The editor I require, needs to be easy to use. Even for people with absolutely no HTML knowledge
The projects I have tried are:
Ive used TinyMCE and have liked it thus far.
Pros: Easy to use no HTML needed but you can still switch to html view if you want. You can change styles and fonts and much more that a CMS would need.
Cons: However there is no way to upload photos with it. It uses the same style that the markdown here on SO uses. It can just include external images.
heres one which uses any blog editor for editing the content. If the users are serious about maintaining a site, its not unreasonable to get them to install software if its going to make their experience significantly better than a JS editor
StackOverflow uses Markdown syntax and the WMD Editor
Markdown is a very nice way to create valid HTML but its feature list is much shorter than the TinyMCE Editor. It might be quite useful for your users, provided they don't need the extra functionality.
Other options you may want to consider are:
I have enjoyed using WYMeditor in the sites we build using ExpressionEngine (a CMS).
Pros:
Cons:
I use the Telerik RadEditor in my CMS. It's VERY robust, and has several hook-in points that allow you to extend its functionality to meet your needs. It doesn't have (afaik) the live view like the one StackOverflow uses, but that could probably be added if you so desired.
It does however provide the photo uploading/arranging functionality you mention, in addition to allowing you to upload documents and some other media. The downside is that the control is quite expensive, close to $1,000 I think. Fortunately, my company covers the cost :)
I had to build a CMS from scratch a few years ago. Went through so many options, tore TinyMCE to pieces, also tried CKEditor, etc etc. I really liked summernote and ended up using that. Seemed like the most drama-free option at the time and worked flawlessly.
https://summernote.org/
Come to think of it I might use it in my next project.