How to Make Web Applications Better using a Powerful React Text Editor

To build and sustain web applications that thrive in today’s digital space, you must take great effort in prioritizing quality. This deeply involves making improvements throughout the development lifecycle. There are numerous ways to do this, each of which having its own benefits and learning curve. For example, you can improve the way your users interact and share content within your application. However, this might be difficult to do depending on which features you want for content creation and editing. Luckily, you can significantly increase your web application’s quality by implementing a feature-rich React text editor.

But how can you use a React text editor to make your web apps better? That’s what this article is going to answer. First, we’ll define the characteristics that make an application better. We’ll also discuss what a React text editor is, as well as your options should you decide to use one.

What makes a web application better?

This is the question that all developers face when planning, making, and improving their applications. It’s essential, but it also has rather vague answers. So, to answer this question, let’s try focusing on some of the most common qualities that great web apps have. Once we identify them, we’ll have an idea of what makes the best apps thrive in today’s digital world. 

1. Polished features

   The first trait that makes a web app better is the presence of rich, complete, and seamless features. They ensure that your users have everything they need to go about their activities in your app. For example, let’s say you’re building a social media app. You need to ensure that your users have the means to post content, message others, see other posts, and more. Not only that, but you also have to make sure that they can use these features in an easy, predictable, and smooth way. Hence, aside from its core features, your app should have: 

   • Fluid navigation/routing that makes sense
   • Less experience-breaking errors
   • Task automation features (e.g., templates for bank transfers, emails, and so on)
   • Tooltips/short description of buttons (especially useful for productivity/collaboration apps)

2. Sleek, modern, and trendy UI

   It’s important to always have a user interface that’s up-to-date. This is because people’s tastes in UI design change over time, and they’re more likely to use an app that keeps up with these changes. Some of the most popular UI traits nowadays include flat, sleek, graphics-rich, and responsive components. And speaking of responsiveness, you have to make sure that your app’s UI will look good across all screen sizes. While beautiful UI design isn’t a requirement for users’ productivity or enjoyment, it’s definitely a major contributor to user satisfaction. And with user satisfaction comes retention (and more trust) for your application.

3. Optimized Performance

   Speed and performance also make up a huge part of why some apps are better than others. Some apps might have complete features, but what if due to having so many features, it loses speed? If all or the important features of your application take more time than expected, your users might lose interest quickly. So, you’ll have to find ways to optimize your app. These consist of reducing the upload file sizes, using a CDN (Content Delivery Network), and trimming down lines of code.

4. Enhanced Security

   Users tend to like applications that have extra layers of security over those that don’t–and for good reason. Without proper security measures, users and the application are vulnerable to cyber attacks. From phishing to Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), and even viruses disguised as normal files, attackers can cause great harm to vulnerable apps. Thankfully, there are plenty of ways to protect your app from these attacks. These include input sanitization, parameterized queries, thorough constraints checking (e.g., max file size), antivirus software, and more. 

5. Compliance with accessibility regulations

   Complying with various accessibility regulations like Section 508 implies that you care about your community, especially those with disabilities. This ensures that people with disabilities can still use your app as seamlessly. Complying with these regulations also tell people that your app is mature enough and also builds trust among your users. 

6. Localization

   Localization is when you adjust your app to fit the needs of your users in different countries or regions. This could refer to changing the contents of an online store/retailer or changing the app’s language depending on region. That way, you’ll make your app more accommodating to the global community.

7. Clear and easy-to-read documentation/tutorials

   Lastly, a better app has a documentation/tutorial page that’s comprehensive yet easy to understand. Tutorials (especially interactive ones) help users get started with using your app. On the other hand, documentation is mostly used as a reference for complicated or developer-focused apps. Here’s an example of how documentation can be beneficial to developers.

Now that we’ve defined some of the qualities that make web applications better, let’s move on to our next topic – React text editors.

What is a React text editor?

A React text editor is a WYSIWYG, or “What You See Is What You Get”, editor for React applications. As you may know, React from Meta is one of the most widespread JavaScript libraries for building amazing front-end applications. This is because of its support for both stateful and stateless components, declarative syntax, component-based approach, and reusability. By using React, you’ll make developing your application a lot easier while also improving its quality. 

