HTMLArea vs FCKEditor and FreeTextBox

HTMLArea vs FCKEditor and FreeTextBox

eftir Vu Hung -
Number of replies: 25
Does anyone have a full comparison between HTMLArea and FCKEditor, FreeTextBox.
I use all three of them. Here are my comments:
  • FreeTextBox keeps very well formats when pasting from MS Word
  • FCKEditor is excellent in drawing and modifying table, inserting images, form fields, and choosing colors.
  • Both FCKeditor and FreeTextBox keep all images when pasting from a web page (but not HTMLArea)
  • HTMLArea and FCKEditor support all language. FreeTextBox is only for ASP.NET.
The newest version of FCKEditor is 2.0 RC03: http://fckeditor.net
The newest version of FreeTextBox is 3.01 : http://www.freetextbox.com
Any comparison and opinons? We compare so that we can improve HTMLArea of Moodle.
Thanks
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In reply to Vu Hung

Re: HTMLArea vs FCKEditor and FreeTextBox

eftir Fabrizio Balliano -
I think that fckeditor is the really best, I developed an open source php framework for 2 years, first we used htmlarea but it lacks international support and it seems to be not so maintained at the moment...

I could say we can exclude freetextbok because of the asp engine...

FCKeditor has very good internationalization, very clean interface and I think is the fastest editor, it also supports XHTML and formatted source.

surely the best, I would be very happy to find fck in the next moodle release smile
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In reply to Fabrizio Balliano

Re: HTMLArea vs FCKEditor and FreeTextBox

eftir Vu Hung -

Hi Fabrizio,

So, should we integrate FCKEditor into Moodle instead of HTMLArea?

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In reply to Vu Hung

Re: HTMLArea vs FCKEditor and FreeTextBox

eftir Fabrizio Balliano -
:) I think fckeditor is the best web editor so... it would be glad

integration I think is pretty easy, nearly the same of htmlarea

is also possible to create a custom toolbar for moodle maybe putting some buttons and excludind some others...

I'd like to help, but I'm following 3/4 open projects, and I hope to find a bit of time in these days

:)
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In reply to Fabrizio Balliano

Re: HTMLArea vs FCKEditor and FreeTextBox

eftir Martin Dougiamas -
Mynd av Core developers Mynd av Documentation writers Mynd av Moodle HQ Mynd av Particularly helpful Moodlers Mynd av Plugin developers Mynd av Testers
We have custom toolbars too ... see the Instant Messaging editor in 1.5 ...
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In reply to Fabrizio Balliano

Re: HTMLArea vs FCKEditor and FreeTextBox

eftir Samuli Karevaara -
In Moodle 1.5 it's possible to exclude the buttons you don't want in the editor toolbar.
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In reply to Vu Hung

Re: HTMLArea vs FCKEditor and FreeTextBox

eftir Janne Mikkonen -
Well I went and tested it again (done it before several times) and again it crashes when several editors are loaded in same page (Firefox).
And I think that compressed source code isn't very nice to maintain thoughtful.
However I'll keep watching it, there are some nice qualities that just might be found at our editor some day wink

- Janne -
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In reply to Janne Mikkonen

Re: HTMLArea vs FCKEditor and FreeTextBox

eftir Vu Hung -

Hi Jane,

Don't worry! The original source code (not compressed code) is very easy to maintain. After modifying the original source code, we have an own tool to compress the source code to keep it as small as possible.

Cheers

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In reply to Vu Hung

Re: HTMLArea vs FCKEditor and FreeTextBox

eftir Martin Dougiamas -
Mynd av Core developers Mynd av Documentation writers Mynd av Moodle HQ Mynd av Particularly helpful Moodlers Mynd av Plugin developers Mynd av Testers
I do like FCK editor (despite the unfortunate name) ... it's really improving recently and seems to have a good momentum.  Definitely one to watch.

However, our version of HTML Area has a lot of little improvements and extra nice features to make it work with Moodle, so any move to FCK will have to take all that into account. In particular see all the settings on the Admin >> Config >> Settings page, and also the ability to browse course files securely with different interfaces for students and teachers etc ...

Perhaps, Vu or Fabrizio, you might like to try to migrate a test site and see how all this can work within a FCK world.
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: HTMLArea vs FCKEditor and FreeTextBox

eftir Vu Hung -

Hi Martin,

I'm very glad and ready to test how FCKEditor works with Moodle (in comparison with HTMLArea).

Can you show me particular steps to build a test site?

Thanks!

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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: HTMLArea vs FCKEditor and FreeTextBox

eftir Tim Kamps -
Since HTMLarea does not seem to be getting any outside development, but Moodle folks do seem to be making improvements to it, what will it take to support Safari now that it supports contenteditable in 10.3.9 and 10.4? Can FCKEditor be enhanced otherwise and made an option for Moodle installs?

http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/hyatt/archives/2005_04.html#007962

Thanks
Tim
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In reply to Tim Kamps

Re: HTMLArea vs FCKEditor and FreeTextBox

eftir Janne Mikkonen -
what will it take to support Safari now that it supports contenteditable in 10.3.9 and 10.4?

