Free ASP.NET 2 WYSIWYG text editor components compared...

I was working on a project that required something better than a text box for text entry. I wanted a simple drop-in replacement for the ASP .net 2005 textbox, that would additionally allow images, formatting and tables to be entered. The main requirements were for someone to use an ASP.NET form to enter details about a book, and an excerpt from it, with bullet points, diagrams maybe. Pretty much like editing with word but on the web. If you've used WordPress you'll know the sort of component I was looking for.

At first I looked in the AJAX framework but there was nothing there to help. I searched the web and found several commercially produced controls for a hundred dollars or so, such as the Active Up HTML TextBox. But I can't see the point in paying when you can get something good for free.

I looked on ASP.NET in the Control Gallery for the keyword WYSIWYG. The ASP.NET gallery is out of date, with really old stuff in it, broken links, and plenty of non-dot.net 2 components. In the end I found the following ones, tried them out and decided that the FCK editor is the best. So, I used it and it works fine. Since then I've noticed that other websites such as some free blogging services use it too, so it must be ok.

Many Monkeys HTML Editor

This is completely free and simple to use. I downloaded the control from Many Monkeys, added it to my control toolbox by copying the .dll file into the project bin folder and then adding it to the toolbar with "right-click, add item", then browse for the dll file.

The html editor is nice and simple, and appears on the toolbar as the HTMLEditor component. In use, you interact with it through its .Text property, exactly as you would expect. The editor has a nice mode where you can view and edit the text in either the html format or wysiwyg format. Unfortunately it has a bug to do with tables, so I couldn't use this component in my production system. The bug is just a slightly annoying element that makes it confusing to use. Anyway, here's a screenshot of it in use:

soEditor Lite 2.5

Slightly better than the monkey product above, I then tried the soEditor Lite 2.5. It is "Lite" because it is free, in contrast to the "Pro" version which is very expensive. I found it reasonably easy to download and install, and to summarise, it has some good features and is customisable. It has plenty of icons that do various features, and the manufacturers have wisely allowed you to customize the features that are shown so that a simple mode is possible. There is no tables bug like in the above product, and it also includes a spell checker and a word-count capability. On the down-side I found that it was quite flickery to use, with the text not looking rock-solid on screen, but momentarily disappearing when you click in the box or try to edit it. This may just be because I used it in IE6, but then so will a lot of other people. I found that the best thing to do is to use "initialFocus=true" to make it take focus automatically when it is on the page, and to turn off the word counter feature, which is perhaps slowing the component down on editing.

Sadly though, it doesn't work in IE7, so that is the end of that. Maybe they will upgrade it in the future. Here's a picture anyway:

FCKeditor for .net

The (strangely named?) FCKeditor is an open source text editor written in javascript that can be used in any html page. The best feature of it is that there is a wrapper for it so that it can be included in your ASP.NET 2 pages really easily. You can get the required dll and other files from The FcK website. This is how I installed it:

1. Copy the entire FCKeditor folder and all its subfolders from the zip file into the root of your website.
2. Copy the .net dll file into the project bin folder.
3. Register the dll and add it to your toolbox by right-clicking on the toolbox and choosing "add" then "browse".
4. Drag a FCKeditor onto your page and change its "basepath" property to "fckeditor/" (By default it was set to "/fckeditor/" which didn't work at all.)
5. Make sure you put the directive "validateRequest=false" in the top of your aspx file to get it working without getting ASP.NET winge errors.

FCKeditor is the best freeware html/wysiwyg text editor for ASP.NET 2. It worked on all the computers I tried, including a Linux box with Safari browser, and it is easy to get working and very configurable. In my project I got rid of all the icons that I didn't think people would need, and customisd the "Smilies" list to have nicer options in it.

Conclusion

So, after spending an entire morning searching the web and installing stuff, I have decided that the FCKeditor is the best one to use, and I have managed to use it in my project. It has been a success.