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Backlight 6.4 - WYSIWYG + Video

Backlight 6.4.0 is now available, featuring a new "What You See Is What You Get" (WYSIWYG) editor, and native media player support for audio and video!

WYSIWYG Editor

Custom built for Backlight, the new WYSIWYG editor is available to use on fields that support Markdown. Under-the-hood, Markdown remains the source of truth. You can freely which between the WYSIWYG and standard Markdown views on-the-fly. You can also set your preferred default editor in Backlight's settings.

I've never used a WYSIWYG editor I've thought was perfect, and this one isn't perfect either, but do let me know your experience with it, and any pain points. Because I've built this custom for Backlight, I should be able to massage things into better shape as we go.

If you're writing HTML into the editor, though, you should definitely use the Markdown mode for that. Likewise if you're writing in an external editor, then pasting into Backlight.

Audio/Video Support

We previously announced audio/video support in Backlight 6.2.1, though with caveats at that time, via PHPlugins and requiring CDN-hosted assets. And so it was a bit difficult to set up, and could not be used by those under the auspices of GDPR.

In 6.4, the media player is fully native, easy to use, and usable by everyone!

To enable it, edit your Kookaburra page template, scroll down to the new "Audio/Video Support" control group, and set "Enable Media Presentations" to ON. You can then use the media player on any album, blog, essay or page using that template.

Apply the media player to the page using Kookaburra's essay features; select "Media" as your presentation type, and supply a URL to your audio or video file, or to a YouTube or Vimeo video. Other video sources might work as well; those are the only ones I've tested.

Backlight 6.4.0 (2025-09-09)

  • Adds WYSIWYG editor for all fields that support Markdown in the Backlight admin
  • Fixes issue of empty private keyword suffix treating all keywords as private
  • Adds protected photos to search results when logged in as admin
  • Galleria Add-on: use Caption || Title to populate image alt attribute for improved SEO
  • Kookaburra: "Official" Audio/Video support
  • Kookaburra: Adds aria-label attributes in various places for improved accessibility
  • Kookaburra Page: Adds aria-label="Search" to search buttons for improved accessibility
  • Kookaburra Page: Fixes title overflow issue in the running head
  • Kookaburra Blog: Resets .hero-image class properties for child posts, preventing inheritance of properties from the parent post.
  • Kookaburra Blog: Adds height and width to hero image IMG attributes
  • Updates Sortable JS in Kookaburra and Backlight's admin to latest, 1.15.6
  • Admin: Increases the max-width of content areas
  • Admin: Reorders quick-nav buttons.
  • Admin: Sets font-display: swap when loading Backlight's logo font
  • Admin: Updates styling for bl_settings
  • Adds further compatibility fixes for PHP 8.4
  • Improves suppression of startup PHP errors