[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #40960: Widgets: The Text widget should respect the “Disable the visual editor when writing” setting

[WordPress Trac]

#40960: Widgets: The Text widget should respect the “Disable the visual editor when
writing” setting
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 Reporter:  westonruter            |       Owner:  azaozz
     Type:  defect (bug)           |      Status:  reopened
 Priority:  normal                 |   Milestone:  4.8.1
Component:  Widgets                |     Version:  4.8
 Severity:  critical               |  Resolution:
 Keywords:  has-patch fixed-major  |     Focuses:
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Comment (by theMikeD):

 @azaozz @FolioVision 's post was exactly right. The core belief of
 backwards compatibility that has guided WP development for years got
 thrown out the window with the decision to modify the text widget without
 warning, feedback or a way to disable it. It's that simple.

 You may think it's bad practice. Maybe it is. That is 100% irrelevant. The
 fact is that for years the text widget has been used for arbitrary HTML
 for countless reasons, and it's not up to you to decide if that is valid
 or not. It was never stated to be *invalid* anywhere that I have seen, so
 its our job to deal with that and make decisions based on data not whims.

 And even if it *is* invalid, that is again 100% irrelevant. You don't get
 to decide how users use WP, and it's not your role to correct them with
 breaking code. And you wonder why there is such negative pushback?

 The truly shitty thing here is that the users this affects won't know what
 happened when it actually does affect them. This bug is not evident on
 upgrade to 4.8. It's only evident after an upgrade to 4.8 and then
 modifying the text widget. If these two things don't happen within minutes
 of each other the logical cause and effect won't exist and they'll be left
 with a) code that used to work that no longer does for no obvious reason,
 and b) no way to get the working code back without a site backup being
 restored (which will only set the user up for the same problem again) or
 the ability to pull the widget code *out* of a site backup and put it into
 the new HTMl widget (when it's released) or one of the several plugins
 that now exist to combat this issue.

 And I'd like to point out that in the slack dev meeting where this issue
 was discussed, one of the things Matt asked for as proof of how messed up
 this decision was, was examples of plugins that had been created to undo
 it. So while you may think it's spammy, it was a factor in that meeting.

 IMHO your patch is missing the point. I don't want to disable TinyMCE
 site-wide, and I suspect the most people don't either. I want to disable
 TinyMCE in the text widget. How can we achieve that goal?

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/40960#comment:31>
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