The rise of portals and content management systems (CMS) has enabled webmasters to create and to maintain websites without using expensive web tools and time-consuming file transfers. This comparison details the features and capabilities of these tools, which can be and, in some cases, already have been integrated into open-source applications like PHP-Nuke.
Name | FCKEditor | HTMLArea | SPAW | TinyMCE | Xinha |
Version | 2.1.1 | 3.0 RC1 | 1.1RC1 | 2.01 | Not specified |
License | LGPL | BSD | GPL | LGPL | BSD |
Internet Explorer | 5.5+ | 5.5+ | 5.5+ | Yes, version?? | Yes, version?? |
Gecko (Firefox / Mozilla / Netscape) | 1.0+ / 1.3+ / 7+ | 1.3+ | 1.3+ | Yes, version?? | Yes, version?? |
Opera | No | No | No | Not working | No |
Safari | No | No | No | "Buggy" | No |
Edit | |||||
Cut / Copy / Paste * Gecko requires security settings | Yes, with Gecko workaround | Yes | Yes, does not indicate Gecko | Yes | Yes |
Undo / Redo | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
HTML Cleanup / Paste from Word | Yes | No | IE only | Yes | Yes |
Paste as text | Yes | No | No | Yes | No |
Edit source HTML (raw) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Preview | Yes | No | No | Yes | No |
Various sizes | No | No | No | IE Only | No |
Find / Replace | Yes | No | No | Yes (replace all) | Yes |
Select All (right click option in IE) | Yes | No | No | No | No |
Insert Date / Time (use FireFox BBCode ext.) | No | No | No | Yes | No |
Format | |||||
Bold / Italic / Underline | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Subscript / Superscript | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Strikethrough | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
Text Color | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Background Color | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Fonts | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Text Size | HTML size w/ examples | HTML Size w/ pt desc | Yes | Yes | HTML Size w/ pt desc |
Indent / Unindent | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Justify | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Left | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Center | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Right | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Full (Left & Right) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Direction (right / left) | Yes | No | No | No | No |
Insert Page Break | Yes | ?? | ?? | Yes | ?? |
CSS Classes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Document Properties | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes |
Emoticons / Smileys | Yes | No | No | Yes | No |
Special characters | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes |
Remove Format | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes |
HTML Objects | |||||
Anchors | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes |
Images (insert URL) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Upload | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Preview | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Select | Yes | ?? | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Properties | Yes | ?? | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Alternate Image on Mouseover | No | No | No | Yes | Yes |
Popup | No | No | Yes | Yes | No |
Flash | Yes | No | No | Yes | No |
Format (H1, etc.) | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
Form (create) | Yes | No | No | No | No |
Text | Yes | No | No | No | No |
Textarea | Yes | No | No | No | No |
Checkbox | Yes | No | No | No | No |
Radio Button | Yes | No | No | No | No |
Button | Yes | No | No | No | No |
Image Button | Yes | No | No | No | No |
Hidden Field | Yes | No | No | No | No |
Horizontal rule (line) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Height | No | No | No | Yes | No |
Hyperlinks | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Remove | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes |
List bullet / Ordered | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Tables (create) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Modify table properties | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Modify row properties | No | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
Modify cell properties | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Insert / delete rows | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Insert / delete columns | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Merge/split cells horizontally | Yes | Yes | IE Only | Yes | Yes |
Merge/split cells vertically | No | Yes | IE Only | Yes | Yes |
Toggle borders | No | No | IE Only | Yes | Yes |
Background image | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Control | |||||
Skins / Themes | Yes | No | Includes 4 | Yes | No |
Customizable Toolbars | Yes | Yes | Includes 4 preset | Yes | Yes |
Horizontal and vertical toolbars | No | No | Yes | No | No |
Same page, different config | Yes | ?? | Yes | Yes | ?? |
Multiple language | Yes | ?? | almost 30 included | Yes | ?? |
Auto Detect | Yes | No | No | No | No |
Right to left support | Yes | No | No | Yes | No |
Universal keyboard / extra character support | Yes | No | No | Yes | No |
General | |||||
Tooltips | Yes | Yes | IE Only | Yes | Yes |
Plugins | Yes | Yes | No | Yes, commercial | Yes |
Spell | IE Only, SpellerPages integration available | Yes | No | IE Only | Yes |
Yes | No | No | Yes | No | |
XHTML 1.0 support | Yes | ?? | ?? | Yes | ?? |
Online Help | No | Yes | No | Yes | No |
Right click context menus support | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
Complete page editing (from to ) or just contents. | Yes | No | No | No | No |
Automatic browser detection and customization | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes |
Administration | |||||
Documentation | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Examples | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Size | |||||
Subjective | |||||
Speed | OK | OK | OK | OK | OK |
Ease of installation | |||||
Ease of customization | |||||
User friendliness | |||||
Comments | Very nice visual table editor | Custom spell checker works in IE and Gecko | Some tools don't work under Firefox | Nice image manager, visual table editor almost as nice as FCK, nice recent compliance enhancements | Nice image functions, link manager available as plugin |
Paste from Word Test | Some headings too large, included links correctly | N/A | Some headings too large, included links correctly | Some headings too large, included links correctly | Some headings too large, included links correctly |