Rich Text Editor is here

I am super excited to announce that Kannan Sundararajan, my colleague at Microsoft, has written a Rich Text Editor control using ASP.NET and JavaScript and shared it under the MS-PL license on CodePlex. It has a very rich feature set and Kannan hopes to enhance it further in the future. Since it is a CodePlex project you can report issues and make feature requests.

Here are the highlights:

  • Live demo: If you would like to see the control in action, then check out this live demo that Kannan has put up.
  • Getting the bits
    1. You can download the latest RichTextEditor bits from the Source Code tab of the CodePlex project.
    2. Unzip the files to a local directory and open the solution using Visual Studio.
    3. The RichTextEditor.dll will be located in the bin directory of the RichTextEditor project.
    4. You can also preview the control by opening the Default.aspx page of the SampleWebSite project in a browser.
    5. To add the RichTextEditor to your project simply reference the RichTextEditor binary in your web project and register its assembly and namespace on the page.
  • Documentation: Kannan has a nice Power Point presentation that talks about some of the important features. It is in the Docs folder when you unzip the source.
  • Features: Here are some really compelling features that I would like to call out.
    • Clipboard support: You can copy and paste content from other programs like Microsoft Word, Internet Explorer, Visual Studio into the RichTextEditor and it will persist the formatting. If you copy code from Visual Studio it will preserve the code coloring scheme.

      WordCopyRTE

    • Context sensitive Toolbar: The ToolBar buttons will reflect the properties of that content automatically when you select it or navigate through it using the mouse or keyboard .

      ContextSensitiveRTE

    • Code Block: It allows you to format text as code blocks. Simple select the text and format it by clicking the "Code Block" ToolBar button. CodeBlockRTE

    • Emoticons: You can express yourself better by adding emoticons to your rich text.

      EmoticonsInRTE

    • HtmlView: If you would like to have more control over the look and feel of your text then you can edit it in HtmlView as well.

      HtmlViewRTE

    • Text in multiple languages: The control currently supports several languages. This means that I can type a message to my mom in my native language, Marathi, using the RichTextEditor and send it to her. MarathiInRTE

    • Browser support: The control works well in two of the most widely used browsers Internet Explorer and Firefox.

 

Toolkit and the RichTextEditor

The RichTextEditor is not a part of the AJAX Control Toolkit and does not use the Toolkit infrastructure either. Currently there are no plans of integrating it into the Toolkit. However, as the new Toolkit contribution model states, we would like to share AJAX controls with the community that provide great solutions for important problems that are commonly faced by a lot of our users. Please try it out and give Kannan your feedback by using the Issue Tracker.

 

To richer text!

Comments

  • Anonymous
    November 10, 2007
    I am super excited to announce that Kannan Sundarajan , my colleague at Microsoft, has written Rich Text

  • Anonymous
    November 11, 2007
    Kannan Sundarajan has written Rich Text Editor control using ASP.NET AJAX and shared it under the MS-PL

  • Anonymous
    November 11, 2007
    Kannan Sundarajan has written Rich Text Editor control using ASP.NET AJAX and shared it under the MS

  • Anonymous
    November 11, 2007
    Brad Abrams からです。 Cool Free ASP.NET AJAX Rich Text Editor ASP.NET AJAX を利用して作られた RTE コントロールが MS-PL license

  • Anonymous
    November 12, 2007
    Kanan Sundarajan has written a Rich Text Editor and has shared it on CodePlex . For additional screenshots

  • Anonymous
    November 12, 2007
    Kanan Sundarajan has written a Rich Text Editor and has shared it on CodePlex . For additional screenshots

  • Anonymous
    November 12, 2007
    How is the html from this handled during page validation?

  • Anonymous
    November 12, 2007
    I am glad to announce the release of ASP.NET Rich Text Editor control , that I have blogged about earlier,

  • Anonymous
    November 12, 2007
    I am glad to announce the release of ASP.NET Rich Text Editor control , that I have blogged about earlier

  • Anonymous
    November 12, 2007
    I'm very interested in the "hopes to enhance it further in the future" part.

  • Anonymous
    November 12, 2007
    I was pushing for this release when I was at Microsoft and while I can't explain what took so long

  • Anonymous
    November 12, 2007
    I was pushing for this release when I was at Microsoft and while I can't explain what took so long

  • Anonymous
    November 12, 2007
    The control is not xHtml compliant.

  • Anonymous
    November 13, 2007
    You can report issues on the RTE CodePlex project. There is already one that tracks XHTML Compliance: http://www.codeplex.com/rte/WorkItem/View.aspx?WorkItemId=4354. You can also ask questions and have discussions with other users of this control: http://www.codeplex.com/rte/Thread/List.aspx.

