Rich Text Editing vs Plain Text Editing

Developers should learn Rich Text Editing when building applications that involve user-generated content, such as blogs, CMS platforms, collaborative tools, or email clients, to enhance user experience and productivity meets developers should learn plain text editing because it is crucial for writing and editing source code, configuration files (like json, yaml, or xml), and scripts across all programming languages and platforms. Here's our take.

Rich Text Editing

Nice Pick

Developers should learn Rich Text Editing when building applications that involve user-generated content, such as blogs, CMS platforms, collaborative tools, or email clients, to enhance user experience and productivity

Pros

• It's essential for creating accessible and feature-rich text input interfaces, reducing the need for users to manually code formatting, and is widely used in modern web development for content management systems and online editors
• Related to: contenteditable-api, javascript

Cons

• Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case

Plain Text Editing

Developers should learn plain text editing because it is crucial for writing and editing source code, configuration files (like JSON, YAML, or XML), and scripts across all programming languages and platforms

Pros

• It is used daily in software development for tasks such as debugging, version control, and automation, as plain text ensures compatibility and portability between different systems and tools
• Related to: command-line, version-control

Cons

• Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case

The Verdict

These tools serve different purposes. Rich Text Editing is a concept while Plain Text Editing is a tool. We picked Rich Text Editing based on overall popularity, but your choice depends on what you're building.

The Bottom Line

Rich Text Editing wins

Based on overall popularity. Rich Text Editing is more widely used, but Plain Text Editing excels in its own space.