I have been trying out several HTML editors for ASP.Net and thought I would share this excellent find that works with several platforms, including ASP.Net, ASP, PHP, Java etc. Up until now I was using FreeTextBox, however this was giving me grief in Firefox so decided that I needed to find a new solution.

FCKeditor is an excellent HTML WYSIWYG editor for ASP.Net as an ASP.Net control is available to use with the Javascript source files to allow you to interact (Get / Set text) etc programmatic ally as you can do with FreeTextBox. In addition to this, FCKEditor allows you to upload images and other files making adding images a breeze and also includes a spell-checker.

Using FCKEditor is also a piece of cake. Simply download FCKEditor and extract the fckeditor directory, placing it the root of your ASP.Net application.

In addition to this, to use the ASP.Net control you need to ensure that the FredCK. FCKEditorV2.dll file is in your bin directory, you can then either add it to your tool bar, and drag-n-drop the control in, or add the following page directive to your ASPX page:

<fckeditorv2:fckeditor id="FCKeditor1" runat="server" height="500px" skinpath="skins/office2003/" toolbarset="Pilot" customconfigurationspath="/fckeditor/fckconfig.js">
</fckeditorv2:fckeditor>

FCKEditor is highly configurable as it is opensource and you can very easily edit the fckconfig.js file to create a new custom toolbar. If you do this, you will need to specify the ToolbarSet property and also add the CustomConfigurationPath properties to your control. The FCKEditor also comes with 3 skins: default, office2003 and silver (a silver version of office 2003). These can be set using the SkinPath configuration above.

As the fckeditor javascript directory is generic for 9 languages, it needs trimming down before deploying live. There is a readme.txt supplied with the download, but basically it involves deleting the server-side code to handle the file-uploads for the languages you are not using and also deleting the skin files you are not using.

Finally if you want to be able to upload files, you need to create a directory in the root of you application called UserFiles. When the user inserts an image from a local file, it is uploaded to this directory.

FCKEditor is a feature rich, cross-browser compatible (Safari will also shortly be supported) WYSIWYG HTML Editor for ASP.Net which is highly configurable and easy to use.