10 jQuery and non-jQuery javascript Rich Text Editors

Written by Kevin Liew on 21 Apr 2009
400,149 Views • Javascript

Introduction

Javascript rich text editor has ease our life when we need to edit articles, post or even documents online. Most of the editors allow user to edit the content straight away (What You See Is What You Get - WYSIWYG), it just like editting a document with microsoft office. Nowadays, I think all of the content management system, blog systems are using rich text editor.

LATEST VERSION: You can read our latest post about rich text editors: 10 Feature Packed Javascript WYSIWYG and Rich Text Editors

SensationalJobs
Sponsor: SentionalJobs

Browse through dozens of job offers for web professionals including design jobs and tech jobs

 

So, here are the 10 RTEs that I can find online. From the most basic support of font formatting to advanced features such as image upload, table creation, ajax support and so on. Be sure to drop me a comment if you know other RTE that is not listed below. Enjoy.

Advertisement

MarkitUp - jQuery

Official Website | Demo
MarkitUp

markItUp! is not meant to be a "Full-Features-Out-of-the-Box"-editor. Instead it is a very lightweight, customizable and flexible engine made to meet the developer's needs in their CMSes, blogs, forums or websites. markItUp! is not a WYSIWYG editor, and it never will be.

  • Fast and unobtrusive integration
  • Support for keyboard shortcuts
  • Ajax dynamic preview
  • Supported: IE7, Safari 3.1, Firefox 2, Firefox 3. IE6 and Opera 9+ as-is.
  • Licence: MIT/GPL
  • File: Packed naked engine is about 6.5Kb.

jWYSIWYG - jQuery

Official Website | Demo
jWYSIWYG

This plugin is an inline content editor to allow editing rich HTML content on the fly. It's an alternative to WYMeditor with much less features. With a small file size less than 17Kb 26Kb total and only 9Kb 18Kb of code and 7Kb packed, the main concept is to keep it simple, not all users need font coloring or create tables, just the basic.

  • GNU General Public License v2
  • Compact and lightweight
  • Ajax dynamic preview
  • Browser friendly

Lightweight RTE- jQuery

Official Website | Demo
jWYSIWYG

I have made this Rich Text Editor as simple as possible to be easily changed according your needs.

  • Super lightweight 7kb uncompressed
  • Compatible with major browsers
  • Degrade gracefully
  • GNU General Public License

HTMLBox - jQuery

Official Website | Demo
HTMLBox

Cross-browser interactive open-source HTML / XHTML textarea built on top of the jQuery library. Tested with Mozilla Firefox, Inrernet Explorer, Opera, Netscape and Safari. The integration of HtmlBox into Content Manegement Systems, Forums, Guest Books, Contact Forms is as easy as a childs play.

  • Easy Integration.
  • Multiple Browser Support.
  • Small Size. Size of 15kb (11kb minimized)
  • XHTML Output Possible.
  • Ajax Integration Supported.
  • User Manual. A complete user manual, that will guide you through every step of integrating HtmlBox into your application and customizing it.

D Small Rich Text Editor - jQuery

Official Website | Demo
D Small Rich Text Editor

This piece of code creates a Rich Text Editor ("RTE") from an IFRAME element. Yes, I know, there are tens of such scripts, and most of them are probably more sophisticated than mine, but my script's purpose is to provide enough basic functionality while having the smallest footprint possible.

  • Small (~18k) footprint! (Packed/Minified JS, Plugins & CSS sum to 12k w/o GZIP, HTML can be reduced to ~3k using GZIP, Images (w/o emoticons) are less than 3k)
  • Cross-browser
  • All basic Rich Text functionality
  • Plugin-enabled
  • Image Upload via AJAX (using the AjaxFileUpload plugin).
  • Resizing of text area.
  • Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional markup (Note: this refers to the editor's markup and not to it's generated content which may or may not be valid!).
  • HTML Cleanup

WYMEditor - jQuery

Official Website | Demo
WYMEditor

WYMeditor is a web-based WYSIWYM (What You See Is What You Mean) XHTML editor. WYMeditor's main concept is to leave details of the document's visual layout, and to concentrate on its structure and meaning, while trying to give the user as much comfort as possible (at least as WYSIWYG editors).

