10 best WYSIWYG Text and HTML Editors for Your Next Project
Matthew Corner
Allowing users, and clients to format their text without delving into code has long been on developers priority lists, but these days, providing this usability is far easier than it once was. Here are 10 WYSIWYG editors that are commonly used, and are worth a look in if its something you need for a project.
1. NicEdit
NicEdit is an alternative to some of the larger, more complex WYSIWYG editors out there, with its small download size. It boasts many of the expected editor features and easily integrates into your site.
2. TinyMCE
TinyMCE is an open-source JavaScript HTML WYSIWYG editor. It’s easy to integrate, and is highly customisable with themes and plugins. TinyMCE is one of the more “complete” editors out there, offering an experience similar to MSWord.
3. CKEditor
CKeditor is the new FCKEditor that proved to be market leading previously. It builds from that, and aims to fix what FCKEditor got wrong. The result is a high performance WYSIWYG editor that offers editing features comparable to MSWord and Open Office.
4. YUI Rich Text Editor
The YUI Rich Text Editor is a UI control from Yahoo that turns textarea’s into fully functioning WYSIWYG editors. IT comes in several different versions of varying features and complexity, but still manages to achieve a great user experience without a plethora of buttons crowding the interface.
5. MarkItUp!
Markitup is a Jquery plugin that allows you to turn textarea’s into markup editors in any markup you wish. Html, Wiki syntax, and BBcode are just a few that are supported. Markitup is not a WYSIWYG editor, but that doesn’t hold it back from offering all the basic features you’d expect, and a lightweight download that works well.
6. FreeTextBox
FreeTextBox is a html editor specifically for ASP.NET. The look and feel of the editor is the most like Microsoft Word that you are likely to get. The free version does lack a couple further features, but the free version has more than enough to get you going.
7. MooEditable
WYSIWYG Editors have become common as plugins for the popular jQuery library, but not so common on Mootools. MooEditable though, fills that void, by providing a simple, but effective user experience to the user, by building on top of a well written JavaScript library. If you’re a Mootools fan, then you’ll have no problems with this.
8. OpenWysiwyg
OpenWysiwyg is a cross browser rich text editor with almost every editing capability you could want. It features a sleek user interface including drop-downs and buttons. High on its features is its capacity to handle tables well, with different borders and colours. However, Chrome is still not supported.
9. Spaw Editor
Spaw Editor is a web-based in-browser WYSIWYG editor control enabling web site developers to replace a standard text area html control with full-featured, fully customizable, multilingual, skinable web-based WYSIWYG editor.
10. jHtmlArea
jHtmlArea is another WYSIWYG text editor built as a plugin for the popular Jquery library. It’s purpose is to be simple and lightweight, and it serves this well, with only the most needed options included in the plugin. It allows itself to be easily customised from the looks, to the functions, to the language.
Further Discussion?
If you have used one of these before, or have used another web-based Rich Text Editor that you think deserves a mention, then go ahead and add them in the comments area below. We’d love to hear from you on the subject!
For Further Reading:
Did you enjoy this article and found it useful?
Get even more from us:
Wayne Gomez
Posted 85 days ago 38what about golive by adobe?
mdev
Posted 209 days ago 35Publication date?
Rean John Uehara
Posted 209 days ago 36April 14, 2010. :)
visitor
Posted 133 days ago 37Does anyone know how to bypass Latex to create text which includes mathematics? Is there anything more recent and which does not force the author to mess up the input with incomprehensible garbage? For example, Maple lets you create text files that can include equations and that you can save in different formats including pdf. Also, how does one generate those nice new animated pdf slides?
Fabio Polisini
Posted 329 days ago 33Hi,
i would like to point MooEditor, free editor that works with Mootools
Guest
Posted 250 days ago 34I look the PEGOEditor and its nice but that only for browser and I try it on mozzila firefox
led strip
Posted 379 days ago 31Hmm it appears like your website ate my first comment (it was super long) so I guess Ill just sum it up what I wrote and say, Im thoroughly enjoying your blog. I as well am an aspiring blog writer but Im still new to everything. Do you have any suggestions for inexperienced blog writers? Id really appreciate it.
Rean John Uehara
Posted 379 days ago 32Hi, I think you will enjoy this: http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/design/pro-blogging/ It is a 10-part series to help people blog. And I’m very sorry to hear about that super long comment, I don’t know what happened to that. :(
Animal Software
Posted 381 days ago 30Whichever editor you use, this should improve it:
Dolphin Text Editor Menu
http://www.animal-software.com/dolphin-text-editor-menu.php
securesh
Posted 444 days ago 29I think Xinha is batter than jHtmlArea , And Xinha is opensource :)
Brett Widmann
Posted 540 days ago 28This is a great collection of editors. I can’t wait to try out a few and see what works best for me. Thanks for sharing.
Mark
Posted 740 days ago 27I just replaced TinyMCE with CKEditor and I am very impressed! The features and ease of use are great (both installing and as a wysiwyg). It also works well in all browsers. I’d highly recommend it. This coming from someone who had switched from FCKeditor to TinyMCE a couple years ago…
element321
Posted 741 days ago 26Thanks for the great list. I have heard of some these. I need to check out some these and see what ones will work best for me when I am not using Dreamweaver.
.-= element321´s last blog ..Hootsuite Versus TweetDeck =-.
TiamatInc
Posted 760 days ago 22Thank you for the excellent list of editors.
