How could such an oustanding project miss my attention?
I've been using a number of different WYSIWYG editors in various projects over the years. These WYSIWYG editors provide the ability for admin users to create content (articles, news, etc.). There are usually two major bottlenecks with current projects: inability to strip out MS Word formatting (from file uploads or from pasting), and image upload directly into the content.
Before someone points out the obvious, I know these features are available with current projects ... but, but, but – not in the licensing that allows free use in personal and commercial projects. They are essentially incompatible with the goals.
There are a few main projects worth mentioning:
- CKEditor
- TinyMCE
- Summernote (non-bootstrap)
- Quill
CKEditor and TinyMCE are both out of consideration now. The licensing for both has changed in recent years making them targets of commercial projects and fee-based usage. Summernote has two versions, the main one is for projects that are Bootstrap based. Mine aren't ... but they do have a non-bootstrap version available. Unfortunately the non-bootstrap version is usually not up to date with the Boostrap version. There are features missing and usually some "glitches" that are impossible to work around.
That leaves Quill. I recently discovered this and it holds a lot of promise. What attracted me immediately was a feature to strip out MS Word formatting. Quill supports images, but not uploading. After a few basic tests, I had to stop using Quill. Essentially, all of the features are customized based on the Quill CSS file. I ended up working a few hours trying to implement a reasonable "font-size" drop down until I realized that I would have to add the same Quill CSS into the app CSS. That defeats the purpose of my own projects. Sorry to say, but the promise of Quill isn't there.
I really am not sure why, but I decided to do my Google searches a different way. I won't say how, that doesn't really matter. What does matter is that I discovered several other WYSIWYG editors that support all the features I want and need. Upload files, upload and edit images. A robust set of features to control just about every aspect of a web document. And that includes the ability to upload or paste MS Word documents with the editor offering a popup to control how to handle the MS Word content – including stripping out all useless MS Word formatting.
Proof, however, is in actually using it. A surprise there too. Where the other projects I mentioned above require a "build" process and API keys, this new WYSIWYG editor has CDN support so that I don't even have to built, download, or get forced into using API keys.
Wow, try it and it works exactly the way I want it to. And it is consistent with the licensing for the new DCP Portal. Stoked!
Just realized that I haven't said what this project is ... sorry, you'll have to wait until the launch of DCP Portal. It is displayed at the right. Click to view larger size.