DEV Community: Kegan Blumenthal

A Comparison of WYSIWYG HTML Editors: Froala vs. QuillJS

Kegan Blumenthal — Tue, 14 Dec 2021 16:02:43 +0000

Coding is a must when it comes to web development. Does this rule apply today also? Not necessarily if you are aware of HTML WYSIWYG editor. A quick fix for those having coding phobia to easily play with the web content. Do you know what the scary-looking abbreviation WYSIWYG means?

What You See Is What You Get 👀

WYSIWYG editor has expanded the scope of web content editing and formatting for a much faster and easier experience. Whether it’s spell-checking, auto-completion or syntax highlighting, you can have it all. Moreover, the tool instantly displays the content live on the web in the exact same way as in the preview.

Indeed, there are multiple featured-packed HTML editors to choose from. To help you accomplish more in less time, we have analyzed the marketplace trends and compared the two of the most popular WYSIWYG editors - Froala and Quill.

Let’s dig in!

Market trends

As per the report released by G2 comparison, the customer review rate for Froala and QuillJS editor is 4.5/5 and 3.9/5, respectively. The product's score at G2 is estimated based on real-time data collected from verified user reviews.

What’s more? G2 Grid for WYSIWYG Editors has crowned Froala as one of the top-performing leaders while QuillJS holds a strong position among the contenders in terms of market presence and customer satisfaction that set Froala ahead in the race as shown below.

While assessing the two solutions, reviewers felt that Froala editor has better ongoing product support, updates, roadmaps and meets the needs of their business better than Quill. Along the way, Froala also offers over 170 responsive design blocks ready to be used in websites or applications. These building blocks are based on the Bootstrap library and help to frame beautiful web content. It’s a modern design framework that combines HTML5 and CSS3 design blocks together to build responsive websites and applications.

In Github, Froala design blocks is one of the top starred modern web development frameworks with 13.3k stars and 1.2k forks.

Ahead, we’ll see powerful features of the two intuitive and overwhelming WYSIWYG text editors.

Froala

Froala is the all-in-one visual development tool for editing and formatting web apps and websites. It is one of the few text editors featuring a modern and retina-ready design. Froala provides a visual text editor and a code editor with standard features such as code completion, syntax highlighting, and code collapsing.

More advanced features such as dynamic code introspection for generating code hints assist the user in writing code. Furthermore, the user-friendly interface is based on the latest web design trend, and it is compatible with any web page.

Key Features

Froala is loaded with a tonne of powerful features that help you to stand out in the crowd. The platform offers an all-in-one rich text-editing package for optimizing any web application or website.

To get a better feel of how far things have come, let’s take a look at a few of the noteworthy features.

1 - Compatibility

From Safari to Chrome, Froala WYSIWYG editor runs seamlessly across all major web browsers, including Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari, and Microsoft Edge.

Not only browsers, but Froala is accessible across multiple operating systems and devices, thus it guarantees a wonderful user experience every time to users.

The true editor without any compatibility limitations! Now we are talking.

2 - Customization

In today’s world, users expect more control over the content they are producing without putting coding skills into action or hiring somebody else for it.

Froala understands this trend very well and hence, the editor has been designed to offer comprehensive customization features to make editing a convenient job. Using custom plugins you can extend the functionalities and customize the existing features. Also, the user has complete access over the toolbar to select the layout, content, design, or functionality that appeals to them.

3 - Markdown Support

Froala editor enables you to format text content using prebuilt markdown commands via the Markdown plugin. The plugin can be used to mark down the Image, heading, list, code block, table, and many more.

Besides, traditional users can get a clearer sense of what they are creating!

All a user has to do is - switch to markdown mode, split the screen to view the real-time changes, and start rolling!

4 - Autosave & Autocorrect

We introduced this feature to simplify the way you optimize content!

The Autosave plugin has a built-in feature that automatically hits HTTP requests from JS to the server, which handles the requests and saves the data automatically.

The autocorrect feature turns predefined snippets into special symbols and characters. Users can write complex characters such as ½ becomes as easy as writing 1/2. What’s more? The feature also allows you to frame your own editing rules!

5 - Real-time collaboration

“Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.” - Michael Jordan.

Froala implemented this principle to offer the users a real-time collaboration for synchronized content creation and instant cooperation with colleagues. You can track changes through dynamic editing features for an asynchronous and co-authoring experience.

