to everyone who reported and helped identify the cause of this bug!