Just checking out David Hyatt's weblog and it would seem that editable regions is not far off. They are implementing it for Dashboard as part of OS X 10.4 so it may well be standard by then or even available now by adding some sort of declaration to your html.
I'll look a bit deeper and see what I find.
Would be nice to not have to install another browser on all our clients.
Do you have a link for this info? I have a few Mac-based clients that would appreciate the knowledge.
A post about the implementation of contenteditable
A post about the implementation of contenteditable
David Hyatt is one of the developers of Safari, in fact he is the one writing this support so it is straight from the horses mouth.
I tested Matrix on our machine here that is running the pre-release Tiger (OS X 10.4) with a Safari 2.0 beta and there are a couple of positive results.
- The asset tree applet loads without any need for the Java plugin (probably would be the same for Mozilla and Firefox as there is only Java 1.4.2 on these releases).
- When clicking the edit button to bring up HTMLArea controls and styled content, the content actually displays now, but is not yet actually editable with the current code.
We are expecting a new seed of Tiger soon that may include all the recent enhancements to Safari and fix this.
Of course it is always possible (and it is probable) that HTMLArea is still treating Safari weirdly because it is not a supported browser. HTMLArea probably has to have some tweak made to allow it to treat Safari 2.0+ on mac just like IE on windows.
I would supply a screen shot, but that would be against the preview release agreement.
Email me for more info if you like.
We have a client here in Canberra that also has a copy of pre-release Tiger (I believe). I'll ask him for a spare Dual-G5 and put the Development copy of Matrix on that, see how it flies. 
Thanks for the heads-up, though.
Here's another heads up for you, Apple have gotten a bit more hardline about their pre-release software.
The pre-release versions of Tiger are thumbprinted and apparently report their installations back to Apple on install. Your client may lose his preview release access if you do this.
Check the license terms that come with the pre-release cd, you may end up with a very unhappy ex-client!
Good heads up. I'll get the client to speak to the Apple guys in Canberra to make sure we're doing things properly. I have another client that's deploying Matrix on a few Xserves in the New Year, so this'll all be in Apple's benefit.
Apple will possibly tell you to buy this…
Tiger Early Start Kit
Just checked the new Tiger build we got today.
Editable areas are actually editable now but selecting text and then trying to apply styles like italic or bold is not working.
You can't toggle HTMLArea controls off after they are turned on, but when you commit the page it is saving the changes.
So some progress is being made there.
Very encouraging news, Sam. We really appreciate this feedback (and I'm sure our other Apple clients do too!)
I'll see if Firefox installs on it at some stage and let you know how that runs too.
Probably won't be until early January now though. I'm off on holidays for a while.
Enjoy the break! I have a local client who's getting a copy of that Tiger Prerelease Kit you linked to, so I might be able to do some tinkering during the silly season.