.-= TiamatInc´s last blog ..Кому обзор за постовой? =-.
Matt Corner
Posted 758 days ago 25No problem, it helped me so i’m sure it can help others =)
Emily McAuliffe
Posted 761 days ago 21For those who need to look outside an open source solution, please consider EditLive!. It is embedded in the leading content management systems and includes enterprise class support. One of the best loved features of EditLive! is the ability to copy and paste content from Word and produce clean, compliant XHTML. Try it – we have advanced features like track changes and commenting in our online demo. http://editlive.com/online-demo
OIK2
Posted 766 days ago 18I want to integrate custom tags(for things like a standard image display with captions, functional tags from within my CMS, etc) with some user input into the WYSIWYG editor. Any tips on what editor would be best for doing this?
.-= OIK2´s last blog ..The Stash of the Week =-.
Matt Corner
Posted 758 days ago 24MarkitUp! seems to have to the ability to cater for custom tags. It might be what you’re looking for =)
Chris Lottman
Posted 766 days ago 16I gravitate more towards Modx than wordpress. Modx uses TinyMcE which has always worked great for me.
Matt Corner
Posted 766 days ago 17You choose your cms on its wysiwyg editor? xD
Raman
Posted 764 days ago 19Hey Matt, Do you know if there is one WYSIWYG editor that can input math equations? thanks
Matt Corner
Posted 758 days ago 23I’m not aware of one I’m afraid. Out of curiosity, in what circumstance would you use such a feature?
Jordan Walker
Posted 768 days ago 15Those are very nice, I prefer CKEditor.
Ben Margetts
Posted 769 days ago 13I’m struggling to find a wysiwig that will allow me to simultaneously see and edit the html and wysiwig windows. All that i can find is editors that require me to toggle.
Any suggestions?
Zac
Posted 769 days ago 9Do any of these strip off the ridiculous formatting/inlined-styling that happens when content editors (the clients) end up simply copying and pasting from MS Word? I’m yet to find a good solution to that problem.
Matt Corner
Posted 769 days ago 10I’m haven’t tested that to be fair. Would it not be easier to copy and paste as plain text and then style it using the wysiwyg editor itself?
Zac
Posted 769 days ago 12Sure, but to get the client to (always) do that is nearly impossible. ;)
Joacim Boive
Posted 764 days ago 20CKeditor, from version 3.2, handles this automatically. No need to press a button and you can of course configure this behavior if you like.
http://cksource.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=13756
/J
Branson
Posted 768 days ago 14TinyMCE and CKEditor for sure do this! You can see the button for it in the screenshots. The one for Tiny MCE is in the 2nd row, 5th button from the left. The strip for CKEditor is in the top row, 8th button over.
It will popup and have you paste the text it…and then it auto strips it. If that fails, paste into Notepad, and then copy and paste again into the wysiwyg.
Martin Hruška
Posted 769 days ago 8All these editors are outdated. They are all based on clumsy contentEditable parameter, which don’t work the same in different browsers and all these editors do are very ugly hacks.
But there’s different approach to browser wysiwyg editor problem! Javascript is now fast so we can emulate everything with DOM methods. Did you see latest Google Docs? Yes – no contentEditable, all with DOM. Even the blinking cursor is just styled DIV!
I’m really waiting when this approach comes to open source world!
Andy
Posted 769 days ago 7My choice – WYMeditor…
because of the simplicity of the interface and because the client can’t make a mess of the XHTML we’ve strived so hard to develop. Styles, typography and layout should be left for the branding/styleguide of the master CSS, not inline by a user who fanices themselves as a designer.
“WYMeditor has been created to generate perfectly structured XHTML strict code, to conform to the W3C XHTML specifications and to facilitate further processing by modern applications. With WYMeditor, the code can’t be contaminated by visual informations like font styles and weights, borders, colors, …
The end-user defines content meaning, which will determine its aspect by the use of style sheets. The result is easy and quick maintenance of information.”
Alan Tocheri
Posted 769 days ago 6Does anyone know what Squarespace uses for their editor? It’s obviously a custom job, but is it built on anything from this list?
Nick
Posted 16 days ago 39Hey Alan… the Squarespace editor is based on the YUI editor mentioned in this post.
$hekh
Posted 769 days ago 4its for sure, a great collection.
Albert Lie
Posted 769 days ago 3I was once used TinyMCE, but now I use Adobe Dreamweaver for html editor. Nice share!
.-= Albert Lie´s last blog ..42 Free Social Media Icon Set by Elegant Themes =-.
Matt Corner
Posted 769 days ago 11These aren’t to be used as html editors as such. They’re to be used for posting content to your site with basic styling like posting an article for example.
ESN
Posted 770 days ago 2I have recently used CKeditor for a project and I must say it’s a huge improvement over the old FCKEditor.
.-= ESN´s last blog ..Easter 2010 Special – $60 off one year/two year Dreamhost hosting packages =-.
Jared Detroit
Posted 770 days ago 1Doesn’t WordPress use TinyMCE? I’ve found TinyMCE to be really easy to use and will definitely look to use it on my next project. I don’t know how it is to integrate into a website but it’s definitely easy to use.
.-= Jared Detroit´s last blog ..Easy & Effective Content Creation =-.
Saad Bassi
Posted 769 days ago 5Yeah, Jared WP use TinyMice. I will suggest you to take a look on CKEditor. I love it and its really very comprehensive solution.:)