Display emoticons as images filter

The filter Display emoticons as images converts emoticon (smiley) characters into images. In Moodle 1.x, this feature is integrated directly into text format processing functions.

Filter settings

Since Moodle 2.0, the site administrator has to enable the filter to convert emoticon characters like :-) into images. In the filter settings, choose the input text formats where the filter should be applied. The default values are backward compatible with Moodle 1.x behaviour.

Inserting emoticons in HTML editor

Insert emoticon popup menu in Moodle 2.0

Users can insert emoticons by direct typing the emoticon characters, eg :-). If the emoticon filter is enabled, a button Insert emoticon is available in TinyMCE HTML editor. It lets the user to insert the emoticon image from the popup menu.

Emoticon images inserted via the popup menu are automatically converted back into their text representation before the text is submitted to the server. And vice versa, all emoticons are automatically converted into images when the editor loads. This way, users using TinyMCE HTML editor can see emoticon images while users working with the plain web form field (textarea) can see the text representation of the smilies.

Customizing emoticons

Both the filter and TinyMCE popup menu use a list of emoticons defined by the site administrator at HTML settings page. See Emoticon images 2.0 for more details.