JavaScript WYSIWYG implementation

Question

I want to write a very simple WYSIWYG editor, but i don't understand how do they work :( I've tried to read sources of tinyMCE but stuck in all those classes and functions. As I know they're creating iframe then do some black magic there and everything works. The question is: what do those editors do with iframe so it becomes editable?

Thank you.

Answer 1

The keywords are contentEditable and designMode.

Good sources to get started:

• Rich-Text Editing in Mozilla (MDC)
• element.contentEditable in Mozilla (MDC)
• contentEditable in IE (MSDN)