HTML text editors

In recent months, I have been using a variety of HTML text editors with several different website content management systems (CMS), including Wordpress and Textpattern, and with ecommerce website administration control panels.

Text editors like TinyMCE and FckEditor really come into their own with the general web-going public who do not know HTML or want to learn it – and why should they?! In these cases, a word processor-like editor is essential.

HTML text editors do a good job under, sometimes difficult, circumstances. However, two points I would like to make about HTML text editors are as follows:

1. The default installations of common text editors are quite simple but additional configuration is often required. For example, most website clients I know will copy and paste from Microsoft Word which can cause all sorts of inconsistent styling website problems when various font tags are copied over as well. The ‘Paste from Word’ button strips out Word-associated styling tags and is often available as part of the ‘Advanced Editing’ window or tab of HTML editors. It should be part of the ‘Standard Editing’ tab in my opinion!

2. My usage is perhaps different to most people’s use. In my case, I want a quick way of seeing the HTML code view and editing it. I don’t want to go through two or three pop-up windows to see this.

In the case of this Textpattern blog, I was using a neat TinyMCE plugin, but I am reverting back to Textile for the next few articles. Just to bring some simplicity back into the writing process.