Comparision of Drupal 5 WYSIWYG Editors

Drupal.org has over 100 modules in the "filters and editors" category. Around a dozen of these are editors which modify textareas for easy formatting of posts.

Drupal core does not currently have an editor, and this is often a feature request in the forums. This chart is designed to help you choose which editor would best fit your needs.

BBCode Formatting Bar
Upon installation I tried to create a new page and voilà! There were several buttons above the box, just begging to be tested. There isn't much to this editor. If you have installed the BBCode module, the BBCode inserted by this editor will be produce valid HTML markup. It isn't pretty, and there are no keyboard shortcuts, but it definitely gets the job done. You must be careful of one thing, however. The input format must be set to BBCode (this can be enabled via the BBCode Module) or your text will not display correctly.
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BUEditor
This isn't really a WYSIWYG editor. It provides buttons which will automatically insert the HTML into Drupal's default plain text box. Although this does make it easier to create the posts, it is not quite as user friendly as a true WYSIWYG editor. To offset this however, it gives you a quick-preview button. This is a far faster way to preview text than Drupal's preview, and is an acceptable workaround for the lack of seeing what you get as you edit it.
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FCKeditor
This wasn't the most friendly to use. When installing it like usual, it did not automatically fill in the plain text boxes with the editor. Going into the admin page, I discovered that I had to download and install FCKEditor separately, then it could be used. (Of course, all this was detailed in the readme, but very few people actually read those) Once it was installed, it worked flawlessly - by far one of my favorite editors available.
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HTMLArea
Unfortunately, this editor also required going to a 3rd party site to download the editor. Once I had installed it, the was no visible way to make it work. I went through their readme and install.txt, but neither of them seemed to work. I would definitely not recommend this editor to anyone.
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HTMLBox
Based on HtmlBox original code by Remiya Solutions released under MIT license. It's only based on, the code is changed quite a bit. This module fails the coder.module test on a minor error relating to a missing space in one string.Screenshot

nicEdit
As the only editor which passed the coder.module test, I had high hopes for this editor. Initially they were filled. This editor did not require going to a 3rd party site to download the editor. As soon as the module was enabled, all the plain text boxes were replaced with the WYSIWYG interface. My biggest problem with this was that, unlike FCKEditor, there were no keyboard shortcuts available within the editor.
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Quicktags
I had no luck with this editor. Once I enabled the module I went to create a new page. No such luck. Drupal spit out an error inside the module. There was no way I could find around this.
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TinyMCE
Like most of the others, TinyMCE required going to their site to get the editor. After doing this, I had to setup a profile to allow myself to use the editor. Going with all the defaults produces an error until you give roles the 'access tinymce' permission. Although other editors had required that users have a certain permission, they had all given me, the admin, permission by default. Even after giving myself permission, it took awhile to notice that TinyMCE (by default at least) doesn't automatically replace the text boxes. It puts a small link underneath it allowing you to enable it. There may be a setting to change this, but by default I would find it much easier to simply replace the text box as expected.
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widgEditor
Once the module was installed, there was no need to go to a 3rd party site for the editor. However, I had little hope for the module when I saw it's admin summary. It was left as the default example message for when people make their own module. Going into the settings, I noticed it was definitely easy to configure; the only option was to make it the default editor. I did this, and went to create a new story. In sticking with their obvious 'less is more' strategy, the editor provided for only the most basic of editing. Overall however, I enjoyed the experience with this editor. As long as you are not planning on using the editor for anything complicated at all, I would highly recommend this editor.
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Whizzywig
I'll never understand why all these modules don't just include a version of the editor. After installing both this and the extension to allow for XHTML, I tried to create a story with the editor. This editor has a slightly different interface than the rest. While most editors use some relatively standard icons to indicate what the buttons will do, Whizzywig uses only text. I have no problem with text, but this makes it so that the toolbars take up more room in the editor. There are some icons available, but this is not made immediately obvious. Additionally, there is no way to tell when the different text styles (bold, italic, etc) are activated. There was really only one other problem I had with the editor. Once I created a link, it was nearly impossible to tell it that I only wanted the link to be on one word, not the whole paragraph.
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WYMEditor
I think people are finally getting the installation right. Yet again, this module did not make me go to their site to get the latest version of the editor. Once I created a new profile for the editor using all the default settings, I headed off to create another story. The editor was beautiful to look at. There was a toolbar on top for the basic text formatting, and the different headings were all in a sidebar. Then I tried to use it. It would not learn that I didn't want to close my tags at the end of every paragraph. It was nearly unusable, which for me at least, was a disappointment. It looked so promising.
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XStandard
Ouch. This editor goes back to the evils of 3rd party sites. To make this pain even worse, it gives you no hint that you need to do so in the administration page. The only time you realize this is when trying to make a story. Even in their message, it doesn't give you a link to the website. (to be fair, all this is detailed in the readme, but as I said with FCKEditor, very few people actually bother to read them) Just in case all this wasn't hurting you enough, their download site requires you to give them your email address. For all this trouble, it had better be one heck of an editor. Once I downloaded it, it comes in an installer. That's a bit odd, but I ran it anyway. It turns out, this is an editor plugin for your computer. Even though it does not take replace the text box by default, XStandard made it very easy to figure out which field IDs needed to be added to use the editor. After adding the needed fields, I fired up the story editor again. After using the editor, I was still left with a bad taste in my mouth. There was nothing particularly special about the editor, certainly nothing worth the pain of installing it.
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YUI Editor
After the pain of XStandard, I was hoping YUI Editor would turn out to be the best editor I'd ever seen. The editor had a beautiful installation. Once I enabled the editor and its dependency, I never had to touch the administration page. Creating a new story was a pleasure. The editor looked, and worked, wonderfully. Everything behaved as expected with one exception. There were no keyboard shortcuts available. This addition would make the YUI editor surpass every editor out there.
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* This test was done by creating a post in each editor with the text "This post was made for Drupal using the awesome editor EditorName." and running the resulting page through the HTML Validator