History of contentEditable alternatives
contenteditable, html, javascript
Solution
contentEditable was introduced with Internet Explorer 5.5; yes that long ago. That's a little bit earlier than any GMail, GDocs or anything like that.
Before that IE provided editing capabilities with a custom ActiveX Control (that was used in FrontPage for example)
You can read a full history at the WHATWG blog
Problem
Related: ContentEditable Alternative I'm quite sure that there were online WYSIWYG editors and the like before `contentEditable`. I do recall using GDocs and GMail with rich-text features that acted nearly the same as `contentEditable`. So, I'd like a (preferably technical) history of how such things were designed before `contentEditable` existed. If the history of workarounds is long, you need not explain all the details - just the basic idea so that I can look it up (links appreciated, though), and/or figure it out for myself.