A WYSIWYG editor is an HTML editor that enables end users to create and edit web content without coding. It usually takes the form of a large text area with a toolbar, buttons, and other components. Sounds familiar? You’ve probably already used one if you’ve used Content Management Systems, email platforms, or document collaboration tools before. WYSIWYG editors are essential to content-centric applications because they streamline the creation and editing of content. 

A React text editor combines the powerful rich text capabilities of a WYSIWYG editor with React’s UI and performance benefits. In the next section, you’ll learn how it makes web applications so much better.

How does a React text editor improve web applications?

Finally, now that we’ve discussed React text editors and what makes web applications better, we can put these topics together. Let’s look at the ways that a React text editor can enhance your application. 

1. It helps developers and businesses save time. 

   This is one of the best benefits that a React text editor can bring to your application. But wait, what does saving developers’ time have to do with a web app’s quality? A lot, apparently. This is because the more time the developers save, the more time they’ll have to improve their applications’ core features. Implementing a React text editor might take some time, especially if you won’t be using a third-party editor (you should). But in the end, it will be worth it.

   Imagine you have a blog. Without a React text editor, you would have to revisit your codes, convert your content in code format, save the file, and update the live site. And that process can be exhausting and prone to so many human errors. Having a React text editor in your app lets you bypass this process. Instead, you’ll only have to write directly on your editor, add images/format, and click a post button.

2. Users can create quality content easily. 

   With a React text editor in place, your app lets users create the exact content they want. Whether it’s an email template, a blogpost with images, formatted documents, or an emoji-bombarded message, having such an editor meets your users’ needs. These editors, especially ready-made ones, are equipped with responsive, well-designed toolbars that help users create content as efficiently as possible. 

   By having the editing features that your users need, React text editors help users avoid having to switch between applications. For instance, let’s say that you’re building a document collaboration software like Google Docs. Your users shouldn’t have to switch to another word processing tool so that they could add comments to a document. Instead, your app should have comments, mentions, highlighting, and suggestion features. This keeps your app at the forefront of your users’ operations. 

   If your React application has a text editor, you could help provide the ultimate user experience, letting it flourish further.

3. A React text editor lets users add media files to their content. 

   In relation to the previous item, React text editors also allow users to add images, videos, and audio to their content. This feature alone is a boon to your application, especially because media files compose a large part of the internet. Having a way to share such files increases user engagement and contributes to your app’s improvement. 

   For example, if you have a food delivery app, you’ll want your users to stay engaged. But you can’t do that with text alone, especially when it comes to food. So, the best course of action would be to allow the stores registered in your app to upload images of their food. This keeps your users craving for food instead of merely scrolling through descriptions. And the good news is that this applies to most web apps, especially those with user-generated content.

If by now you’re leaning towards using a text editor for your React app, you might have another question. Where do you start, and what sort of text editor should you use?

What’s a good React text editor?

There are two ways to implement a React text editor. The first way is to create everything from scratch. This takes plenty of time, and the amount of time and effort scales with the app’s complexity. You would have more control over its design and features, though. 

But is it really worth it to sacrifice an early deployment (plus time to focus on other features) for this? And what if you decide to scale your application’s editor in the future or make it available across multiple platforms? Furthermore, you won’t be paying for anything (except for the developers’ time), but is it worth the future maintenance you’ll have to do? Only you can answer these questions. 

The second way is to use a ready-made or third-party React text editor. The best ones in the market allow you to integrate their editor in seconds, solving your problems right away. Of course, you’ll have to configure and customize the editor of your choice to fit your app’s needs and design. Undoubtedly, though, you’ll have a massive amount of time saved because you’ll already have what you need. 

Premier editors also already support multiple languages and accessibility, which are features that are difficult to do on your own. Aside from that, developers can integrate them into almost any framework easily, including React. The best part is that premium third-party React text editors can also be affordable (click here for an example). 

Whatever React text editor you choose, the quality of your all will certainly benefit from it. You should always check your requirements first. Afterwards, you should determine whether you have the time and resources to make your own or integrate a ready-made editor. One thing is for sure–your users will appreciate having a capable text editor for them to share content with.

Conclusion

To keep up with today’s best web applications, you have to strive to improve your application’s quality. Integrating a React text editor is one way of doing this. In this post, I’ve shown you the traits that make an application better, what a React text editor is, and how you can use it to improve applications. Remember that the goal of improving your application is to exceed the expectations of your users. Use this article as a guide, put yourself in your users’ shoes, and ask yourself, “How can I have a better time using this app?”