#10 – FCKeditor

Starting us on our journey is FCKeditor (named after Frederico Caldeira Knabben, otherwise known as Fred CK.) Strictly speaking, this is not an application in its own right. Rather it is an online text editor for use in Web sites that require flexible, formatted text entry.

FCKeditor embodies a truly flexible design philosophy. It has been implemented purely in DHTML giving it compatability across many web browsers and operating systems. It integrates with web sites built in PHP, Java, ASP/ASP.NET, ColdFusion and other popular formats. Visually, it presents an extremely familiar OpenOffice/Microsoft Word-style toolbar with the expected formatting icons and keyboard shortcuts. Tooltips display in a raft of languages.

Admittedly, for the casual user, FCKeditor doesn’t have a lot to offer – but if you’re building any sort of interactive web site, FCKeditor would make a superb replacement for the stock-standard HTML TextArea tag giving your site a real touch of professionalism and enhancing your user’s experience. Check out http://www.fckeditor.net/demo for a demonstration.