Lately I've been playing with FreeTextBox and FckEditor in an attempt to find a good (FREE) .NET control for a rich-html/wysiwyg editor.
Both controls look great on their respective site demos and have tons of features built-in - but as soon as you really start working with both controls, you quickly realize FckEditor is simply the more polished/stable of the two.
FTB's biggest drawback to me is that it does not work in an ASP.NET Master/Content page environment. You'll find forum postings arguing that the old versions do work - and that the new version does if you only move your Form tag from the Master page to each individual Content page... but come on - what kind of solution is that? (especially in today's AJAX world where you need the ScriptManager on the Master page - which has to be inside a Form tag.)
I was actually able to get FTB4.0's javascript implementation working somewhat in a Master/Content page environment with AJAX - but I just noticed too many quirks to make me feel comfortable with really using it (but it's beta so that's expected). The main problems I noticed were the popups/combo-dropdowns didn't always appear where you expected, the tooltips and toolbar icons were kinda flakey, etc.
I really did like FTB's alternative full javascript implementation + API though. I believe when the 4.0 version is finally polished up and stable that it will be a strong contender in the non-.NET world.
Both controls could use some serious documentation work. FTB's doc is practically non-existant. I had to search google just to find out they had a wiki site - I dont think their main site ever mentioned it. FckEditor's doc is better - but could still use a lot of work.
In the end, IMO, FckEditor is easily the winner. I had no problems implementing it several different ways (with Master Pages, with AJAX, etc) - and it just works... and if it doesn't work exactly like you want - check the javascript config file - it's probably an easily customizable option.
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ReplyDeletejemreal28-
ReplyDeleteI deleted your comment because i didnt want to publish it since it contained your email address.
However, I did want to respond here for the benefit of others:
To answer your question of whether I'm using fckEditor in VS2008-
Yes, I'm using fckEditor in several 2.0 and 3.5 production applications.
The only problem I've ever encountered is that the fckEditor doesn't like to be inside an AJAX .NET UpdatePanel. Other than that, it works great.
Post a couple of lines of your html where you have the editor located.
Also, do you have any other ajax frameworks in use on the page? (i.e. jquery, mootools, etc)
Kenneth,
ReplyDeleteYou ever use the ProtecedSource.Add command with FCKEditor? I am needing some help with writing a regular expression for use with that command so FCKEditor will leave certain tags and the code in them completely alone. I have tried their forums, but there isn't much activity on them. Any help is much appreciated.
Hey Josh-
ReplyDeleteSorry, unfortunately I've never used the ProtectedSource.Add() function you asked about.
I glanced at the doc though and it looks like you just pass in the regex pattern.
What kind of regex are you trying to come up with?
Thanks for the response, Kenneth. I figured it out. Had to take a crash course in RegEx.
ReplyDeleteI found a solution to the problem with the update panel. Tried it, works fine.
ReplyDeletehttp://jlcoady.net/aspnet/fckeditor-work-inside-updatepanel
hope it helps
thanks for the tip about the update panel fix. i'll have to check that out-
ReplyDeleteThis one even simpler:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.daveparslow.com/2007/10/fckeditor-inside-updatepanel-broken.html
also hope it helps
I believe the latest version of the FCK editor works with update panels out of the box as I just implemented it into a site within update panels and didn't have any issues.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the tip. I tried it out and agree that it seems to work just fine now OOTB.
ReplyDelete