  • XHTML strict + CSS compliant
  • No font or text formatting, sizes or colors - WYMeditor is CSS-based
  • Designed to be easy to integrate into your application
  • No installation needed - this is 100% Javascript code - no plugin, no extension
  • Image, link, table support
  • Skins support via CSS
  • APIs, plugins support
  • Free and Open Source
  • Major browsers support

TinyMCE - non-jQuery

Official Website | Demo
TinyMCE

TinyMCE is a platform independent web based Javascript HTML WYSIWYG editor control released as Open Source under LGPL by Moxiecode Systems AB. It has the ability to convert HTML TEXTAREA fields or other HTML elements to editor instances. TinyMCE is very easy to integrate into other Content Management Systems.

  • Easy to integrate - Only a few lines of code needed.
  • Customizable - Themes and plugins, block invalid elements and force attributes.
  • Browserfriendly - Mozilla, MSIE, FireFox, Opera, Safari and Chrome.
  • Lightweight - PHP/.NET/JSP/Coldfusion GZip compressor, Makes TinyMCE 75% smaller and a lot faster to load.
  • AJAX Compatible - You can easily use AJAX to save and load content!
  • International - Multilanguage support using language packs.
  • Open Source - Free under the LGPL license, millions of ppl help test and improve this editor every day.

fckeditor - Non-jQuery

Official Website | Demo
fckeditor

This HTML text editor brings to the web much of the power of desktop editors like MS Word. It's lightweight and doesn't require any kind of installation on the client computer.

  • Multi browser compatibility
  • Outputs XHTML 1.0
  • CSS support for better integration with your web site
  • Font formatting: type, size, color, style, bold, italic, etc
  • Text formatting: alignment, indentation, bullets list, etc
  • Cut, Paste, and Paste as Plain Text, Undo and Redo
  • Paste from Word cleanup with auto detection
  • Image insertion, with upload and server browsing support
  • Right click context menus support
  • Plugins support
  • Spell checker
  • Lightweight and fast
  • Automatic browser detection and customization

Yahoo YUI Rich Text Editor - Non-jQuery

Official Website | Demo
Yahoo UI RTE

The Rich Text Editor is a UI control that replaces a standard HTML textarea; it allows for the rich formatting of text content, including common structural treatments like lists, formatting treatments like bold and italic text, and drag-and-drop inclusion and sizing of images. The Rich Text Editor's toolbar is extensible via a plugin architecture so that advanced implementations can achieve a high degree of customization.

Xinha - Non-jQuery

Official Website | Demo
Xinha

Xinha (pronounced like Xena, the Warrior Princess) is a powerful WYSIWYG HTML editor component that works in all current browsers. Its configurabilty and extensibility make it easy to build just the right editor for multiple purposes, from a restricted mini-editor for one database field to a full-fledged website editor. Its liberal, BSD licence makes it an ideal candidate for integration into any kind of project.

Conclusion

I hope you all love this resource. :)

Join the discussion

Comments will be moderated and rel="nofollow" will be added to all links. You can wrap your coding with [code][/code] to make use of built-in syntax highlighter.

77 comments
Daan 15 years ago
You forgot to mention that jWYSIWYG alows you to upload images.
It's really minimalistic, but unlike the others, it allows image uploading.
They did it really nice.
Reply
Mike Wharton 15 years ago
jQuery RTE is really nice, however it is old. I am starting to rebuild it and fix some of its quicks.

I'll post here when its ready...
Reply
HommeDeJava 15 years ago
How about the footprint of TinyMCE?

GZip, versus non GZip?
Reply
Jonathan Yarbor 15 years ago
jWYSIWYG is the best!

it has a lot more features than appears. Open it up and look into the options 60% of its abilities are turned off. Set the visibility to true and it will appear!
Reply
Paul Irish 15 years ago
Jack Wong 14 years ago
Thanks for sharing this. I been looking for more alternative simple html editor that using jquery.
Reply
Wezo Alves 14 years ago
german 14 years ago
presretac 14 years ago
Thanks for sharing this.
Reply
Ahmet 14 years ago
i use ckeditor thanks post
Reply
James 14 years ago
jWYSIWYG is simple, but doesn't have the font selection.
Reply
Jason 14 years ago
Great stuff ! think I will try fckeditor first
Reply
Guhan Iyer 14 years ago
I've had excellent results with fckeditor and PHP based sites. Thanks for this resource!
Reply