Introducing the new CKEditor Ecosystem
Two years ago, I was announcing the “upcoming” CKEditor 5 as the “Future of Rich Text Editing”. After three years of investment and hard work, that future is now… and it’s much more than we expected. That’s exciting!
CKEditor is now a range of solutions dedicated to in-browser text editing. It includes the rich text editor (now editors!) that has led the market for more than 13 years and brand new products dedicated to real-time collaborative editing, better writing and advanced editing features.
It’s the birth of the New CKEditor Ecosystem.
A new range of editors
CKEditor 4 has been around for some good time already and is one of the settled market leaders. We’re now introducing our big star, CKEditor 5, a totally new editor with a modern approach to API, UI, behavior and features.
CKEditor 5 is available in two different fashions:
- CKEditor 5 Builds: ready to use editors. A drop-in solution matching different needs.
- CKEditor 5 Framework: a complete library to design custom editing solutions.
The differences between CKEditor 4 and 5 are remarkable, therefore we’re determined to continue the CKEditor 4 development and maintenance for some good time still. This includes the next year, 2018, and much probably 2019, depending on the adoption of CKEditor 5. This means, we’ll keep introducing new features, fixing bugs and providing support to CKEditor 4 for the period to come.
Serious collaborative editing
One of the high points in our new offer is the introduction of an extremely innovative proposal making it easy to anyone to include real-time collaborative editing inside any application. It’s the one-and-only offer currently available on the market.
For that purpose, other than specific features introduced within the CKEditor 5 Framework itself, we’re bringing two new products:
- Letters: a ready to use, drop-in component that offers a complete solution for real-time collaborative writing, coupled with an astonishing UX.
- CKEditor Cloud Services: a SaaS cloud service that makes both the implementation and deployment of real-time collaborative editing a breeze.
So far, only the biggest brands were able to have such solutions (Google Docs, Microsoft Office 365, Dropbox Paper among a few others). That’s because the technology necessary for it is extremely complex to develop and very expensive to bring to production. Taking our experience on editors, we invested heavily during the last years so a simple drop-in solution is here.
Our technology can be used to easily create solutions that compete with the above brands, but its main purpose is empowering developers to design unique features that amaze their customers and make them stay inside their applications.
Advanced editing features
When it comes to additional killer features, we’re happy to introduce the first “make-my-dream-come-true” plugin from the Cloud Services offer, from the many to come. It’s called Easy Image.
Easy Image doesn’t require much integration effort or server side setup. It’s a CKEditor plugin that enables a unique user experience on inserting responsive images inside the editor and the most optimized and modern solution on delivering them to content readers.
Easy Image comes to add to our current addon offer, which includes:
- CKFinder: a powerful file and image manager that integrates seamlessly with CKEditor.
- Accessibility Checker: a unique tool to help users produce accessible content.
Current plans
At the current stage, we’re giving you a sneak-peek of the new solutions, talking about them with partners and customers and gathering feedback from the whole community. This stage will drive our next steps, so be sure to let us know what you think. We’re eager to hear your voice.
This is the current status of things:
- CKEditor 4, CKFinder and the Accessibility Checker are available in the same fashion as before, including commercial licenses and support.
- CKEditor 5 is available on Open Source and commercial licenses and support, just like CKEditor 4.
- Letters and Cloud Services are being previewed and talks are open for early adoption.
What’s next:
CKEditor 4:
- Maintaining its regular release schedule, with the introduction of features and the usual bug fixing.
CKEditor 5:
- Refactoring a few pieces of code and stabilization.
- Gathering feedback on features to be developed.
- Introducing new features.
Letters and Cloud Services:
- Final stabilization works.
- Start working with customers on their adoption.
- Gathering feedback, continuing their development.
- Planning new features for Cloud Services.
- Introducing Letters plugins for WordPress and Drupal.
Who’s behind the New CKEditor Ecosystem?
It has been a long road for us to reach this point. I’m happy to have shared this adventure along these 3 years with a team of amazing professionals that not only created top-notch, innovative technology, but also believed in it with their hearts and made CKSource what it is at its core: a place for friendship and creativity, where one is happy to share an important part of their lives.
Thank you to the development team for figuring out high quality solutions for the by-then-impossible challenges you’ve been presented with.
Thank you to the marketing team for the extensive work and effort put on the defining our communication, creating new websites, campaigns and the beautiful things still to come.
Thank you to the sales and support teams, who keep up doing an excellent job on maintaining our customers happy and our finances healthy.
Thank you to our HR and administration team, which has successfully worked to raise our team to 40+ amazing people and to keep them happy and our company in great shape.
Love you guys!
Find Out More
Check out our new websites:
- CKEditor.com: for all about the New CKEditor Ecosystem.
- CKEditor Docs: for technical details on our products.
- CKSource.com: to learn more about our company.
Our social channels:
Feel free to contact us for comments, feedback, doubts or anything you may wish.
(This article has been originally published on the CKEditor official blog).
