Rich-Text Editor (RTE) Tips

The Text component in AEM includes a Rich-Text Editor (RTE) interface that lets users quickly and effectively add content or resources to a given page. The component itself houses a multitude of functions, but some other functionality exists that some users may be unaware of.

Keep reading to gain insight with these knowledge tips!

Several text styling options exist to give a bit of additional flexibility to how the text is rendered out, while maintaining accessibility and consistency throughout all of our agency websites. The styling options are accessed via the "S" icon on the bottom row of the RTE.

Some of the more useful styling options are:

• Red text
• Strikethrough text
• all caps, all the time. we have a keyboard key for this.
• Some smaller-than-normal font
• Slightly larger font than normal
• Even larger
• You get the picture

These can even be combined to help give more emphasis to certain texts that aren't in need of being Titles. Be disciplined in their use and avoid excessively using these non-standard sizes.

Text entered into the Text component may be paragraphs long, or include "blocks" of data that may need visually separated from the rest in order to make reading it feel less compact and jumbled. Proper spacing also helps to maintain flow and should assist in breaking material down into appropriate sections.

One such way to dictate spacing between paragraphs is by managing how you insert newline characters. Newline characters dictate when text flows to a new line, and is automatically-handled by wrapping text immediately from where the newline character preceded.

A standard "Enter" key press on the keyboard will drop the user 2 lines instead of one, and will give proper space above the text to indicate this separate block of text. This will also add additional list items by continuing the list (bulleted, numbered).

Holding "Shift" and pressing "Enter" (Shift + Enter) on the keyboard will drop the user to the immediate next line without the added spacing. This acts more like a "line break". This allows users to maintain related text together into 1 uniform paragraph block and tends to be more evident in situations such as putting out contact information:

Doing a Shift + Enter command will NOT make a list (bulleted or numbered) continue with a new entry, because as stated before, this command functions as a line break instead of a true new line.

*Remember! Use ONLY Enter to continue your lists!

Typical system operating system (Windows, Mac) shortcut key combinations are supported for a variety of actions in the Rich-Text Editor, even if they don't appear available as options. Highlighting text and pressing the key combinations below will give the desired effect on Windows operating systems. These are the most common:

You may drag and drop onto highlighted text from the Assets Side Panel to automatically create links to associated documents, images, etc.

Text may also be drag and dropped, but it should be noted that AEM does not properly handle all formatting types. It is rather that text be copied and pasted via the "Paste as Text" button, to strip out formatting and allow the user to format via the RTE without issue. The Image component handles inserting images and should be used as such, not the text component.