With real-time collaboration, users can instantly see content changes with the name of the editor. In real-time collaboration, you can view the list of active users you are collaborating with at the top-right corner of the editor window.

For more information, you can check the documentation - how to install plugin for real-time collaboration.

6 - Track Changes

The track changes plugin allows users to keep the track of all changes users make to the text, format, tables, styles, tables, and more. You can easily accept or decline the introduced changes in the content. It enables users to collaborate on documents while maintaining complete control over the content creation process. It is fully compatible with real-time collaboration.

For example, some users can operate in the editing mode while others can operate in suggestion mode by enabling track changes.

Why Froala?

Why not? Froala is a perfect editor choice if you are looking for diverse functionalities, customization features, extensive documentation, and reliable support. Besides, there's no need to reinvent the wheel to integrate additional features; the rich text editor comes with over 30 out-of-the-box plugins to choose from.

Without any extra steps, it provides:

1 - High Performance

Froala is faster than the blink of an eye; the rich editor initiates under 40ms while providing an amazing editing experience. It is carefully designed with high performance in mind and can withstand the most rigorous tests. The lightweight and well-structured architecture make it the best Javascript-rich text editor in every single aspect.

2 - Security

Froala WYSIWYG HTML editor has a robust defense mechanism against XSS attacks. It is regularly updated, which significantly reduces vulnerabilities. The input data is screened and validated on both the client-side to protect against cross-site scripting attacks.

3 - Extend Functionality

The plugins help to manage and extend the functionalities of the editor. You can use multiple built-in plugins or you can also build your own custom plugins as per your requirements to extend the editor functionality.

Follow the steps below for downloading Froala plugins.

Step 1: Launch the Froala Plugins documentation on your browser.

Step 2: Click on the icon of the required plugin you want to download. For example, Align.

Step 3: Click on the Download button to download the plugin.

Step 4: Enter the required details and click on the download button to download the plugin.

Alternatively, for faster plugin integration, you also use a CDN link for each plugin; for example, you can check the CDN link for Align plugin.

Simple, Right? Let’s move to the next section and take a look at QuillJS and its features.

QuillJS

Quill is an open-source WYSIWYG editor built for the modern web. It is designed as an easy-to-use editor that helps create and format content across the web. It is built on top of consistent and predictable constructs. With its extensible architecture and an expressive API, you can completely customize the editor to fulfill your needs.

Key Features

QuillJS is designed with numerous features to make it an easy-to-use editor for creating content across the web.

Let’s see what this editor has got in its bucket list that can break the wall of code in the web development space.

1 - API Driven

Quill is an API-driven platform that makes editing and formatting easy. You can call core API calls to create arbitrary indexes, modify content, extend functionalities, and more. Users don’t need to traverse the DOM to change the font-weight style attributes; instead, call API. Its event API also reports changes in an intuitive JSON format - no need to parse HTML or diff DOM trees.

2 - Deltas

QuillJS has its separate standalone library - Deltas. The Deltas are the simple and expressive format used in interpreting Quill’s content modifications for formatting. It’s a strict subset of JSON and can be easily parsed. This library can help in describing text and formatting information of any Quill document.

3 - Parchment

To provide users with a consistent editing experience, Quill offers a document model - Parchment. Parchment provides a powerful abstraction over the DOM to enable custom formats over the content in Quill. With Parchment, you can now enhance or customize existing Quill formats or add entirely new ones in your application.

Why QuillJS

Quill editor offers multiple customization features to suit your needs. You can easily extend existing functionality and change styling themes using the APIs. Also, you can strikingly customize the editor by simply adding features and functionalities using individual modules.

Here are some of the reasons how QuillJS features can make your life easier.

1 - Easy to use

Quill offers the features in an easy-to-use package format. You can configure logical default settings immediately using a few lines of Javascript command. For easy editing, the syntax module detects and highlights syntax to format code blocks automatically. With API and modular architecture, it can be customized to suit your needs.

2 - Customization

Themes of the CSS stylesheet primarily control Quill visuals, and other changes can be easily made by overriding the existing codebase. Overriding makes customization simple with any web application. For this purpose, you can use a browser console to inspect the elements, which will allow you to view and modify them. For example, the toolbar in the user interface can be customized through the toolbar module.

