Collection of Web Based Text Editors

Tags: Javascript, RTE, TextArea Edit, WYSIWYG

Mar

Over the past few years I’ve been using FCKeditor as my internet text editor. I’ve recently been having some problems with FCKeditor because it is just to slow for some users. So I decided to look for a different editor. Now don’t get me wrong FCKeditor is a great text editor with so many features and it works with so many programing languages. But it was getting to the point for me that it just has so many features that I don’t use and it has ugly HTML markup that I decided to change.

Below is a list of Text Editors that I found.

TinyMCE - TinyMCE is a platform independent web based Javascript HTML WYSIWYG editor. TinyMCE is very easy to integrate and use. It also has very good HTML markup. I decided to Switch to this editor.
Damn Small Rich Text Editor - DSRTE is a very small text editor script that works by creating an Iframe element. DSRTE works on top of the jQuery framework. It is very easy to implement all you need is the jQuery library, a Javascript and a CSS file. One of my favorite parts is that it has a resizable text area.
jWYSIWYG - JWYSIWYG is a jQuery Plugin to editing rich HTML content on the fly. It is a very small file less than 26kb. I like this editor because it doesn’t have tons of features and it is just the basics.
NicEdit - NicEdit is a WYSIWYG editor for websites. NicEdit is extremely lightweight and can be easily integrated in any site. NicEdit doesn’t have the best markup but it is very fast and doesn’t overload you with tons of features.
Whizzywig - Whizzywig is a completely free web based text editor. It is written in javascript and is very easy to implement. Whizzywig runs very smoothly and is cross browser compatible.
widgEditor - widgEditor is an easily installed, easily customizable WYSIWYG editor for simple content. It is written in javascript and is very simple. It doesn’t have that many features but it is very fast and works well.
sLedit -sLedit is an in place rich text editor using Mootools. The code works very fast. I really enjoy this script because it is an edit in place text editor. You must check this out. The only thing that is a bummer is the installation is annoying.
Yahoo! UI Text Editor - YUI Text Editor is a text editor that is based on the Yahoo UI library. It has many different options and features that you can choose from. You can go from a very simple and basic text editor to an advanced editor. You can even customize it.

If you have any more that you use please comment below. Thanks.

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Edwin says, March 29th, 2008

Long time ago I used TinyMCE, but then I stepped over to FCKeditor, because it looked more professional to me and in that time it has better valid output then TinyMCE. But now you make me doubt again. If you have tinymce vs. fck, what are the most important things to look at when you have to choose between them?

BTM says, March 29th, 2008

@Edwin: TinyMCE just hit 3.0 recently, and I must say I’m impressed - I’ve been using it for a long time now, and hadn’t had any major problem (on my wife site it outputs DIV’s instead of P’s and I have no idea why …) and as for FCKEdit … oh boy … where would I start - ther hadn’t been a day when a client would not complain that the editor isn’t working quite right - cant create paragraphs, cant change text style, cant insert / edt table bla bla bla …

And as for the article - sLedit is just a TinyMCE clon/mod - cant really tell what has been changed o.O

Edwin says, March 30th, 2008

Hi BTM,
Thanks for the fast response. I think I will test tinymce in the coming days and if it’s really as good as you say (and I expect that you’re right) I will make the step to tinymce too. How is tinymce with updates? Have you got to update the whole system or also only parts of it. Because I am planning to tweak some things to my own flavour.

It’s a little bit a dissapointment. I expected so much of fck, also because there is a whole team behind it developing the system. But indeed, reguarly I get complaints of clients too that some parts are not working good. One time time when somebody tried to center a paragraph and a picture at once, the whole system crashed. They are now bringing out version 2.6 I hoped that that will be better, but maybe it’s better to step over to tinymce…

Boris Delev says, March 30th, 2008

I use Spaw text editor. For more info check this page: http://www.spaweditor.com/en/disp.php/en_products/en_spaw/en_spaw_demo

Brett says, March 30th, 2008

@Boris, Thanks I will check out Spaw.

@Edwin, Thanks for taking the time to write. Since I just recently switched to TinyMCE I’m not to sure about updates but maybe someone here can answer that for you. Anyway its great to hear from you.

@BTM, Thanks for pointing out sLedit is just a clone of TinyMCE.

Edwin says, March 31st, 2008

I think your blog is getting spammed, isn’t it? But that besides… I am still thinking about TinyMCE and I suddenly remembered the common reason why I went to fck: in the past tinymce alwats “corrected” the output on his own way. But very often it did things I didn’t want. Like making the paths to images relative or cutting code away. How does it handle the ouput now?

Brett says, March 31st, 2008

@Edwin, Yeah it is getting spammed I need to get a new spam filter. TinyMCE allows for both absolute and relative image paths. TinyMCE still does cut some code out that is invalid but you can change it in the settings. I think the coolest feature is that you can add your own custom CSS to the text or images.

Gary says, May 2nd, 2008

I am developing a website and need an online text editor that I can use with a variety of fonts not normally installed on user’s computers. I can embed these fonts into a HTML page but do any online text editors allow me to use embedded fonts?

Thanks

Gary

Brett says, May 2nd, 2008

@Gary - Not that I know of, but I would check out the text editors websites and see if it is possible.

sLajax says, August 13th, 2008

@BTM:

I wrote sLedit, and your right, it’s not a new text editor. Rather it’s just a wrapper class that allows you to take ANY RTE and integrate it into a inline editing functionality. Click to edit for FCK, Tiny, or anything else with a halfway decent api.