Rich Text Editor in IBM v6.1

Business Need

In the todays world it is most common that CxO of a company would like to intract with public and employees over blogs, wikis... So it is imperative that that Content management system should have a most elegent content contribution interface with all the features of normal document autoring and aswell trouble free.

I took 3 tools for my analysis, they are

1. Ephox EditLive
2. TineyMce
3. CKEditor

Ephox EditLive

Pros:
# Most powerfull Rich Text Editor in the market with all essential features
# Good Support as it is licenced
# Good Code organization and easy to develop custom feature

Cons:
# Applet based so requires right version of JRE with all the clients
# Linking external CSS file for the style definition in portal context is tricky and required static definition at the configuration XML.

TineyMce

Pros:
# Rich in Features
# Javascript based and hence no dependecy with client side plugin
# Good architecture

Cons:
# Support is not good
# Custom development requires deep expertise
# Integration is not easy

CKEditor
Pros:
# Javascript based and hence no dependecy with client side plugin
# Easy to do Custom development
# Easy to Integrate

Cons:
# Poor Documentation and support
# Results in some allignment problem if the custom development involves custome tags.

If the organization objective is to find a tool for requires almost all employes of the organization to author a content, It is necessary to avoid dependency with client side plugins. In such case RTE based on the normal Javascript is better option. So essentially we are narrowed down to TineyMCE and CKEditor. Given this choise CKEditor look favourable in terms of cost to production with most decent features in place. If the content autoring requires support of custom tags, TineyMCe would be the better solution among all. On the otherway If number of contributor is less , Editlive is perfect option as the posibility to end with plugin problem is limited.

Ideal solution:

Inorder to better utilize the power of Editlive and to get the rouboustness of TinyMCE it is beter to make TinyMCE as a fallback for the Editlive. Fortunately Ephox is working on this fallback scenario and there is more challenge for them to meet the markup compatibility between two RTEs.