Key Takeaways
- Features that feel effortless in WYSIWYG editors often represent months of specialized engineering work
- Clean paste handling requires parsing dozens of source formats and stripping invisible garbage markup
- Cross-browser consistency demands constant testing and workarounds for each browser’s quirks
- Real-time collaboration involves conflict resolution algorithms that took Google Docs years to perfect
- Understanding this complexity helps teams make informed build-versus-buy decisions
Introduction
Users expect rich text editing to just work. They paste from Word, resize an image with their finger, and undo a mistake. Simple interactions that happen in milliseconds.
Behind each of these moments sits engineering complexity that humbles experienced developers. What feels obvious to users represents edge cases, browser inconsistencies, and algorithmic challenges that consume entire teams for months.
Before deciding to build your own editor, you should understand what you are actually signing up for. Here are six features that look trivially simple from the outside but become engineering nightmares once you dig in.
1. Why Clean Paste Handling Is Deceptively Difficult
Users copy content from everywhere. Microsoft Word, Google Docs, web pages, email clients, PDFs, and dozens of other sources. Each application encodes formatting differently. Your editor must handle all of them.
Word embeds proprietary XML namespaces and deeply nested span tags. Google Docs uses inline styles with computed values. Web pages bring external CSS dependencies. Email clients add their own formatting layers.
A single paste operation might require detecting the source application, parsing multiple markup formats, mapping foreign styles to your supported formats, stripping dangerous scripts, and reconstructing clean HTML. Each source demands special handling.
According to the MDN documentation on the Clipboard API, browsers provide raw clipboard data in multiple formats. Your code must inspect each format, choose the best representation, and transform it appropriately.
Expect Endless Edge Cases
Every new source application reveals new formatting quirks. Teams that build paste handling from scratch discover bugs continuously for years.
2. Cross-Browser Consistent Output Takes Constant Effort
The contenteditable attribute that enables browser-based editing behaves differently in every browser. Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge each interpret editing commands with subtle variations.
Press Enter in Chrome, and you might get a div. Press Enter in Firefox, and you might get a br. Apply bold formatting, and the resulting markup structure varies by browser. Your clean document model fractures across the browser landscape.
The W3C Input Events specification attempts to standardize editing behavior. But implementation varies, and legacy code paths persist. True consistency requires intercepting browser defaults and reimplementing behavior yourself.
Normalize Everything at Every Step
Consistent output demands normalizing markup after every user action. Insert text, then normalize. Apply formatting, then normalize. Paste content, then normalize. This overhead compounds quickly.
3. Touch-Friendly Image Resizing Hides Surprising Complexity
Desktop users drag image corners with pixel precision. Mobile users pinch and drag with imprecise finger contacts. These seem like variations of the same feature. They are not.
Touch events fire differently than mouse events. Pinch gestures involve tracking multiple contact points simultaneously. Finger occlusion means users cannot see what they are touching. Resize handles must be large enough to tap but small enough not to obscure the image.
The Google Developers touch event documentation explains the complexity. Building intuitive touch interactions requires handling gesture recognition, momentum, boundaries, and accessibility all at once.
Test on Real Devices Constantly
Emulators miss touch behavior nuances. Every physical device and operating system version introduces potential bugs. Mobile image resizing that works on an iPhone might fail on an Android tablet.
4. Real-Time Collaboration Requires Distributed Systems Expertise
Google Docs makes simultaneous editing look effortless. Multiple cursors dance across the document. Edits merge seamlessly. Nobody loses work.
Behind this simplicity sits years of research into operational transformation and conflict-free replicated data types. When two users edit the same paragraph simultaneously, the system must reconcile their changes without corruption.
Building collaborative editing means implementing a distributed system with eventual consistency guarantees. Network latency, offline editing, and merge conflicts all require handling. This is PhD-level computer science, not a weekend project.
Recognize When to Use Existing Solutions
Few teams have the expertise or time to build collaborative editing infrastructure. This feature alone justifies using established editors or dedicated collaboration services rather than building from scratch.
5. Accessible Keyboard Navigation Demands Meticulous Attention
Sighted mouse users click buttons effortlessly. Keyboard users must navigate through every interactive element in logical order. Screen reader users need announcements for every state change.
The WCAG 2.1 keyboard accessibility requirements seem straightforward. In practice, managing focus across toolbars, dropdowns, dialogs, and the editing surface itself becomes extremely complex.
Focus must move logically. Escape must close popups. Arrow keys must navigate toolbar buttons. The editor must announce formatting changes. Each requirement multiplies implementation effort.
Accessibility Cannot Be Bolted On Later
Retrofitting keyboard navigation into an editor built for mouse users requires architectural changes. Froala builds accessibility into core interactions, making compliant editing available by default.
6. Undo and Redo With Nested Content Breaks Simple Approaches
Basic undo tracks text changes. Insert a character, undo removes it. Simple.
Now add images, tables, embedded videos, and nested lists. A single user action might modify multiple DOM nodes in complex ways. Undoing that action must restore every changed node to its exact previous state.
Undo systems must also handle grouped operations. Typing a word should undo as one unit, not character by character. Pasting formatted content should undo completely, not partially. Memory management becomes critical when tracking extensive edit histories.
Appreciate What Libraries Provide
These six features represent just a fraction of WYSIWYG complexity. Character encoding edge cases, right-to-left language support, spell checking integration, and print formatting all add further challenges.
Teams that build editors from scratch eventually implement most of these features. The question is whether your engineers should spend months on rich text infrastructure or on the unique problems that define your product.
The build-versus-buy decision becomes clear once you understand the true scope of what “simple” features actually require.
Peyman Khosravani is a global blockchain and digital transformation expert with a passion for marketing, futuristic ideas, analytics insights, startup businesses, and effective communications. He has extensive experience in blockchain and DeFi projects and is committed to using technology to bring justice and fairness to society and promote freedom. Peyman has worked with international organizations to improve digital transformation strategies and data-gathering strategies that help identify customer touchpoints and sources of data that tell the story of what is happening. With his expertise in blockchain, digital transformation, marketing, analytics insights, startup businesses, and effective communications, Peyman is dedicated to helping businesses succeed in the digital age. He believes that technology can be used as a tool for positive change in the world.