3 - Cross-Platform

Cross-platform support is not a bar for QuillJS; it runs or works the same way across all browsers, devices, and operating systems. It’s not only equally functional but also strikes the same user experience across all browsers and devices. If some content produces a particular markup in Chrome on OSX, it will also make the same markup on Mozilla Firefox. If hitting enter preserves bold format state in Firefox on Windows, it will be kept on mobile Safari.

Feature Comparison Table: Froala Vs. QuillJS

After, evaluating these two text editors, it is fair to say that Froala has an edge over QuillJS with over 100 features to help users to construct quality content. However, let’s check the feature comparison table.

Wrap Up

A WYSIWYG editor not only gifts editing powers to the users but also simplifies the whole content development process without investing in coding skills. Above, we have rolled down the features of the top picks in the market but the only catch is to go for the option that aligns with your needs.

Quill is quite right with the price, but “free” comes with its costs. On this basis, Quill deficit of the most powerful content editing features that set Froala apart. If you are looking for a more sophisticated WYSIWYG editor, go with Froala. The flexibility, easy-to-understand documentation, and more than 100 features alone are great assets.

Takeaway

Before you jump into optimizing your web content, make sure you pick the right text editor. There are tons of different WYSIWYG editors available on the market today but what matters the most is whether the editor makes your content optimization process easy and emphatic?

Froala WYSIWYG editor offers a striking collaborative platform to optimize and publish content on the web. Whether you are dealing with an enterprise website or just want to customize the user interface designs of your blog site - Froala editor is ready to serve you all.

Froala vs. CKEditor: A Duel Between the Two Most Popular HTML Editors

Kegan Blumenthal — Mon, 22 Nov 2021 12:11:38 +0000

WYSIWYG editors can help you create content and web pages with no knowledge of HTML principles, making it a holy grail tool for developers. These editors offer numerous options for adding images, editing texts, inserting links, etc. So, what makes these tools so popular among developers?

Well, it’s the magic of programming happening behind the scenes. Any step you take in the process of generating a web page is automatically supported by a relevant HTML code. Hence, given the high demand for WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get), many organizations are creating smart and efficient WYSIWYG HTML editors. Froala, CKEditor, and TinyMCE are just a few popular choices.

So, if you’ve got some heavy-duty web editing tasks to get through, chances are there’s one of two programs you might be considering: Froala and CKEditor. Now, you might be wondering which one will suit your needs best. For this reason, we’ve put together a comprehensive comparison to make things easier for you — check it out!

Froala - An Overview

Froala is an open-source HTML editor that provides a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) interface to create and edit HTML documents. It’s a lightweight, open-source tool loaded with a tonne of features and plugins for turning the web page-making process into a seamless experience. It supports all popular third-party tools such as Code Mirror, Embed.ly Integration, TUI Advanced Image Editor, Codox Real-Time Editing, and more.

Froala is created with user experience (UX) in mind, which allows its easy integration into any web application. It’s straightforward to use and extremely high-performant, and has a clean, neat interface. For users who wish to customize their editor, Froala guarantees that everything can be modified or changed. If you do not like the default color scheme, you can choose another one. However, if you’re not interested in making further changes to the program, Froala offers you the flexibility to choose another layout or customize the rich-text editor’s interface using the customizer.

Froala comes with ready-to-use drag-and-drop design blocks, a set of more than 170+ Bootstrap-based responsive components, allowing you to create beautiful modern websites easily.

Also, users can integrate this WYSIWYG HTML editor to websites and content management systems, learning management systems, document management systems, SaaS web applications, or any other scriptable application with a simple line of code.

Features of Froala

With a clean and intuitive design, Froala offers numerous amazing features that help this editor stand out in the market. As the platform is written in JavaScript, it offers rich text-editing for any application. Let’s have a look at some of its amazing features.

Track the Changes

Froala enables users to track changes against deleted and new text within the text editor. Users can also track various formatting and styling changes to the text, images, and tables. It also allows users to accept and reject the changes accordingly through easy access to ‘Reject or Accept’ a ‘Single or All’ changes via accessible toolbar buttons.

