WYSIWYG Editors - Implementations

[lfryc]

Since we are going to implement editor component in upcoming major release,

I have started survey on current implementations which suits our needs,

now you have possibility to choose which one particular implementation do you like

or recommend your favorite choices.

I have divided editors to two groups:

• full-featured
  • offers complete editing experience
  • heavy-weight - decreases user experience
  • still might be optimized for simple scenarios
• lightweight editors
  • offers enough of editing experience (but lacks advanced options)
  • light-weight from their nature
  • needs plug-in when achieving advanced use cases

Let's check it out:

Full-Featured Editors

TinyMCE (Demo, LGPL, enteprise support)

CKEditor (Demo, LGPL, enterprise support)

HtmlBox (Demo, MIT, JQuery-based)

Light-weight Editors

YUI Editor (Demo, BSD)

CLEditor (Demo, MIT/GPL, JQuery-based)

NIC Editor (Demo, MIT)

Message was edited by Lukáš Fryč (added information about JQuery and support)

[lfryc]

Aloha (Demo, AGPLv3) is my favorite one,  but licensing doesn't probably suits well.

[jonask]

an option advanced="true" would be great which switches a light-weight one to an advanced version. are there any implementations which support two versions? that one would be my favorite...

from the one you posted i prefer CKEditor and if lightweight NIC Editor.

[lfryc]

Basically each of them allows to select fine-grained options you would like to display.

So all of full-featured editors are coming to consideration then.

We will probably stick with only one editor implementation, but needs to make sure, that it supports both full-featured and light-weight configurations

and verify that they doing so non-intrusive way (resources, that are not needed should not make way to the browsers).

[rcoats]

I'd probably have a preference for TinyMCE, that way any new usage of it in Richafaces 4 applications would give a similar user experience to that in the RichFaces 3 apps that already use rich:editor.

[bleathem]

Do they all make use of jQuery?  It would be nice to make use of the javascript libraries we are already bundling as much as possible, and not unecessarily intorduce new included script files.

[jbalunas]

Unfortunately the tinyMCE editor had several issues, and was difficult to upgrade between versions.  There were also issues with portlet environments that made it difficult to maintain.

Since this is a major upgrade version to 4.X we want to review other options.

[jbalunas]

We need to make sure whatever we choose has a good history and activity so that we can make sure they will maintain it and update as needed for bugs, browsers, etc...

We also need to be sure there is mobile device support!

[lfryc]

Brian Leathem wrote:

Do they all make use of jQuery?  It would be nice to make use of the javascript libraries we are already bundling as much as possible, and not unecessarily intorduce new included script files.

This is great idea, but regrettably only some of editors are JQuery based (HtmlBox and CLE Editor), I have added this informations to initial post.

Also using jQuery-based editor might be considered as risk in upgrading jQuery versions.

[lfryc]

Jay Balunas wrote:

Unfortunately the tinyMCE editor had several issues, and was difficult to upgrade between versions. 

Could you be more specific about issues and problems with upgrade? We might want to test this with other implementations.

There were also issues with portlet environments that made it difficult to maintain.

This is also the point which we should test prior start of implementation - would be worth to contact Wesley and Jan.

[lfryc]

Jay Balunas wrote:

We also need to be sure there is mobile device support!

Unfortunately, there are no mobile-enabled implementations, see http://community.jboss.org/message/611796#611796

[jbalunas]

Lukáš Fryč wrote:

Jay Balunas wrote:

Unfortunately the tinyMCE editor had several issues, and was difficult to upgrade between versions. 

Could you be more specific about issues and problems with upgrade? We might want to test this with other implementations.

The main issues were around upgrading and stability between point releases.

• API changes between point releases
• Skinning was difficult to implement
  • and changed with point releases

There were also issues with portlet environments that made it difficult to maintain.

This is also the point which we should test prior start of implementation - would be worth to contact Wesley and Jan.

+1 - This is something that Wesley should be able to comment on as well.

[jbalunas]

Lukáš Fryč wrote:

Jay Balunas wrote:

We also need to be sure there is mobile device support!

Unfortunately, there are no mobile-enabled implementations, see http://community.jboss.org/message/611796#611796

ok - commented in other page - we'll keep this in the requirements discussion for now.  Hopefully we can find some more info here

Update:  The quick research I did here are not positive.  There is little support - especially for iphone.