Basically it just have to be enabled in the code (in moodlelib + htmlarea).

I think you can replace HTMLArea with any other editor quite easily. One of the considerable alternative could be kafenio (java editor).

But we should all remember that changing the editor doesn't change the fact that any editor made with javascript does have its own little annoyances. (plain textarea is still the best and doesn't contain bugszzz).
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In reply to Janne Mikkonen

Re: HTMLArea vs FCKEditor and FreeTextBox

eftir Samuli Karevaara -
I vote "no" for java editor. WebCT's "wysiwyg" editor is made with java, and there seems to be a lot of issues with it, besides from it being slow. More so than with the javascript one.
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In reply to Samuli Karevaara

Re: HTMLArea vs FCKEditor and FreeTextBox

eftir Michael Penney -
Second that, after just updating my JRE and seeing (again) what a total user unfriendly mess Sun's java download site isangry.




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In reply to Janne Mikkonen

Re: HTMLArea vs FCKEditor and FreeTextBox

eftir Janne Mikkonen -
TinyMCE looks like this in Moodle...
(and it's not bug free wink)

Attachment tinymce.png
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In reply to Janne Mikkonen

Re: HTMLArea vs FCKEditor and FreeTextBox

eftir Petr Skoda -
Mynd av Core developers Mynd av Documentation writers Mynd av Peer reviewers Mynd av Plugin developers
TinyMCE is my favourite big grin

Sure there are bugs, but the community seems to be the most active. The progress is visible each month - see the change log.

From their web site: "Our goal is to further enhance TinyMCE and make it work on more platforms/browsers, however we do not have a Mac to make extensive tests on!" Yet? "Current status $545 / $680"
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In reply to Petr Skoda

Re: HTMLArea vs FCKEditor and FreeTextBox

eftir Petr Skoda -
Mynd av Core developers Mynd av Documentation writers Mynd av Peer reviewers Mynd av Plugin developers
TinyMCE was updated again today, the changelog is pretty impressive smile
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In reply to Petr Skoda

Re: HTMLArea vs FCKEditor and FreeTextBox

eftir Scott Teresi -
As of today, the TinyMCE developers have ordered a Mac Mini!
http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=605&highlight=safari

Safari support is near the top of their to-do list!
http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=580&highlight=safari

Meanwhile, at FCKEditor, Safari support doesn't appear to be a priority yet. After searching their forums a while, I finally found this statement by their developer, Frederico Caldeira Knabben, dated April 20: "I would be more than happy to promote the editor compatibility to Safari... I just still need to find out some way to have a Mac Mini here for testing it."

Scott Teresi
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In reply to Vu Hung

Re: HTMLArea vs FCKEditor and FreeTextBox

eftir Vu Hung -

When I visited HTML Area website, I saw "htmlarea 2 and 3 have been discontinued".

Will we continue to maintain and develop HTMLArea inside Moodle community or choose another editor with better support of open source community (many choicesthoughtful)?

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In reply to Vu Hung

Re: HTMLArea vs FCKEditor and FreeTextBox

eftir Martin Dougiamas -
Mynd av Core developers Mynd av Documentation writers Mynd av Moodle HQ Mynd av Particularly helpful Moodlers Mynd av Plugin developers Mynd av Testers
Our editor works pretty well, thanks to Janne, so there's no urgency to change. Eventually I'm sure we'll move when something that is a lot better becomes available.

Stable support for Safari would do it for me.
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: HTMLArea vs FCKEditor and FreeTextBox

eftir Tony Hursh -
Stable support for Safari would do it for me.

It's possible that HTMLArea might work (or could be made to work) with Safari 1.3. I posted something about this before, I think, but it may have gotten buried.

According to the Safari developer's blog, Safari 1.3 (which is out now) supports the contenteditable and designmode features. If I remember right, these were the the stumbling blocks preventing HTMLArea from working in Safari.

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In reply to Tony Hursh

Re: HTMLArea vs FCKEditor and FreeTextBox

eftir Martin Dougiamas -
Mynd av Core developers Mynd av Documentation writers Mynd av Moodle HQ Mynd av Particularly helpful Moodlers Mynd av Plugin developers Mynd av Testers
It doesn't work out of the box, though, I believe some work needs to be done.
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: HTMLArea vs FCKEditor and FreeTextBox

eftir Tony Hursh -
Yeah, I did a little tinkering when I read that, but just adding Safari as a supported browser in the list isn't enough.

I notice there are a lot of HTMLArea.is_gecko and HTMLArea.is_ie conditionals in the code. I'm wondering if just telling it Safari is Gecko for this purpose would do the trick? I suppose that would depend on how close Apple's implementation is to Mozilla's (probably closer than IE, anyway). Hmm....


Here's a demo of the contenteditable feature that does work in Safari.


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In reply to Vu Hung

Re: HTMLArea vs FCKEditor and FreeTextBox

eftir Janne Mikkonen -
HTMLArea in Moodle never really dependent on HTMLArea's own development.
And indeed there are more choices available now than there was back then  when HTMLArea was integrated into Moodle.
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