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CKEditor 4 VS Draft.js

Compare CKEditor 4 VS Draft.js and see what are their differences

CKEditor 4 logo CKEditor 4

CKEditor 4 is a rich text editor that enables you to write content inside of web pages or online applications.

Draft.js logo Draft.js

Rich Text Editor Framework for React
  • CKEditor 4 Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-07-08

CKEditor 4 is a smart WYSIWYG rich text editor that has been on the market since its launch in 2012. It allows software creators and developers to build stable and reliable writing solutions for applications of all sorts, within hours. Thanks to a plugin- and event-based architecture, ready-to-use builds, native integrations, extensive documentation, and reliable customer support, the editor can be easily tailored to your needs.

To create an intuitive and user-friendly writing experience, you can include features such as: Easy Image, Export to PDF, Paste from Word, Excel and Google Docs, Media embeds, widgets, code snippets, math formulas, Spreadsheets, Autocomplete, @mentions, and emoji 😊 support. Moreover, CKEditor 4 offers an optional Accessibility Checker for analyzing if the content created by users is accessible.

  • Draft.js Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-03-29

CKEditor 4 features and specs

  • Autocomplete
  • Code snippets
  • Easy Image
    Premium
  • Emoji support
  • Export to PDF
    Premium
  • Image plugins
  • Math formulas
    Premium
  • Media embeds
  • @Mentions
  • Paste from Word, Excel and Google Docs
  • Spreadsheets
    Premium
  • Tables support with columns resizing, selecting rows and columns
  • Widgets

Draft.js features and specs

  • Rich Text Editing
    Draft.js provides a powerful framework for building rich text editors with a high level of customization, allowing developers to implement various formatting and styling options with ease.
  • Immutable.js Integration
    Draft.js uses Immutable.js to manage editor state, which can lead to improved performance and easier state management, as it helps avoid unnecessary re-renders and mutations.
  • Extensibility
    The library offers the ability to create custom blocks, decorations, and plugins, enabling developers to extend and tailor the editor's behavior to their specific needs.
  • Facebook Support
    Draft.js is developed and maintained by Facebook, which suggests a certain level of reliability and indicates a strong backing in terms of updates and community support.
  • Comprehensive Documentation
    The library is well-documented, with comprehensive guides and examples that help developers get started quickly and understand the full potential of the framework.

Possible disadvantages of Draft.js

  • Complexity
    Draft.js has a steep learning curve, especially for developers who are not familiar with React or Immutable.js, as it requires understanding its unique architecture and concepts.
  • Bundle Size
    The inclusion of Immutable.js can lead to a larger bundle size for web applications, which might be a concern for developers aiming for minimalistic and fast-loading applications.
  • Limited Built-in Features
    Draft.js provides a basic editor out of the box, which means developers often need to implement or find third-party plugins for advanced features like tables, embedded media, or collaborative editing.
  • Customizability Overhead
    While high customizability is a strength, it also means that basic implementations may involve more boilerplate code and setup compared to other, more out-of-the-box solutions.
  • Sparse Updates
    Draft.js does not receive updates as frequently as some other open-source projects, which can lead to uncertainty around the timeline for bug fixes or new feature implementations.

Analysis of CKEditor 4

Overall verdict

  • CKEditor 4 is considered a reliable and robust choice for developers looking for a fully-featured, customizable text editor. Its long-standing reputation and wide usage in the industry attest to its quality and effectiveness.

Why this product is good

  • CKEditor 4 is a highly popular WYSIWYG editor known for its rich set of features, flexibility, and ease of integration into web applications. It is suitable for both simple and complex editing tasks and has a large community support. The editor supports a wide range of plugins to extend its functionality, making it adaptable to various use cases.

Recommended for

  • Developers and companies looking for a versatile, feature-rich text editor.
  • Projects that require extensive customization and integration options.
  • Applications where end-users need advanced content editing and formatting capabilities.
  • Teams that value community support and reliable documentation.

