With the web being the interactive place that it is today, there is no doubt that most sites need an easy way for users to express themselves. Since a large marjority of communication on the web is done with text, then the more control you have over that text, the more expressive you're able to be. In days gone by, the only choice was to hand code HTML tags. While this still works, only a very small percentage of people understand how this is done.

Enter the WYSIWYG Editor. This gives all users the ability to change formatting, sizes, colors and more with the simple click of an icon. We all know this from HTML email, word processing programs, and other online applications.

The problem is, there are many, many choices of WYSIWYG editors. I've attempted to narrow it down, and therefore bring a firm answer to, at this time, what is the definitive best option available?

Here are my criteria:

• Easy to install
• User Friendly once working
• Easy to add images
• Browser compatibility

When I'm trying to decide on a module to use, I like to see what other people are using and assume that a very popular module is likely to be that way for a reason. A quick glance at the Drupal Project Usage page shows that the two primary WYSIWYG editors being used in Drupal at this time are FCKEditor and TinyMCE. Fundamentally, they seem to offer the same things. Easy text editing with many options and plugins. I've now used both though, and have my mind pretty much made up.

1. Easy to install
   They both started out about the same.. the README.txt file does a good job of explaining the steps. The trouble is that with TinyMCE, not all the buttons showed up, including the Drupal Break button, which is essential to Drupal developers. After much tweaking and tinkering I got most of it right, but in the end it was a big hassle that took much longer than I would have liked.
   
   FCKEditor on the other hand, I went through the steps, and everything showed up just exactly where I wanted it to.

2. User Friendly once working
   On this aspect I'd have to call it pretty much a wash.. they are both very similar in functionality and I was not missing anything that I wanted for my purposes in either one

3. Easy to add images
   If you take a look at the TinyMCE demonstartion, then you'll see a very nice looking image manager. The problem? It will cost you $40+USD. Now, this is not so much money for a good piece of software, but does tend to go against the mindset of using a totally open source piece of software. That being said, the TinyMCE image manager is very good. There is also the free option of IMCE, but I had a number of issues with CSS display in my two favorite browsers, firefox and chrome. Also, usability was not great. There were a few extra clicks that were confusing at best to explain to clients.
   
   FCKEditor's built in file manager is great. It's straight forward and easy to use. It's a little more involved to get set up than the other solutions, but it works well and is worth the effort. (It's really not that hard.. just follow the instructions.)

4. Browser Compatibility
   Both claim about the same browser support, but TinyMCE seems to have Safari issues, plus CSS issues with the file uploader.
   
   FCKEditor is so far, so good.

Another win for FCKEditor is it's ability to fine tune where the editor shows up and how. There are some very granular controls to be able to place the editor on some text areas and not others based on field IDs, and page URLs, as well as putting a full editor on some fields, while using a compact on others. TinyMCE does a lot of this as well, but FCKEditor seemed to make this much easier accomplish.

Another observation:

At this stage, TinyMCE is a development version, wheras FCKEditor is on release candidate 3. This means as far as issues, FCKEditor seems to be closer to full support of Drupal 6.

My Conclusion?

Go download FCKEditor if you haven't already, and start working to get it set up right.

That's for now. As development continues on other modules perhaps my views might change. What is your favorite? What are the benefits or frustations you've experienced with various editors? Post your comments here and let us know what's worked for you!