WYSIWYG Editor

[eluser]Adam Griffiths[/eluser]
Hey guys,

Basically what I am looking for is a javascript WYSIWYG editor that I can use in my CMS application. What would be the best to use in regards to ease of use and features. The people who will be using it will probably be used to word processors like Word and OpenOffice, so should be a little like that in regards to feel etc.

I have used TinyMCE before but was just wondering if there was anything better out there?

Thanks.

[eluser]Mirage[/eluser]
Tiny seems to be the most popular. I've recently adapted FCKeditor to work in ExtJS windows and I kinda like it. The code for FCK is a bit crufty as it supports some pretty old browsers. But they definitely appear to have a better API that let's you have more control from a programming standpoint. I was able to replace entire commands and dialogs with Ext UI components. The FCK is working on a 3.0 version which will likely be much leaner and even better separated.

Beyond these two giants - there's Solmetra http://www.spaweditor.com/en/ . I haven't tested it but it appears to have good compatibility. I know there are many other projects each with a different twist and varying degrees of support.

Oh - ExtJs also has their own HTMLEditor. It's much lightweight, but covers the basics just fine.

HTH,
-m

[eluser]Adam Griffiths[/eluser]
Thanks for the links and your opinion mirage. I went with tinyMCE, I was planning to do this all tomorrow but I just couldn't help myself!

[eluser]ray73864[/eluser]
TinyMCE was good, but then it came to inserting images using the wysiwyg and tinymce made it difficult to upload the images and then browse the server.

I use FCKEditor myself now, very easy to integrate with CodeIgniter (don't even need to use the wiki article), and it has proper server browsing and file uploading capabilities.

[eluser]Bramme[/eluser]
I'm personally a fan of tinymce because of the rich features. I hate it for it's non-existing ease of styling though.

[eluser]@li[/eluser]
Tiny for me. Looks better than fuck and also you can easily get rid of the buttons you don't want to display, etc. Loading size is also smaller than fuck.

[eluser]Mirage[/eluser]
Hi all -

Just wanted to throw this link to a current review one the state of RTE's out there:

http://bulletproofbox.com/web-based-rich...-compared/

Cheers,
-m

[eluser]Teks[/eluser]
The link above currently seems to be dead. I did find, however, this interesting blog post.

Personally, there are a few things that are crucial for my installations:

1) my end users need to have a *very* simple interface - no tables, no multiple font sizes, colours, etc. That means, that I must be able to customise the toolbar.
2) my end users need to have a pretty straight-forward way to add pictures to their pages - image upload is a must.
3) code should be stable - buggy code just generates unhappy customers with support questions I cannot solve
4) the project should be alive and kicking - one year down the track I don't want to have to change the editor my users got used to, because the project has been abandoned
5) the license must be reasonably liberal for commercial projects - no copy-left GPL-style licenses allowed.

My own take on the current crop of editors is as follows:

XINHA
http://www.xinha.org/
The most feature-full editor I have been able to find - it even has a simple image editor built-in - and the original, official successor of the HTMLArea. It also has the most liberal license. Unfortunately, it is also the buggiest of the 3 listed here.
* easily customisable interface: YES
* picture uploader: YES - as well as a file browser, picture editor, and many, many other plug-ins.
* stable code: NO
* project status: almost stagnant - last update May 2008.
* license: BSD-style (totally free and unrestricted for commercial use)

TinyMCE
http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/
This is the editor made popular by WordPress. The 'free' version is intended as a hook to get the developer to purchase the commercial file browser and image uploading plug-ins.
* easily customisable interface: YES
* picture uploader: NO - although free (but unreliable) plug-ins may be found on the 'net.
* stable code: NO - various problems being currently addressed, with code becoming increasingly stable
* project status: vibrant
* license: LGPL (commercial use allowed, but restrictions apply)

FCKEditor
http://www.fckeditor.net/
A very mature and feature-filled editor, with a prolific development team, and being increasingly adopted by more and more CMSs who are looking for a stable alternative to TinyMCE.
* easily customisable interface: YES
* picture uploader: YES
* stable code: YES
* project status: vibrant
* license: LGPL (commercial use allowed, but restrictions apply)

There are also other options that are worth considering, depending on your budget and licensing requirements. Have a look at:
* Spaw Editor | http://www.solmetra.com/en/ - if you have a little money to spare, this polished commercial editor is certainly worth a few dollars
* XStandard | http://xstandard.com/en/ - worth considering if XHTML 1.1 is important to your project, comes in 'lite' (= free but restrictive) and 'pro' (= commercial but powerful) versions

All of the editors mentioned in this page are, to my knowledge, cross-platform, and compatible with current versions of all major browsers on each platform (Mac, Windows and Linux).

I hope this helps.

[eluser]Sheldon[/eluser]
I like SPAW, it creates valid code, has a good File Manager and works with CI well.

Check out my blog post about it <a href="http://sheldon.lendrum.co.nz/codeigniter-spaw-editor-tabs_411/10/">Code Igniter, Spaw and SPAW Tabs</a>.

[eluser]Phil Sturgeon[/eluser]
Congratulations, you wrote a blog post on it, Spaw is still a terrible WYSIWYG.

I haven't looked in FCKEditor in a very long time but I am massively impressed with its progress.

The modal windows look great as does the crazy pop-up file-manager. Simple enough for any client to be happy.

I might have to switch PyroCMS to FCKEditor purely for the multi-language support alone though!

Edit: Ok, TinyMCE can do multi-language perfectly well. Sticking with it for now.