About Brightspace Editor

Brightspace Editor is now the default editor across the Brightspace Platform.

Figure: The new Brightspace Editor

The new Brightspace Editor includes the following enhancements:

Refreshed formatting options
The Lato font type
A refreshed color picker
A refreshed font size menu
A comprehensive and standard emoticon menu
A comprehensive and refreshed symbols menu
An advanced source code editor
A refreshed Tables feature, including data sorting
A refreshed Accessibility Checker
The placement of the Check Accessibility, HTML Source Editor, Preview, and Toggle Full Screen functionalities into the top bar
Word count functionality that includes words, characters, and text selection.
Context menus while editing to enable quick access to text, link, and image editing options; including advanced image editing options (where image editing is currently available).

Figure: The Formatting Context menu.

Figure: The Context menu link editor.

A new overflow menu with additional, infrequently used menu options.
A format painter that enables you to copy and apply text formatting.
@mentions – @mentions is controlled by the organization unit configuration variable, d2l.Tools.WYSIWYG.Mentions, that is deployed in an OFF state. Once enabled by an administrator, in discussion posts, users can now tag other users within the same course using @mentions depending on permissions. Tagged users are notified by alerts in the minibar. External notifications are not yet available.
The Editor now allows users to set page attributes (title and language) in the Attributes menu. Page attributes only appears in legacy Content, Lessons, and Custom Widgets.
The Editor now remembers the open or closed state of the More Actions button, per user, in order to reduce clicks for users that frequently use options in the expanded editor.
The Editor now uses pixels (px) in the font size menu in order to match the Content Settings menu for an org unit’s default font size.
The drag/drop and copy/paste functionality for images in areas that do not contain user specific data is now available. Those areas include:
- Content Module/Topic Descriptions
- Quiz/Survey/Self-Assessment - Description, Header. Footer
- Grades - Description
- Content Course Overview descriptions
- Discussion Forum/Topic descriptions
- Quizzes Feedback and Grades Feedback
- Grades Comments
- Discussions > Post feedback and Thread feedback
Note: This functionality is available in user-specific areas that may contain images with learner-sensitive information. As a result, these images are stored in the database rather than the Manage Files area of a course offering. In addition, the Course Copy function does not include these images.

The list below outlines what is not included in the Editor:

Spell check functionality. D2L recommends using your browser spell check functionality. However, the d2l.Tools.Quizzing.ShowSpellCheckInAttempts org unit configuration variable is still respected and marks text in Quizzes to be ignored by the browser spell checker. It can be turned off for all quizzes at the org unit level.
Cut/Paste functionality. D2L recommends using your browser hot keys/menus for this functionality.

Important: In Brightspace Editor when you upload a file using Insert Stuff, a message appears indicating that the files uploaded using Insert Stuff are saved in the Manage Files area. The message also indicates that files in the Manage Files area are potentially accessible to all users enrolled in the course or to anyone who has access to the course. As best practice, do not include individual learner feedback in the files you are uploading using Insert Stuff.

The Brightspace Editor has three options you can choose when viewing content:

View	Description
Design view	The design view loads automatically when Brightspace Editor is accessed. Use this view to quickly create and format content without needing any prior knowledge of HTML. Enter your content and use the available controls to apply formatting to your text, insert images and tables, and create links.
Source Editor view	Click the HTML Source Editor icon to display the source editor view. This view displays the code that structures and formats your content. Use this view if you have experience with HTML and prefer to author your content in HTML or want to apply styles from a cascading style sheet (CSS). If you have HTML-based content from another application, you can also copy and paste that code into the source editor view.
Preview	Use the view to display a preview of your HTML content in a new window. This allows you to preview content and ensure that it displays as expected prior to saving any changes.

The Quiz Builder supports the new inline Editor.

The inline limited version of Brightspace Editor is now available in Activity Feed as the default editor.

Brightspace Editor HTML options in Activity Feed include: Bold, Italic, Underline, Strike-through, Superscript, Subscript, Font Color, Bulleted Lists, Numbered Lists, Increase/Decrease Indentation, Insert Stuff, Insert Quicklink, and Emoji. Insert Stuff now includes various capabilities, including Video Note functionality.

Figure: The updated inline limited version of Brightspace Editor in Activity Feed