  • Anonymous
    November 14, 2007
    功能特征: 下面是一些我想要重点介绍的引人关注的功能特征。

  • Anonymous
    November 16, 2007
    I've recently come across a large number of blog posts talking about a new Rich Text Editor on CodePlex

  • Anonymous
    November 27, 2007
    1st: Excellent work, must have been pretty tough. 2nd: Now the Ajax Control Toolkit is not going to make one, which is sad, because we need the Toolkit to provide all common interface widgets, including a rich text editor. So please merge and then go from there. You will have the added benefit of the general Toolkit popularity and testing framework. Please consider. Keep up up the good work, thanks!

  • Anonymous
    December 03, 2007
    Thanks for posting. Was really looking for such a control from a long time!!!

  • Anonymous
    January 02, 2008
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 23, 2008
    OK - so how DO I get to the dll? I downloaded the latest zip - no bin directory in there are all, sooooo I download team explorer - even using the username_cp I can't get access by loading it into VS2005, sooooo I download TortoiseSVN abd SCN Bridge and re-download the project again - apart from a hidden directory ',svn' it the same as the zip file - still no Bin directory, still no dll... This is the fastest loading RT editor I have come across - and would be great in our apps - sooo some help please...

  • Anonymous
    January 23, 2008
    Hi Dave, Could you try building the solution and see if that creates a bin directory? You should ignore any Team explorer authentication prompts. Kirti

  • Anonymous
    January 24, 2008
    Hi Kirti Yup I ran build to compile last night - bin directory doesn't appear in VS2005, but it has now compiled a dll in the download directory under Bin/Debug - I'm not really sure what the .pdb file is for next to it? If I right click in toolbox - choose items and browse to the dll it's not visible... Sorry to be a pain!

  • Anonymous
    January 24, 2008
    Hi Kirti OK - I've got it working. Not sure why the assembly loads as RichTextEditor and the control as rte, but by changing the control name it runs fine now! Faster and better than anything I've come across including the heavyweight flickr editor... Thank you

  • Anonymous
    January 24, 2008
    Another question... The editor is runs well, but for some reason when running under an SSL socket it's attempting to load some items that are 'nonsecure' (outside of the app) - if I load it and prevent the nonsecure items to be displayed I can't see any difference from allowing them. Getting this warning will be a pain to users though - any ideas?

  • Anonymous
    January 24, 2008
    You should post any control specific issues in the RTE Issue tracker: http://www.codeplex.com/rte/WorkItem/AdvancedList.aspx and Kannan can investigate further.

  • Anonymous
    January 30, 2008
    only few fonts are available there.we want style more fonts

  • Anonymous
    February 14, 2008
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    March 23, 2008
    I need a rich text editor which has a insert table option. Please send me the codes or tell me where I can find it. Thanks

  • Anonymous
    March 23, 2008
    Hi guys,        I am facing a need to tab twice in order to enter the rich text area, some how one tab doesn't work for me. Movement from one control to another is possible only if I tab twice, how can I tab into the textbox using only 1 tab. Regards, Naren.

  • Anonymous
    March 23, 2008
    Hi guys,        I am facing a need to tab twice in order to enter the rich text area, some how one tab doesn't work for me. Movement from one control to another is possible only if I tab twice, how can I tab into the textbox using only 1 tab. Regards, Naren.

  • Anonymous
    April 07, 2008
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    April 08, 2008
    The RichTextEditor project is open source and you can download and change its code as per the Microsoft Public License. It would be great if you could report new issues and vote on existing issues here that will help Kannan better track them: http://www.codeplex.com/rte/WorkItem/AdvancedList.aspx. You can also post questions on the RTE forum: http://www.codeplex.com/rte/Thread/List.aspx.

  • Anonymous
    August 18, 2008
    This is superbad! Excellent work guys.

  • Anonymous
    August 25, 2008
    Hi kannan, How could we open this editor when user clicks on the div element in a modal popup, and i need to edit the content inside that particular div element and to save back in the same div element after editing using this editor. pls. help me out. Thanks in advance

  • Anonymous
    October 26, 2008
    [2008. október 27.] Az október 14-i RTW (Ready To Wire) bejelentés kapcsán megvizsgáltuk a Silverlight

  • Anonymous
    March 10, 2009
    Similar to Kannan, How can I get content of RichTextEditor as HTML in C# code page. some thing like Rte1.GetContent(); Thanks, Linh

  • Anonymous
    March 23, 2009
    How can I save the editors content? rte1.Text() returns empty string.

  • Anonymous
    May 03, 2009
    When i set the controls visibility to false i get a java script error. Else a fantastic control thanks

  • Anonymous
    July 01, 2009
    I don't see a button for strikethrough.

  • Anonymous
    August 12, 2009
    Does not support multiple instances of editor on one page.

  • Anonymous
    November 03, 2009
    Clipboard support: is not working. Can you please help me in this regard.

  • Anonymous
    November 03, 2009
    please see my issues @ http://rte.codeplex.com/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=73280