Support table and image tags in the htmltextbox

ADMIN

Ivan Hristov

Posted on: 29 Jan 2024 16:11

Hi all,

With the risk of bringing some unhappy faces here is the state of this effort.

The current engine of the HtmlTextBox serves the need to provide support for a limited set of tags, predominantly oriented towards text-layout functionality. We realize extending the supported HTML tags is one of the top-voted features and the value this would bring to all of you. Eventual compatibility of what end users can input in our Kendo editor and what Reporting can export in all the supported document formats is needed and naturally expected. However, all in-browser editors use the browser engine which a .NET reporting engine cannot utilize.

Back when we planned the R1 2024 (now 2024 Q1) release, we decided to invest time in a P-o-C project of extending the supported HTML tags in the HtmlTextBox with its current, internally developed parser and layout engines. Hence the label 'Scheduled for 2024 Q1'. Well, it did not work well, but this quick failure proved we will need to find an alternative solution to extend our capabilities with HTML.

After aligning our findings with the PM team, we decided to pivot the development efforts and work on a separate report item that would have a brand new HTML parser and layout, supporting more tags. We already have some ideas of libraries that we can utilize in the future. Such support would come with a price tag for more intensive CPU and memory usage, hence the decision to leave the current item “as is” for text formatting scenarios.

The new item will have an extensible design but will require more development efforts and cannot fit into the 2024 Q2 planning. I will happily share when we start working on this project. For the sake of clarity, I am removing the current “Scheduled for” tag.

All best,

Ivan Hristov
Telerik Reporting

Tommy

Posted on: 25 Jan 2024 19:22

Yay, looks like this is going to be resolved soon enough!

Kenneth

Posted on: 23 Jan 2024 09:49

Hello can I know is there any progress on HTMLTextbox support img and table?

Thanks!

Mateusz

Posted on: 20 Sep 2023 11:10

htmltextbox should be editor control than just simply textarea
like there is in Standalone desktop application

Patrick

Posted on: 03 Apr 2023 12:48

Hello, this message is for @Cris Trina, can you tell me what is your competing reporting tools? I need something to render html table before the end of this century 😁

Thanks,

ADMIN

Dimitar

Posted on: 29 Sep 2022 14:43

Hello,

We understand the frustrations that the long waiting time has caused and are sorry for it.

Most of our development power is currently focused on implementing the Visual Studio Designer for .NET Core feature which has also been long awaited. Once that feature is ready, we will have the capacity to further look into this request but it will be as early as next year.

I will update this item again as soon as I have more concrete news.

Please accept our apologies for the caused inconvenience.

Regards,
Dimitar
Progress Telerik

Brand new Telerik Reporting course in Virtual Classroom - the free self-paced technical training that gets you up to speed with Telerik and Kendo UI products. Check it out at https://learn.telerik.com/.

Santiago

Posted on: 23 Sep 2022 11:54

we are almost there son, you will turn 10 years old just in 2 more years! I'm so proud for being part of your childhood. I'm pretty sure that we will be remaining contact for so many years more! I'm so happy for receiving news about you three or four times in a year. This make me remember those good old days when I was a programmer and I was using Telerik and I trying to do something pretty basic for a reporting tool! It's nice to see that many years after I quit programming, things are quite the same in the world or, at least, in the world of telerik!

tim

Posted on: 23 Sep 2022 11:11

we really need images too - please add this feature as soon as possible - it is for sure to add a competitive advantage for your products

ADMIN

Dimitar

Posted on: 01 Sep 2022 07:11

Hello Christos,

The feature is still not planned for a release in the current year.

Please follow the Telerik Reporting Roadmap 2022 for future updates.

Regards,
Dimitar
Progress Telerik

Brand new Telerik Reporting course in Virtual Classroom - the free self-paced technical training that gets you up to speed with Telerik and Kendo UI products. Check it out at https://learn.telerik.com/.

Christos

Posted on: 27 Aug 2022 02:30

Hello, is there an update on this?

ADMIN

Dimitar

Posted on: 18 Jan 2022 08:57

Hello Andreas,

The feature is approved but it is not in our recent plans for implementation - Telerik Reporting Roadmap 2022.

If you have not, you may vote for this request. This way, you increase its priority and it also ensures that you will receive a notification when the status of the item is updated.

If you experience issues with the current workarounds, I would recommend you to open a support ticket or a new forum thread on our forums about the problem, we would be glad to help.

Regards,
Dimitar
Progress Telerik

Brand new Telerik Reporting course in Virtual Classroom - the free self-paced technical training that gets you up to speed with Telerik and Kendo UI products. Check it out at https://learn.telerik.com/.

Andreas

Posted on: 11 Jan 2022 11:03

We also need tables and images in the htmltextbox report-item.

The suggested workarounds do not work in our szenario for freely formatted Content - this is some kind of showstopper for us. We use .net Core 3.1

Are their any plans if and when this will be available?

Regards.

Antonio Vidal

Posted on: 08 Jan 2021 09:35

We use Telerik Report to issue documents that combine free text edited by users through RadEditor and structured data stored in the system. For this reason, we have an essential and critical need so that at least tables and images can be accepted and properly generated by htmltextbox. As far as we can see, this is a common requirement of several other users of Telerik Report and so we would like a greater effort to be made to provide it more quickly.

Michael

Posted on: 08 Jan 2021 08:24

We also need this extension for our customers.

