Rich text editor, bold text using the strong tag

Question

I'm working on a very very simple rich text editor. I've read about using designMode = 'On' applied to an iframe, and then I use this to create bold text:

nameOfiframe.document.execCommand('bold',false,null);

Even though it's works, execCommand() uses b tags instead of strong to make bold text. I took a look at some advanced rich text editor, all of them used strong instead of the b tag.

Is there a simple way for me to fix this? Or are execCommand() not good to use at all?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Unfortunately document.execCommand() behaviour varies between browsers. As @1UnitedPower's answer mentions, document.execCommand() is intended for for presentational rather than semantic effect.

Two possible options are:

1. Write your own code to do the bold styling. Unfortunately it is non-trivial to do this properly. You could look at how major WYSIWYG editors such as CKEditor and TinyMCE do it.
2. Run some code to convert <b> elements into <strong> elements after calling document.execCommand(). This would seem the easier option. You will need some way to preserve the selection while doing the conversion, if that's important to you.