WYSIWYG, WYSIWYM and all that jazz

So you have a requirement – supply the possibility to create and edit rich formatted text in a web application. Seems pretty straightforward – use a ready editor and you’re done.

Now, add some constraints to that, like – the editor needs to be dead simple because the target user does not care about all that semantic stuff (that’s your job), it needs to perform well and be as intuitive as it gets.

This is a pretty valid requirement and in todays web is pretty common, but as it turns out, there isn’t a lot of maneuvering space here.