CKEditor 4 videos

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Draft.js videos

Live coding – Draft.js copy-paste fix

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to CKEditor 4 and Draft.js)
Text Editors
53 53%
47% 47
Developer Tools
0 0%
100% 100
Rich Text Editor
52 52%
48% 48
WYSIWYG Editor
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Draft.js should be more popular than CKEditor 4. It has been mentiond 28 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

CKEditor 4 mentions (10)

  • Show HN: Tilepieces – An open source project to visually editing HTML documents
    However, I think Ckeditor is (https://ckeditor.com/). You can find it in component format for tilepieces in the project https://github.com/tilepieces/component-examples. - Source: Hacker News / over 4 years ago
  • Pls, help it doesn't know why is showing an error on collectstatic. I tried everything that goes over every possible article which I found but nothing helped and I don't want to build the projects from zero since I already give 6 hours to set up it for the production server.
    It's CK Editor, a WYSIWYG text editor (a frontend component, so you wouldn't see it in your requirements.txt). I assume you're using it in a template somewhere? Otherwise why would collectstatic be looking for it? Source: over 4 years ago
  • Justnote - A privacy-focused note taking app built on Stacks
    Powered by one of the best rich text editor: CKEditor, all editing features like bold, underline, font color, and background color are supported. Source: over 4 years ago
  • Passing Arguments to ModelView edit template in flask-admin
    I have managed to override textarea with ckeditor. But I want to pass the paths of the images in the static folder to ckeditor image plugin. Source: over 4 years ago
  • Best WYSIWYG editor for Vue that supports structured content?
    CKeditor (https://ckeditor.com/) is worth looking at. Although it emits HTML by default, internally it uses a richer doc structure that supports versioning, concurrent collaborative editing, etc. There should be a way to access that structure. Source: over 4 years ago
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Draft.js mentions (28)

  • Rebuilding a web text editor
    Therefore, we wanted to choose a low-level framework that would solve most of the issues related to text input. We settled on Draft.js, which was quite popular at the time (2020). All we had to do was integrate it into our current system, attach it to the data storage, and implement the ability to edit styles with our constructor—done. - Source: dev.to / 9 months ago
  • Introducing react-rte-light: A Lightweight Rich Text Editor for React
    Are you looking for a lightweight, flexible, and modern rich text editor for your React applications? Look no further! I'm excited to share react-rte-light, a TypeScript-based rich text editor built with Draft.js. It’s designed to work seamlessly with React 16.8 to 19, offering a minimal-dependency alternative to heavier editors like React Quill. Whether you're building a blog platform, a note-taking app, or a... - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Lexical 0.24 with Vanilla JS: Getting started
    Lexical is an open source project and considered the successor of Draft.js. It is primarily developed by Meta, licensed under MIT. It is not restricted to React, but supports Vanilla JS, too. The flexibility enables us to integrate it with other JS libraries such as Svelte and Vue. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Ask HN: Is there a licensable/free version of the "Substack" email editor?
    - https://draftjs.org/ If you're talking about liking the full experience with settings and previews, that I'm afraid is all custom built. I can't imagine an open source reusable one being out there, but I could be wrong! - Source: Hacker News / almost 2 years ago
  • Which Rich Text Editor to use ?
    I've always used Quill and always satisfied with it. It can be adapted to React Native as well. Despite the most popular RTE is Draft js it has some limitations on mobile. Source: about 3 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing CKEditor 4 and Draft.js, you can also consider the following products

Sublime Text - Sublime Text is a sophisticated text editor for code, html and prose - any kind of text file. You'll love the slick user interface and extraordinary features. Fully customizable with macros, and syntax highlighting for most major languages.

Quill - Powerful, API-driven rich text editor

Notepad++ - A free source code editor which supports several programming languages running under the MS Windows environment.

Next.js - A small framework for server-rendered universal JavaScript apps

VS Code - Build and debug modern web and cloud applications, by Microsoft

ProseMirror - A toolkit for building rich-text editors on the web