Safe Web Text Formatting

Question

I am building a web application that will need to allow users to save formatted text to a database. Basically they just need to be able to change font color, font background color, font size, bold, italics, and underline.

I would like to use something that I can just attach to a text area to make a formatting bar show up.

It would be nice to use something that marks up the formatting in something besides HTML so that I can HTML Encode the input when storing it, for safety. It would, of course, need to convert its own markup into HTML when rendering back to the browser.

What options are out there?

Answer 1

I'd take a look at the HtmlEditor in the latest version of the Ajax Control Toolkit. I haven't used it yet - but for free, you can't beat the price.

http://www.asp.net/ajax/ajaxcontroltoolkit/samples/HTMLEditor/HTMLEditor.aspx

Answer 2

FCKEditor is one of the best fits for you. We are using it in one of our ASP.NET MVC web applications and it's awesome.

Before selecting FCKEditor, it tried other web editor but the ability to configure them was not good.

Check FCKEditor at: http://www.fckeditor.net/

Answer 3

I can recommend you WymEditor.

It's WYSIWYM (What You See Is What You Mean) XHTML editor (not WYSIWYG).

It was perfect for my small pseudo-CMS module to force users to use only a few defined styles from a list, but I have no idea if it'll suit your needs.

Plan B is to use TinyMCE which I prefer more than FCKEdit.