@ckeditor/ckeditor5-essentials

What is @ckeditor/ckeditor5-essentials?

@ckeditor/ckeditor5-essentials is a package that provides essential features for CKEditor 5, a modern JavaScript rich text editor. It includes basic functionalities such as undo, redo, and clipboard support, which are fundamental for any text editing experience.

What are @ckeditor/ckeditor5-essentials's main functionalities?

Undo

This feature allows users to undo and redo their actions within the editor. The code sample demonstrates how to include the Essentials plugin in a CKEditor 5 instance and add undo/redo buttons to the toolbar.

import Essentials from '@ckeditor/ckeditor5-essentials/src/essentials';
import ClassicEditor from '@ckeditor/ckeditor5-editor-classic/src/classiceditor';

ClassicEditor
    .create( document.querySelector( '#editor' ), {
        plugins: [ Essentials ],
        toolbar: [ 'undo', 'redo' ]
    } )
    .catch( error => {
        console.error( error );
    } );

Clipboard

This feature provides clipboard support, allowing users to copy, cut, and paste content within the editor. The code sample shows how to configure the CKEditor 5 instance to include clipboard functionalities.

import Essentials from '@ckeditor/ckeditor5-essentials/src/essentials';
import ClassicEditor from '@ckeditor/ckeditor5-editor-classic/src/classiceditor';

ClassicEditor
    .create( document.querySelector( '#editor' ), {
        plugins: [ Essentials ],
        toolbar: [ 'copy', 'cut', 'paste' ]
    } )
    .catch( error => {
        console.error( error );
    } );

Other packages similar to @ckeditor/ckeditor5-essentials

quill

Quill is a modern WYSIWYG editor built for compatibility and extensibility. It offers similar functionalities to CKEditor 5 Essentials, such as undo/redo and clipboard support, but also includes a more extensive set of features out of the box. Quill is known for its ease of use and flexibility in customization.

tinymce

TinyMCE is another popular rich text editor that provides a wide range of features, including undo/redo and clipboard support. It is highly customizable and offers a robust plugin architecture, making it comparable to CKEditor 5 Essentials in terms of functionality and extensibility.

draft-js

Draft.js is a JavaScript rich text editor framework developed by Facebook. It provides similar core functionalities like undo/redo and clipboard support. Draft.js is highly extensible and allows developers to build complex text editing experiences, but it requires more setup and configuration compared to CKEditor 5 Essentials.

README

CKEditor 5 essentials plugin

Essential editing features for CKEditor 5 wrapped in one plugin.

The Essentials plugin includes all fundamental editing features:

• Clipboard
• Enter
• SelectAll
• Typing
• Undo

Installation

This plugin is part of the ckeditor5 package. Install the whole package to use it.

npm install ckeditor5

Create free account

If you want to check full CKEditor 5 capabilities, sign up for a free non-commitment 14-day trial.

Documentation

See the @ckeditor/ckeditor5-essentials package page in CKEditor 5 documentation.

License

Licensed under a dual-license model, this software is available under:

• the GNU General Public License Version 2 or later,
• or commercial license terms from CKSource Holding sp. z o.o.

For more information, see: https://ckeditor.com/legal/ckeditor-licensing-options.

Changelog

44.2.0 (February 12, 2025)

We are happy to announce the release of CKEditor 5 v44.2.0.

Release Highlights

🖥️ Enhanced Source Code Editing (⭐)

Introducing new premium feature: Enhanced Source Code Editing. It displays the source code in a dialog and is compatible with all editor types. It offers syntax highlighting, code completion, code folding, and other advanced functionalities. Additionally, it supports both HTML and Markdown formats.

📤 Uploadcare and image optimizer (⭐)

We have integrated the Uploadcare image manager service, enabling you to upload and edit images to their cloud environment. You can upload files from various sources, including local devices, social media, or online drives ensuring rapid uploads. The integration takes care of efficient media delivery with responsive images mechanism, making sure your users will save bandwidth and have faster website loading. You can also optimize images with the built-in image editor which offers a range of features, such as cropping, rotating, flipping, photo filters and more. All this directly from the editor, try it out!

🖼️ Image Merge Fields (⭐)

Image merge fields are a new type of merge fields, dedicated for image placeholders. They maintain all standard image interactions, like styling, resizing or captions (in which you can use merge fields too!) At the same time, they keep all merge fields functionalities, like data previews or document export integration. In the document data, image merge fields are represented like other images, however their src attribute is set to a respective merge field, for example, src="{{CompanyLogo}}", making them easy to post-process!

📝 Track Changes Preview (⭐)

We have added the preview mode that displays a document with all suggestions accepted. Accessible from the track changes dropdown, this modal preview helps check the final content without extensive markers.

😀 Emoji support

They are here! 🎉 🥳 🎊 Insert emojis effortlessly in the editor by typing : or through a user-friendly emoji picker. This feature enhances the richness of your content by allowing quick access to a wide range of emojis.

⚡ Performance improvements: Part 4

Here comes the final batch of the planned performance improvements in the editor loading speed area, that we worked on through a couple of past releases.

• A new caching mechanism in Mapper now handles model-to-view mappings, substantially improving performance for loading and saving data.
• Images with specified height and width automatically use [loading="lazy"] in the editing area, optimizing the loading time (read more on MDN). This attribute is only applied during editing to enhance the loading efficiency of images, and it does not reflect in the final data output.

We are greatly satisfied with the improved editor loading times. At the same time, we acknowledge some other problematic areas, and we will keep delivering more performance-related improvements in the future.