Browser Compatibility

Froala is compatible and tested with all popular internet browsers, including Firefox, Safari, and Chrome. However, due to browser-specific behavior, there may be small differences from one browser to the next. For instance, while working locally and testing examples using file:// instead of using a web server to run the files, the icon will not be shown properly in the Firefox browser. It is because firefox has strict “file uri origin” that forbids web fonts from being accessed from directories other than the root.

Customization

With Froala, users have complete freedom of customization. They can use the API to edit the source code or change the default behavior. The customizer tool allows users to change the look and feel of the page the way they want. Also, they have full control over the toolbar functionality on each screen size.

Robust API

Froala boasts a powerful API, allowing users to customize and interact with this editor easily. The API comes with complete documentation to help developers with easy onboarding.

High Performance

Imagine a JavaScript editor that takes no more than 40 seconds to initialize. Froala does just that! The lightweight nature of the editor ensures optimum loading speed coupled with bulletproof security features.

Markdown Support

Markdown support allows Froala’s users to quickly add Markdown syntax to their text to indicate words and phrases that need formatting. The editor provides a simple split-screen interface to observe the changes in real-time.

Excel & Word Paste

Froala allows clean formatting when pasting from Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word to make sure the code looks clean. With this editor, users can easily paste text boxes, tables, and numbered lists along with captioned images.

Autosave

To improve the saving experience, Froala has a save plugin, which has built-in mechanisms for sending HTTP requests from JavaScript to your server. It handles the requests and stores the data. It is up to the users to manage these requests and save the data on the server-side.

Real-Time Collaboration

Froala utilizes the real-time collaboration capabilities of Codox.io, which is a real-time collaboration service that offers a turn-key solution for integrating real-time co-editing into the applications.

With this service, developers will be able to integrate real-time co-editing with Froala using the client-side API with just a few lines of javascript. Teams will be able to edit the same rich text documents in real-time and see each other's edits (character by character) in Froala.

Plug-Ins

Froala offers plugins for multiple development frameworks to ease its integration with any application. As plugins extend the scope of how the editor performs, Froala is more easy-to-understand, efficient, and easy to maintain.

CKEditor - An Overview

CKEditor is another amazing JavaScript WYSIWYG editor for creating rich text content and simplifying web content creation. Like Froala, CKEditor has a neat design and provides a good user experience for creating semantic content.

CKEditor employs ES6 with MVC architecture, a virtual DOM, and a custom data model. As it relies on modern architecture, it is great for creating web pages, blog posts, news articles, and any other content on the web.

Like Froala, with collaborative tools, CKEditor also helps teams become more productive. The editor is designed to be configurable and extendable, making it a solid alternative for adoption.

The HTML editor focuses on providing high-quality code output and cutting-edge functionality while staying lightweight and allowing easy integration with any application. It imparts common word processor features directly to the web pages. Also, developers can use this editor in their projects. For instance, they can install this editor into their organization’s CMS so that content providers can update the website.

Features of CKEditor

Developed on the top of HTML5 and JavaScript, CKEditor is not only lightweight but can also function properly without the use of additional plugins. It works well on all popular browsers and supports all major input methods. It also enhances the user experience by offering properties for each field, allowing users to view each button's output in real-time.

Let's take a look at some more features of CKEditor that make it popular.

Rich Text Editing

CKEditor allows users to create any content they wish with rich text editing tools. With support for HTML5, users can add multimedia elements to documents. This editor also allows for quick editing of copied text from other applications without losing formatting.

Programming Language Support

CKEditor supports HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, PHP and includes a complete set of tools for creating effective websites. Also, users can extend the editor to create their functions.

Autoformatting

With CKEditor, users can easily format and customize the content in a go. For instance, you can add headings with ‘#,’ bold with ‘text,’ inline code with ‘text,’ bulleted list with ‘*’ and code block with three black ticks.

Autosave

CKEditor allows users to automatically save the data when needed by sending it to the server. So, whenever a user makes modifications to the content, new changes will be saved automatically. It even prevents users from leaving before the changes are saved, or any pending action is done.

Restricted editing

CKEditor has an option of restricted editing, which provides users with limited access while editing the documents. It is ideal for templates where only certain parts need to be altered or filled. As a result, an additional security layer is created that restricts the editing rights for a document.

Automatic text transformation

Autocorrect or automatic text transformation turns predefined snippets into special symbols and characters. Defining difficult characters such as ½ or ™ become as easy as writing (TM) and 1/2. With this feature, you can define your own rules.

