Efficient Usage Of FckEditor

Amit Pankajkumar Shah

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15 Feb 2011CPOL3 min read

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There are many editors available in the market. Each editor has its own features, benefits and drawbacks. FckEditor is top one of them in Open Source category.

Download demo - 1.5 MB

Introduction

There are many editors available in the market. Each editor has its own features, benefits and drawbacks. FCKEditor is top one of them in the Open Source category. In this article, I will explain some of the good features.

What is FCKEditor?

FCKeditor is an HTML text editor that brings to the web much of the power of desktop editors like Microsoft Word. Fckeditor is a powerful tool which provides the HTML editing, theme to suit your web interface, multiple language supports, selection of tools to be displayed as per requirement, image upload, flash file upload and many more. It's lightweight and doesn't require any kind of installation on the client computer.

Features that Attract the User to Use It

Open source
User friendly and easy to integrate
Toolbar selection facility
Support of multiple language
Support of skin to suite web page UI
Light weight
Image and flash file upload

Improvement Which Could Be Done

Inbuilt facility to select theme at client side
Inbuilt facility to select language at client side
More font type and font size to improve user interface

Integrate FCKEditor Step by Step

1. Download Fckeditor source code from the following link:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/fckeditor/files/FCKeditor/2.6.4.1/FCKeditor_2.6.4.1.zip/download

2. Create new/ Open existing web project/ website:

3. Copy Fckeditor source code folder and paste it to website root directory:

4. Copy Fckeditor FredCK.FCKeditorV2.dll file from source code and paste it to website Bin folder:

5. You have to register FCKEditor to use it in your page. There are two ways to register it.

a) Manual: The following script will register it. You have add this script in every page where you want to use FCKEditor.

ASP.NET

<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Default.aspx.cs" 
	Inherits="FCKEditorDemo._Default" %>

<%@ Register TagPrefix="FCKeditorV2" Namespace="FredCK.FCKeditorV2" 
	Assembly="FredCK.FCKeditorV2" %>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" 
	"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head runat="server">
    <title>FCKEditor Demo : Amit Shah</title>
</head>
<body>
    <form id="form1" runat="server">
      <div align="center" width="70%">
          <hr />
          <h1>
              FCKEditor Demo : By Amit Shah</h1>
          <hr />
      </div>    
      <div>
           <FCKeditorV2:FCKeditor ID="FCKeditor1" runat="server" 
		BasePath="~/fckeditor/" Height="300px"
               Width="70%">
           </FCKeditorV2:FCKeditor>
      </div>
     </div>
    </form>
</body>
</html>

b) From Toolbar: You can otherwise, you can browse FCKEditor by right clicking on Toolbar >> Choose Items. A dialog box will appear as shown in the following image. Select .NET Framework Components >> Click on Browse button located at right hand bottom. Choose the .dll of FCKEditor from the bin directory of your application. An item called FCKEditor will be added to your Toolbar. Now you are ready to drag and drop editor in your page. If you place editor in your page, it will also add same code in your web page as we have done in the manual method.

6. Run website, you can see the FCKEditor in your browser with default theme and default English language.

How to Apply Theme?

FCKEditor has a great theming feature. User can apply the theme in two ways. One way is dynamically and another statically. The site of FCKEditor provides 3 themes to be downloaded. There are many third party open source themes available to download. I have shared few themes with this article, which you can find in the demo project attached with this article.

Now, how can we assign default theme and apply dynamic theme?
The answer is here: First of all, you can set default theme from fckconfig.js placed in FCKEditor folder, look at the below code:

JavaScript

  FCKConfig.SkinPath = FCKConfig.BasePath + 'skins/Default/';
//FCKConfig.SkinPath = FCKConfig.BasePath + 'skins/silver/';
//FCKConfig.SkinPath = FCKConfig.BasePath + 'skins/SilverNarrow/';
//FCKConfig.SkinPath = FCKConfig.BasePath + 'skins/office2003/' ;
//FCKConfig.SkinPath = FCKConfig.BasePath + 'skins/office2007/';
//FCKConfig.SkinPath = FCKConfig.BasePath + 'skins/ChroomDeluxe/';
//FCKConfig.SkinPath = FCKConfig.BasePath + 'skins/Aluminum/';
//FCKConfig.SkinPath = FCKConfig.BasePath + 'skins/Obi-D_V1/';
//FCKConfig.SkinPath = FCKConfig.BasePath + 'skins/Office2003Blue/';

You can also set the language from .aspx /html /php page where you have declared Fckeditor.
Just set the SkinPath Property.

Now run the application. You can view the office2003 theme in Fckeditor as you have set in the above page.

How to Apply Language?

Fckeditor provides a great multiple language support feature. User is able to change the language dynamically or set default language as per website language.
Fckeditor provides 56 languages that you can use as per your requirement.

Now, how can we assign default language or apply dynamic language?
The answer is here:
First of all, you can set default language from fckconfig.js, look at the below code:

JavaScript

FCKConfig.AutoDetectLanguage	= false ;
FCKConfig.DefaultLanguage	= 'en' ;
FCKConfig.ContentLangDirection	= 'ltr' ;

You can also set the language from .aspx /.html /.php page where you have declare Fckeditor.
Just set the DefaultLanguage Property.

Now run the application. You can view the Arabic language in Fckeditor as you have set in the above page.

Conclusion

Fckeditor is very simple, easy to integrate and can be used in almost all the web applications as HTML editor/ rich textbox editor.

History

15^th February, 2011: Initial post

Bibliography

Fckeditor official website

License

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)

Written By

Amit Pankajkumar Shah

Software Developer (Senior)

Denmark

Amit Shah have 6 year experience in the computer industry working on Microsoft .NET tools & technologies(WCF, LINQ, WebForms, MVC, DNN, Entity Framewrok, Jquery,JSON), Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Service including analysis, design, development, project management and interaction with client on site.

Amit Shah also having knowledge of crystal reports and MS SQL Reporting Service 2008 (SSRS 2008).

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