Adding a color box for "Transparent" on the TinyMCE-4 color picker - tinymce-4

Question

I'd like an option with the TinyMCE color picker to choose transparent as the color so a character (a "bullet") will still be there and take up space but will not be visible if it's color is transparent.
There's an "X" box option that says "No color" but this seems to make the color black, not transparent.
Does anyone know how to add a transparent color option to this color picker, or even make the "X" box implement transparent instead of black?
Thanks for any ideas.

Answer 1

I believe I was able to do that, I did some quick tests and it appears to be working fine.
I got the latest version of TinyMCE (4.1.10_dev) to access the textcolor plugin's non minified javascript there's this instruction:
if (value == 'transparent') {
resetColor();
} else {
selectColor(value);
}
What happens here? When you choose a color it runs the selectColor, which wraps the selected text in a span with the selected color. However, when you select the no color it removes this color span (that's why it goes back to black which is the default color) instead of setting it to transparent.
So if you do this:
//if (value == 'transparent') {
// resetColor();
//} else {
selectColor(value);
//}
Instead of removing the span it will change it to 'transparent' instead.
One important thing is that tinyMCE gets the plugin scripts automatically, so it only works with the minified versions, so after you do these changes you'll have to minify the script to the plugin.min.js and put it on the textcolro plugin's folder overwriting the one there.
I hope it helps.

Answer 2

The × button in the colorpicker removes any custom colours, it does not add a zero-opacity colour.
As you can see when looking at the source code or trying the full example there is no support for rgba() or opacity in the included colorpicker plugin. Only rgb() and hex unfortunately.
You may need to create your own small plugin to add the ability. There are a number of alternatives, for example:
Create a CSS class which you can add to elements in the editor. Then do your colour magic in your own CSS file.
Create a new button in the toolbar which makes the element transparent.
I would personally go with option two, something like this:
tinymce.init({
selector: 'textarea',
plugins: 'nocolour',
toolbar: 'nocolour',
external_plugins: {
"nocolour": "url_to_your/nocolour.js"
}
});
And nocolour.js:
tinymce.PluginManager.add('nocolour', function(editor, url) {
// Add a button that opens a window
editor.addButton('nocolour', {
text: 'Remove Colour',
icon: false,
onclick: function() {
editor.undoManager.transact(function() {
editor.focus();
// Here is where you add code to remove the colour
editor.nodeChanged();
});
}
});
});

Answer 3

Rafael's solution worked for me. I just wanted to document it a bit more and show what it looks like for TinyMCE 4.1.7.
When you click the "X" in the textcolor grid the "value" variable gets "transparent," rather than a hex value from the colorMap.
The relevant code in the textcolor plugin is:
value = e.target.getAttribute('data-mce-color'); // the hex color from the colorMap square that was clicked. "transparent" if X was clicked
if (value) {
if (this.lastId) {
document.getElementById(this.lastId).setAttribute('aria-selected', false);
}
e.target.setAttribute('aria-selected', true);
this.lastId = e.target.id;
// if (value == 'transparent') { // occurs if you select the "X" square
// removeFormat(buttonCtrl.settings.format);
// buttonCtrl.hidePanel();
// return;
// }
selectColor(value);
The five lines I've commented out remove formatting for the selected text, leaving it black, which doesn't seem useful. If you wanted the text black you could select the black square in the colorMap. Falling through to selectColor(value) with value = "transparent" sets transparent as the color.