Hi folks, here's a little more info on htmlArea. It does indeed only work with IE 5.5+ for Windows right now. That's because it's based on the contentEditable library that Microsoft includes with their browser.
Unfortunately, this library doesn't work on IE for the Mac - even though it's built into the PC version. Nag Microsoft, maybe they'll listen you you.
Our big goal with Ver 3 will be to make the application cross-platform so that it works with both IE and Mozilla, but is a lot harder than it sounds. The word on the street right now is that version 1.3 of Mozilla may actually support the contentEditable functionality but we'll see how seamless it is; otherwise, we'll try to rebuild it from scratch. And I'm not sure how long that will take.
Regarding the price, it is indeed free. It uses a BSD-style Open Source license, so it's free to use for whatever you like - this isn't some bait-and-switch. We use the application in our other software, which we do charge for, but we completely understand the Open Source movement, and support it when we can.
Good luck with your project.
Fraser Cain
interactivetools.com