Thread

I need a descent WYSIWYG editor for my site.

I saw people mentioning TinyMCE and Wygwam in the forums, but which one is better?
Which one is easier to use, more flexible and customizable?

Let me move this to General for you 😊 It’s not a matter of Tech Support as such.

Let me move this to General for you 😊 It’s not a matter of Tech Support as such.

Yes, I am sorry.

No worries 😊 And I would have replied to your question, too, but I don’t have too much experience with WYSIWYG editors… I’m sure somebody else does, though.

Two votes for WYGWAM.

Well done.

Thank you!

Personally prefer WYGWAM as its easy to customize but both are good products.

I prefer WYGWAM. Besides that is looks better in the admin panel, it is based on CKEditor which i think is better.

Just interested to know what’s the main difference between these two and the fantastic job Max has done on his MX Universal Editor.

That seems to do everything you could ever need and a whole heap more so just interested to know what features WYGWAM or LG TinyMCE have over this?

Best wishes,

Mark

I checked the MX Universal Editor. It looks nice, but I think it is too complicated for my needs.
I just need a simple, neat and easy to use wysiwyg editor.

(I don’t know what is the difference)

I checked the MX Universal Editor. It looks nice, but I think it is too complicated for my needs.
I just need a simple, neat and easy to use wysiwyg editor.

(I don’t know what is the difference)

Yeah would like to know the difference myself so hopefully someone will let us know but with regards to a simple WYSIWYG editor you can very easily edit (or create your own) configuration files for MX Universal Editor so that you can give as much or as little of the editor that you wish to people. It really is a very very neat add-on and very kindly given to us for free by Max.

Best wishes,

Mark

Thanks Mark!
I will check it.

Yeah would like to know the difference myself so hopefully someone will let us know…

Well, okay, since you insist. 😉

Wygwam is more polished and easier to configure and use. You can use a very friendly drag-n-drop GUI to create button sets for different purposes. Personally, I generally use 3 sets:

- Minimal, which only has the most elementary bold/italic/link type buttons
- Basic, which has a more expanded set of tools, such as images, lists, etc
- Full, which has everything under the sun (font colors/styles/sizes, tables, Flash embeds, etc)

Then, when creating a custom field, you can choose which button set you want that custom field to use. For example, a short blurb would be fine with the Minimal set, a typical article would probably need the Basic set, and a doctoral thesis would be best off with the Full set.

Wygwam also has provision for specifying CKEditor’s more advanced settings through an ingenious drop-down interface. It’s not the most user-friendly presentation imaginable (you see the raw name of each setting, kinda like showing the {url_title} of entries instead of the {title}), but the explanatory descriptions Brandon Kelly included for each one of the myriad settings helps tremendously in figuring out what’s what, and each one links to the appropriate page in the CKEditor’s online manual.

Wygwam is a commercial add-on, meaning you have to pay to use it, but the resulting quality and polish Brandon Kelly puts back in to it is evident throughout.

MX Universal Editor is in many ways far more powerful, especially with regards to file uploads and non-WYSIWYG editing (MarkItUp fields help generate the HTML, but the HTML is still displayed right there in the field). However, some of that power is hidden by fields whose purpose is not always clear. Since Max Lazar is (I understand) from Germany, I can’t really fault him for the often confusing English terminology, but he could definitely benefit from a native English speaker’s assistance. Compounding this issue is the lack of full documentation on the myriad settings available.

It’s not all that difficult to figure things out through trial and error, however, and Max Lazar does provide pretty good support via Get Satisfaction. Once you’ve got your head wrapped around which setting does what, you’ll see the amazing amount of powerful features available in this one single add-on, especially some of the file upload capabilities:

- Got a News weblog with images that you dream of storing under /images/news/YYYY/MM/DD/ folders? There’s a setting for that.
- Want to give (and restrict) all your contributing authors their own personal file upload folders, ala /files/users/[username]/ ? Yep, there’s a setting for that, too.
- Need to automatically limit the pixel dimensions of uploaded images, as well as generate thumbnails of a specified size? That’s covered as well.

I’d be remiss in not mentioning the LinkManager feature, which makes it easy to link from an entry you’re writing to another entry in some other weblog, using an interface similar to a miniature version of EE’s Edit tab’s search options - filter by weblog, category, etc.

Did I mention you get the option of using TinyMCE or CKEditor (it’s a site-wide setting, though, not per-custom field), or MarkItUp if you’re a code guy?

——

Hope that helps clarify things a bit. 😊

I prefer WYGWAM. Besides that is looks better in the admin panel, it is based on CKEditor which i think is better.

Brandon (Pixel and Tonic) has updated WYGWAM (and other add ons) to work with EE 2.0.