WYSIWYG Editor

WYSIWYG stands for What You See Is What You Get, a pretty simple acronym to remember. WYSYWYG editors are used for simple management of HTML code and formatting options when writing blog posts or even publishing websites. Some famous examples of WYSIWYG programs that made websites was Dreamweaver and the online service GeoCities, GeoCities died earlier this year and Dreamweaver is pretty much living dead. Other types of WYSIWYG editors are based on javascript that can be implemented in different CMS like Wordpress, Drupal and Joomla. These are the more common ones and the more popular ones in this category is: TinyMCE and FCKeditor.

FCKeditor or TinyMCE?

I myself use TinyMCE everytime because of it's simplicity and good looks. It has a smoother feeling than FCKeditor. Though FCKedtor has some nice features when playing with HTML and code in general TinyMCE has all the functions you need when you are publishing content on a site.

In terms of reliability I find that they both has some issues, but most of the time they work as they should.

Using the WYSIWYG module for Drupal

Before the WYSIWYG module came out for Drupal you had to install TinyMCE or FCKeditor as separate modules. A nice contribution to the CMS i think, because it simplifies the whole process of choosing one editor that you like.

1. Download and install the WYSIWYG module
2. Download you favourite editor
3. Extract the files from you favourite editor into /sites/all/libraries/[editorname] so that for example fckeditor.js can be found under /sites/all/libraries/fckeditor/fckeditor.js
4. Configure the WYSIWYG module profiles and choose the one editor you installed and you're done!