Pure .NET HTML Editing control for WinForms?
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Anyone know of a complete, stable control (free or commercial) that can be embedded in Windows Forms that allow users to directly edit HTML and see previews? I have written one on my own, largely with the help of the following CP article (with extremely heavy modification): http://www.codeproject.com/cs/miscctrl/Attach.asp[^] but we're beginning to feel its limitations, and I'm considering finding a superior alternative, if there is one. We have a reasonable budget, but we're not looking to spend thousands, of course. Suggestions would be appreciated. This is something I have looked high and low for, but doesn't appear to be something anyone is actually interested in writing. There are free ones, including articles here on CP, but they all are unstable or very incomplete in one way or another. I'm looking for something that won't require me to spend a week modifying, just to discover it has a fundamental flaw that prevents it from being useful. In other words, an out-of-the-box solution. Oh, edited to add: When I say "Pure .NET" I would really prefer something that doesn't rely on a COM object or otherwise. Unmanaged DLL's are fine, but I'm trying to stay away from using Microsoft's COM controls, the overhead of using them in .NET is unacceptable to my client..
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. - Albert Einstein
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Anyone know of a complete, stable control (free or commercial) that can be embedded in Windows Forms that allow users to directly edit HTML and see previews? I have written one on my own, largely with the help of the following CP article (with extremely heavy modification): http://www.codeproject.com/cs/miscctrl/Attach.asp[^] but we're beginning to feel its limitations, and I'm considering finding a superior alternative, if there is one. We have a reasonable budget, but we're not looking to spend thousands, of course. Suggestions would be appreciated. This is something I have looked high and low for, but doesn't appear to be something anyone is actually interested in writing. There are free ones, including articles here on CP, but they all are unstable or very incomplete in one way or another. I'm looking for something that won't require me to spend a week modifying, just to discover it has a fundamental flaw that prevents it from being useful. In other words, an out-of-the-box solution. Oh, edited to add: When I say "Pure .NET" I would really prefer something that doesn't rely on a COM object or otherwise. Unmanaged DLL's are fine, but I'm trying to stay away from using Microsoft's COM controls, the overhead of using them in .NET is unacceptable to my client..
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. - Albert Einstein
Patrick, I also looked high and low last year, to no avail. I was trying to get a form capable of editing HTML under Mono, but every HTML editor I could find relied on the IE browser control. I found HTML rendering controls, which with more than a little work could have been beaten into acting like editors, but we canned the project before I got any further.
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Calling all South African developers! Your participation in this local dev community will be mutually beneficial, to you and us.
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Anyone know of a complete, stable control (free or commercial) that can be embedded in Windows Forms that allow users to directly edit HTML and see previews? I have written one on my own, largely with the help of the following CP article (with extremely heavy modification): http://www.codeproject.com/cs/miscctrl/Attach.asp[^] but we're beginning to feel its limitations, and I'm considering finding a superior alternative, if there is one. We have a reasonable budget, but we're not looking to spend thousands, of course. Suggestions would be appreciated. This is something I have looked high and low for, but doesn't appear to be something anyone is actually interested in writing. There are free ones, including articles here on CP, but they all are unstable or very incomplete in one way or another. I'm looking for something that won't require me to spend a week modifying, just to discover it has a fundamental flaw that prevents it from being useful. In other words, an out-of-the-box solution. Oh, edited to add: When I say "Pure .NET" I would really prefer something that doesn't rely on a COM object or otherwise. Unmanaged DLL's are fine, but I'm trying to stay away from using Microsoft's COM controls, the overhead of using them in .NET is unacceptable to my client..
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. - Albert Einstein
You're still going to have to do a bunch of work, but here are a couple I found (we're using the 2nd one in one of our desktop apps to display a html stream in a MDI form). http://www.codeproject.com/cs/miscctrl/editor_in_windows_forms.asp[^] http://www.codeproject.com/cs/miscctrl/csEXWB.asp[^]
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001 -
Patrick, I also looked high and low last year, to no avail. I was trying to get a form capable of editing HTML under Mono, but every HTML editor I could find relied on the IE browser control. I found HTML rendering controls, which with more than a little work could have been beaten into acting like editors, but we canned the project before I got any further.
MY BLOG
Calling all South African developers! Your participation in this local dev community will be mutually beneficial, to you and us.
You know, these guys have an absolutely fantastic renderer: http://syncfusion.com/[^] but they seem to have forgotten to include editing capabilities. ;P They wrote the entire display engine from the ground up - I was shocked. They do the entire HTML DOM themselves, from interpretation to rendering. The only unmanaged dependencies are on user32 and gdi32. It's fantastic. It's also very expensive, which I might even consider paying if it were able to function as an editor. Alas, it can't :( And it's really the only thing that has looked even remotely promising. Is this really such a hard thing to do? I did find someone who wrapped fsk..something or other (a javascript WYSIWYG HTML editor for the browser) in a WebBrowser control, which I thought was clever. Problem is that library is GPL and my application is not (and I'm not sure my client would want to use it, either). Well, seems I'm stuck. Guess we'll keep hacking away at what we've got..
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. - Albert Einstein
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You know, these guys have an absolutely fantastic renderer: http://syncfusion.com/[^] but they seem to have forgotten to include editing capabilities. ;P They wrote the entire display engine from the ground up - I was shocked. They do the entire HTML DOM themselves, from interpretation to rendering. The only unmanaged dependencies are on user32 and gdi32. It's fantastic. It's also very expensive, which I might even consider paying if it were able to function as an editor. Alas, it can't :( And it's really the only thing that has looked even remotely promising. Is this really such a hard thing to do? I did find someone who wrapped fsk..something or other (a javascript WYSIWYG HTML editor for the browser) in a WebBrowser control, which I thought was clever. Problem is that library is GPL and my application is not (and I'm not sure my client would want to use it, either). Well, seems I'm stuck. Guess we'll keep hacking away at what we've got..
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. - Albert Einstein
Patrick Sears wrote:
fsk..something or other
FCKEditor.
MY BLOG
Calling all South African developers! Your participation in this local dev community will be mutually beneficial, to you and us.
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Patrick Sears wrote:
fsk..something or other
FCKEditor.
MY BLOG
Calling all South African developers! Your participation in this local dev community will be mutually beneficial, to you and us.
That's the one.
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. - Albert Einstein
