Best cross-browser web-based text editor.

November 7, 2007 6:28 AM

I'm looking for a good cross-browser web-based text editor simliar to google docs but with a focus on text rather than RTF or ODF. Something like a server-based TextWrangler or Emacs. Some of the things I want include:

* What you type is what you get text, with no mangling of HTML entites.
* Ability to organize documents by keywords.
* Download option.
* Standards-based cross-browser compatibility. Needs to work with Safari and Opera.

posted by KirkJobSluder to computers & internet (8 comments total)

Try Google notebook.
posted by Lownotes at 7:42 AM on November 7, 2007

Lownotes: Not standards compliant. Not cross-browser. Read the question.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 7:57 AM on November 7, 2007

It sounds like you're looking for a web-based SubEthaEdit.

You might want to check out some of the appropriate Wikipedia article's links to Browser-Based Collaborative Editors.

Hopefully this at least gives you some more useful terms to search for.
posted by Asymptote at 12:50 PM on November 7, 2007

Writeboard is a good bet.
posted by Happy Dave at 1:05 PM on November 7, 2007

How EMACS-like are you hoping to get? Are you looking for somethign that has the classical characteristics of a programmer's editor: Macros, string-manipulation, etc?

And are you looking for a whole package, or interface widgets?

As for the latter, these might help you focus. They're all rich-text-oriented, but some of them have a source-view aspect to them:
Whyzzywig
Widgeditor
WYMEditor ("what you see is what you mean") (focuses on XHTML structures, rather than specific presentation)
Yahoo UI Library (YUI) editor

(I know I've somewhere seen a commercial component that might fill your bill, but I'm having a hard time tracking it down just now. Will post back if I can.)
posted by lodurr at 2:11 PM on November 11, 2007

(Happy Dave, your Writeboard link appears to be borked -- here's another.)
posted by lodurr at 2:12 PM on November 11, 2007

None of these really did it for me. Writeboard dumped the text every time I clicked on edit, and lodurr's other links are good if I wanted to build my own storage mechanism. So far the best I've found is www.pote.com. But thanks for the suggestions.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 2:22 PM on November 15, 2007

Interesting. Very simple. Doesn't sound like it's quite what you're looking for.

KJS, I'm sorry, I know I once found a server-based component (even downloaded it and looked it over) that could do what you were describing, but I just couldn't see that I'd kept the URL anywhere or remember anything about what it was called. I just know it's out there. Where else have you asked?

FWIW, I think I probably found it on HotScripts.com.
posted by lodurr at 6:02 AM on November 16, 2007