The workaround for the support of images in our software does not help anyone very much,

since it comes at the expense of the formatting, arrangement and size of the images.

Jeff

Posted on: 07 Jan 2021 19:53

I just wanted to add that the suggested workaround does not work with ASP.NET Core - as the Windows WebBrowser control is not supported in .NET Core. We really need a solution to this for images.

ADMIN

Nasko

Posted on: 16 Jul 2020 11:52

Hello Elisa,

We are discussing this request when planning the roadmap. It is not included in a published roadmap yet, but given the demand, we will not decline the request either. I cannot provide a particular time frame when this will make it in the roadmap, but I can assure you that it will be brought up again to the attention of the product management to re-evaluate its priority.

Regards,
Nasko
Progress Telerik

Elisa

Posted on: 09 Jul 2020 12:59

Is this actually still under review or is all hope lost? I'm in the same situation as the original requestor. I have users that need to add freeform text through the RadEditor, and it needs to be formatted as a table showing example data or other tables. It's too inconsistent to reliable store as data. And/or is there a way they can attach a PDF into a report?

Simon

Posted on: 17 Jul 2019 07:44

32 votes.

5 years later.

Still under review.

Sigh.

Ludwig

Posted on: 28 Mar 2019 10:56

need this too

Shane

Posted on: 21 Nov 2017 17:39

This is one of the most popular/liked feedback items (and has been for quite some time), yet it is not listed in your recently published 2018 roadmap (through Q3 2018):

https://www.telerik.com/support/whats-new/reporting/roadmap

Do you plan to address this request?

Mark

Posted on: 09 Nov 2017 09:36

My real requirement is for the handling of images so that is whay I will focus on. In fact, I think this issue should be split into to two separate requirements: images and tables.

In my SSRS reports, I have managed to embed images into Html by utilising a data: urls as below:

<img width="430" height="221" src="data:image/png;base64,R0lGODlh... />

Using this type of image reduces the handling of the image to a simple data extraction exercise and removes the complexities of access to the referenced URL etc. etc. If this was supported then we would at least have a pathway to embedded image support.

In may case, I feel the proposed workaround (web browser and a sampled image) will not work as my images are to be embedded into a multi-page, multi-column letter.

Chris Trina

Posted on: 07 Jun 2017 11:23

The feature that we are requesting is not an unusual feature, your competing reporting tools already do this.  Prior to migrating to Telerik Reports we were using a competing product.  We discovered this limitation midway into our migration and have had to leave several of our reports in our old reporting tool, which does support this feature due to Telerik's lack of support.  If you are serious about offering a full feature supporting tool this is an issue that you need to resolve.

ADMIN

Katia

Posted on: 07 Jun 2017 09:35

Thank you for your comments!

We do understand that tables and images are essential part of the reports. Thus we do provide the PictureBox and the Table item. However, there are some limitations when working with HtmlTextBox, which I will explain here.

Telerik Reporting (TR) is a server solution, which is intended to process and render data, rather than text (be it plain text or richly-formatted text). TR supports several export formats, but they are all geared towards exporting tabular data and charts, rather than richly-formatted text. It is not and will not become a word-processing solution.

If TR is to serve all HTML tags and CSS attributes, we will need to develop a HTML engine which to render this HTML before it hits the client. In other words, we will need to develop a fully functional browser engine which to parse this HTML and CSS, then layout the parsed primitives finally render it to one of the supported formats. Developing such functionality is neither easy nor viable (browser engines are developed for years).
This are the reasons why TR renders a small subset of HTML tags and CSS attributes, support for which have been written by our developers to enable the most common text formatting options.

To input more HTML tags and CSS attributes you can use WebBrowser control and PictureBox item as elaborated in the following KB article: http://www.telerik.com/support/kb/reporting/details/how-to-render-any-html-tags-in-reports
This is a viable option for Telerik Reporting and to facilitate its implementation in your projects we can build it in as out of the box functionality. We have logged this as a new feature request and you can vote for it on this address: https://feedback.telerik.com/Project/162/Feedback/Details/218846-render-any-html-tags-css-attributes-with-webbrowser-control

Thank you for the understanding.

Santiago

Posted on: 19 Dec 2016 19:20

This feature (pretty basic for a any respectable html control) was required two years ago and still remains "under review". Any worthy reporting tool would have given it treatment already.

Victoria

Posted on: 01 Jun 2016 16:12

I'm guessing the RadEditor is the Asp.net equivilant to the RadRichTextEditor in the Winforms UI. 

My request is therefore the same. I would love to be able to utilize in reports the same free text that I can with the RichText tools. My clients too, are asking for images in the html text section of my report.  

Allowing us to embed the existing RichTextEditor in view only mode so we can stream in an external file would allow a huge amount of flexibility in report design.

Francesca

Posted on: 05 Nov 2015 12:59

Image tag is really important in htmltextbox.

Hamid

Posted on: 03 Apr 2015 09:54

That's what I was going to suggest. In this day and age of more and more user customization I think this should have top priority, at least for the table tag but better for both.
There is a mismatch in telerik 'input' and 'output' products - the radEditor is rich in tools  while htmltextbox in Reports is very weak in its support of even simple html tags like <hr> <table> which have been there from early days of html, it is like a sticking plaster approach. 
So what's the use of giving rich tools in radEditor which you can't take output of.
Come on brilliant Telerik team make your customers happy.