Track Changes

Allow users to edit your material in suggestion mode to add an extra layer of control. Changes will be labeled as suggestions, with users having the choice of accepting, rejecting, or editing them.

Display Mode

You may configure Comments and Track Changes annotations, allowing users to view them in a wide or narrow sidebar, with or without inline balloons, and cycle between various display styles.

Real-Time Collaboration

Users may see updates, ideas, and comments in real-time, and there is no limit to the number of collaborators. This real-time feature includes a presence list UI that allows you to see active users with whom you’re collaborating.

Froala & CKEditor: Comparison

CKEditor is an open-source editor, and it is free to use. However, for support and upgrades, a user must rely on the open-source community. On the other hand, users of Froala have year-round access to the most recent upgrades and technical assistance.

Both of them come with a rich set of features for HTML content creation and editing. If you are in a dilemma, here is a detailed comparison between the two editors to help you make a more informed decision.

Integration

Froala facilitates integration with multiple development frameworks like Angular, Vue, React and eases the editor’s integration with the help of numerous plugins into applications (Angular, Vue, React) through its API.

On the contrary, CKEditor has over 100 extensions, which results in a much heavier dependency on plugins and a DLL (Dynamic Link Libraries) build to operate.

Customization

Users can easily customize the editor using the API to make changes. With Froala, users can edit source code directly to make changes in the content. Both editors have multiple customization options for the dialogs, styles, and themes. For example, CKEditor offers a wide range of themes and styles.

Pricing

Froala Editor is one of the most affordable WYSIWYG editors with free access to convert text to HTML. However, to avail of an editor license for enterprise or personal app, users will need to upgrade to another plan. CKEditor has a free Edition, but it comes with limited features and functionalities. For more features, users need to subscribe to a ‘Standard’ plan.

The yearly fees for a number of services offered by Froala are extremely reasonable, and on top of that, every plan also has a perpetual license option, making it particularly appealing to long-term users.

API

Froala Editors offer an API that developers can use to extend functionalities in their applications, which include the ability to add custom functions through which users can easily customize the editor. CKEditor also provides cloud-based REST APIs for integration.

Ease of Use

In terms of editor capabilities, advanced functionalities, development, and design features, Froala is the preferable choice. Froala comes with documentation support, as well as comprehensive text editing capabilities, well-structured developer-friendly APIs, blazing fast speed, and a customizable editor that makes Froala easy to use for both developers and users.

Documentation

Froala Editors provides detailed and easy-to-navigate documentation to help users get started easily without any hassle. In contrast, CKEditor’s documentation is complex to understand and more of a reference guide.

Security

CKEditor uses JSON-based data structures for all internal communication, making it less vulnerable to cross-site request forgery (CSRF) attacks. Froala Editor is also impervious to CSRF attacks due to the use of JWT tokens for server communication and even consists of a robust defense mechanism against XSS attacks.

When Should You Choose Froala?

If you are looking for a budget-friendly option for a WYSIWYG HTML editor, Froala is a go-to option. One core feature that makes Froala a better option than CKEditor is Auto-direction. With this feature, the editor automatically detects if the keyboard input is LTR or RTL and adjusts the text direction.

When Should You Choose CKEditor?

If you are looking for an easy-to-manage WYSIWYG editor with versatile functionalities such as real-time collaborative editing and tracking changes, CKEditor is the right choice. However, the CKEditor is a little difficult to understand at first, so users need to refer to support documents to understand how the platform works.

Wrap Up: Why Is Froala The Better Editor?

After reviewing these two exceptional WYSIWYG HTML editors, it is fair to say that Froala outshines CKEditor with many features to help developers create high-quality content.

What’s more interesting? According to G2 Froala is a leading WYSIWYG editor!

However, Froala editor stands out when it comes to user experience. This HTML editor makes content creation convenient and easy to use. Also, you can easily customize colors, fonts, icons, and more without knowing code or writing separate CSS files. Froala's editor makes it simple to incorporate third-party plugins, which is also an edge.

On the other hand, CKEditor is an HTML editor with great functionality for creating websites but with more complex configurations. So, if your company requires an editor that provides outstanding features with fewer code modifications or integrations into existing systems, then Froala editor is the right choice.