The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 3 (of 5)

Edit rich text in browser

I'm converting an application from Lotus Domino Server to ASP.NET and MS SQL Server. Lotus allows you to edit rich text in place.

Joel talked about editing rich text in a browser before.
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000296.html

What would you try?
Use a component to edit rich text in the browser?
Use a component to edit HTML in the browser?
Launch a .NET app from the browser?
Any other ideas?
Which is preferable?

John Ridout
Sunday, January 18, 2004

I believe MS has a pretty spiffy rich text activeX component. If Im not mistaken, its even distributed with Win2k / XP.

I could be wrong though, Im not much into MS specific stuff.

Anyway, It seems to be the most straight forward option if you dont mind locking into IE.

Eric DeBois
Sunday, January 18, 2004

For ASP.Net I've got to recommend
http://www.richtextbox.com/

It's a .Net/jscript richtextbox with a formatting toolbar that also allows the user to edit the HTML if they want to.

We implemented it on a project with non-technical users and it was like crack - they had to have it *everywhere*.

Only caveat - obviously since you're sending the formatting code down every time, it's fat, but I'm sure a lot of that could be dealt with with caching.

Philo

Philo
Sunday, January 18, 2004

>>Any other ideas?

Yup, a basic word processor that would tx/rx stuff through XMLRPC :-)

FredF
Sunday, January 18, 2004

A newer topic covers some additional suggestions.

http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware/default.asp?cmd=show&ixPost=104410&ixReplies=13

Brad Wilson (dotnetguy.techieswithcats.com)
Sunday, January 18, 2004