TinyMCE Archives | Matt Doyle | Elated Communications

These days, many websites allow you to enter your own content — whether it’s creating a Web page, writing a blog post, or posting in a forum. In order to allow people to enter richly-formatted text and images, many sites use WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) HTML editors. Great though these editors are, they do have a few drawbacks.

In this article you’ll learn about 2 popular alternatives to WYSIWYG editors: Textile and Markdown. You’ll learn what they are, how to install them, and how to use them. You’ll also compare them to each other, and to using WYSIWYG editors. The article ends with lots of useful links to help you find out more about Textile and Markdown.

What is a WYSIWYG HTML editor?

A WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) HTML editor is a JavaScript-driven Web form field that lets users enter formatted text, much like using a word processor. The editor then converts this formatted text into HTML when the form is sent to the Web server. Here’s what a WYSIWYG HTML editor looks like:

CKEditor screenshot — CKEditor is a popular JavaScript-based WYSIWYG HTML editor

Most WYSIWYG editors let you do at least the following:

Add formatting such as bold, italic, and underlining
Create headings (H1, H2 and so on)
Create links
Use different font faces, sizes, and colours
Insert bulleted and numbered lists
Create tables
Left-align, right-align, centre, and justify text
Embed images, Flash movies, and more
Edit the HTML directly if desired

Many editors take things further, allowing you to upload images, Flash movies and other files to the Web server, and browse files on the server.

Textile and Markdown: 2 Nice Alternatives to WYSIWYG Editors

Adding a WYSIWYG HTML Editor to Your Site

What is a WYSIWYG HTML editor?

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What is a WYSIWYG HTML editor?

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