Ability for a user to attach extra content, e.g. a hyperlink

[Hovik]

Posted by a customer on 18/08/2010

Example: I want to provide a configurable texts utility in a project. One of the features I would like to include is the ability for a user to attach extra content, e.g. a hyperlink, to specific words or phrases in the text.

As it stands at the second I have two options - the user must either hand-code the HTML tags for a hyperlink into the text value (which assumes a level of competence with web coding that I can't guarantee), or my form must provide a custom markup standard that they can use to indicate where they want the hyperlink to go, the URL they want it to link to etc.

If it were possible to act on the selected portion of a text or text area field (for example, using a MyFieldName.Selected format), a more intuitive way to achieve the effect I'm after would be to display the text item in an editable field (text or text area) and allow the user to click and drag (or keyboard select) to highlight the relevant word or phrase, then click a link or button which fires a script to act on that selected text (in our example, replace the selected text with itself surrounded by <a> tags).