Which is the best WYSIWYG editor?

There are many, check this link

Hi Rok,

yep, I know there are many. Because there are many I’m asking people who favor one or the other to give me the critic they have on the ones they tried out or swear on using. ??

blogdesk.org
qumana.com

both are good

Hi resiny,

if I grasp this correctly, these are “offline” blogging clients?

I will look into this as a possible solution. This might even be perfect for a totally different blog I had in mind.

However, what I actually meant was a replacement of the in-built online RTE editor in WP. I’m looking for reviews of these:

– ChenPress
– EditorMonkey
– Wysi-Wordpress
– WYSIWYG
– wysiwyg pro
– Xinha
– textile

as compared to the current standard RTE editor in WP 2+. I need something which won’t “run away” with the html, is configurable (esp. input buttons) and easy to deal with for a complete (really complete) blogging noob who doesn’t know more than common Word.

I place even more stress on clean insertion of tables into posts and no automatic re-writing.

Hi,

I’m pulling this up again, as by now I tried Monkeyeditor and Chenpress, neither worked/worked as hoped for.

With ME only the TinyMCE compatible version worked at all, and that just as badly as the in-built editor. The FCKeditor didn’t play nice with Imagemanager (same in Chenpress) and the TinyMCE full version one inserted random code into the interface where it doesn’t belong.

So, I’m still at a loss with regards to a good wysiwyg editor for WP 2.0.

My dream solution would be a Quicktags editor with a wysiwyg window. I haven’t found anything like it, but it’s the cleanest of all editors I tried so far.

Any other recommendations?

I’m also looking into the offline blogging clients, but haven’t so far seen one which allows for editing of existing posts?

Hi lhk, do you really need a WYSIWYG?

I’ve found the quicktags editor perfect for all needs. They WYSIWYG is just an unneeded addition to WP.

Hi Ajay,

as I explained, this blog is not for me (I can write html even without Quicktags ;-)), it’s for a client who is an absolute html noob. She has no knowledge whatsoever and is afraid of code.

What truly exasperates me in that whole regard is, that the major other blog softwares like Nucleus or the online blogging services seem to all come up with wysiwyg editors which do not have the problem the WP one has: namely to insert faulty html and run havoc during repeated editing.

If you have a close look at the html after a few basic edits of a post, you become quite sick. And that’s absolutely needless. I remember – loooong, long ago – that even AOL’s basic editor AOLPress managed to create working html. And I hate AOL, but dang it, they pulled that much off.

I’m no programmer, but if you have a basic editor which produces halfway clean html like the Quicktags editor, it ought not to be a major problem, to use that syntax for a wysiwyg version of the same. Hey, even the Joomla people managed to pull it off ;-))

And it’s not as if this is a single complaint here, I’ve filched all other posts about this topic, it’s irritating the hell out of people. Sigh.

You got a valid point there.

Check out Hoteditor at https://www.ecardmax.com/index.php?step=Hoteditor

It looks good, you can try and give it a shot

Edit: It doesn’t generate XHTML, so it can be a problem ??

Hi Ajay,

unfortunately this one ties only into phpBB and SMF, not WordPress.

At that precise moment I don’t care about XHTML, plain ole HTML would suffice for me. But clean HTML at that…

Thanks for the input, anyone else have an idea yet?

Oh, and just for the fun of it, this is what someone like this answers, if you ask “how would you feel using code directly?”:

“Please note: I know NOTHING about creating or publishing data on the internet. Nothing. I don’t know what is HTML code. I know only that html is written at the end of some webpage addresses.”

That’s meant word for word exactly as it’s written and not to be cute. And that’s not the only client who tells me the like. So in my book creating/having a wysiwyg editor which works cleanly is really a priority.

This is a good thread as I’ve struggled a little bit with the WP 2,02 editor especially using IE.

In fact I’ve never used a wysiwyg editor having always worked in html – and I’ll admit I found the WP editor a little fiddly to use.

For instance, I’m trying out html mark ups but have written in html and when saved, I noticed that I’d left some tags on there which I never wanted. I guess I never closed them using the little buttons which could be redesigned to make it easier to see when one is actually active.

What would have taken me two minutes to do scrawling up some easy html has taken me an hour of editing the html mark ups thrown up.

I’m going to spend a few hours checking this out as it is the most important part of WordPress. The average user wants some sort of easy word processing editing capability that is easy to use. I think a clearer GUI (a graphical user interface) might be called for as those buttons are small and I strain to look at them like 40% of people with not the greatest eyesight.

I think I’m having issues with IE6 and editing posts, but I’ll report back and give a proper verdict on the editing control panel.

Hi Liverpoollad,

what gives me the willies is how liberal the editor is with sprinkling tags around no one ever wanted, or to not remove those you want to remove (even when doing it in the html popup).

If I was to grade this editor by normal wysiwygs, I’d say it’s on a worse level than the Word WWW editor, it doesn’t even begin to touch Frontpage and it sure as hell is no Dreamweaver.

What we truly need is something self-restricted as Dreamweaver.

Lhk, I think the editor is sprinkling html about because we are not closing the tags in the editor.

I’ve tried to patiently use the limited mark ups on the wysiwyg editor, they do work, but is not easy to see what tag needs closing, just a little drop shadow on the button.

I’ve also added all the heading tags in the html and that works fine in IE.

The problem, I think, is the fact you have to hit a button to start a tag, then write your words, then close it.

It also uses maybe the easier way of adding mark ups by highlighting what you want marked up then clicking the bold or whatever. WordPress does this to add an html link, so why not use that way to add the other html mark ups?

Either that or have some better GUI that shows users which mark up is open. Bigger buttons would be better.

I’ve been using Mudbomb’s (www.mudbomb.com) WYSI editor for almost a year and I’ve found nothing that comes remotely close. I think the WP 2 editor is horrible and it’s not enough for my needs. I don’t want to do lots of coding in my posts and Mudbomb’s editor saves me tons of time. It uses iimage-browser for all images which is perfect for me. I can do thumbnails with many differnt options, resize/resample, wrap text, and do everything I need in seconds. Html editing of text is very easy and I don’t miss any functions. It’s very easy to install and Mudbomb is helpful when it comes to support.

I’m not sure if this might be something for you but I think it’s the best WYSI editor out there.

AD

Hi LiverpoolLad,

I believe we are talking about two different editors. I am talking about the WYSIWYG editor bundled with WP, you seem to talk about the Quicktags one.

There’s nothing about closing or not closing tags, which riles me. It’s about sprinkling needlessly ‘s or about stripping out <div>’s or about entering a wild nested mess of <font> tags, once the post gets saved.

Also – a WYSIWYG editor has to be so robust, that a noob can use it (as it’s meant for noobs, I never ever use WYSIWYG editors myself) and NOT produce a mess or at least only a small one.

I’m talking about very simple stuff here:

– bold/unbold
– underline/un-underline
– align/unalign left/right/center
– edit text in a table
– align thumbnails and pictures

That’s truly not much to ask, que no? Offline WYSIWYG editors 10 years ago managed to pull that much off without creating such an abysmal tagsoup and I just tested the Wysi-editors for Serendipity, Nucleus, Textpattern and Dotclear, they curiously all manage that much.

By now I’m convinced that it’s the interplay of WP and the editor which creates this curious behaviour. Sigh.