The Most Powerful HTML Editors
So you want to create a web site? Great idea! There are few things in this world as satisfying as creating a good web site and having other people look at it, comment on it and like it.
You have many choices in the tools that you use to perform this act of creation. If you already know HTML or if you are a "purist", you can just use the simplest, most basic program of all - Notepad. In fact, many webmasters do just that, and many of the best looking web sites are created completely by hand with no help at all from any other tool.
Some of the editors that I have used over the years are listed below, with a few brief comments about each. There are many other editors on the market, some good, some bad.
Notepad [Free with operating system]
Many people just use Notepad to edit their HTML files. What is Notepad? It's the text editing program that comes with all versions of Windows. Notepad is extremely simple, which more or less means you get to do everything (and I mean everything) by hand. Personally, I like to use Notepad occasionally to make quick and dirty edits to my web site when Dreamweaver or Frontpage 2000 won't do the job.
NoteTab Light [Freeware]
(http://www.notetab.com/)
NoteTab Light is a replacement for Notepad which is intended to include some extensions to make editing HTML easier. It's simple and easy to use, but not extraordinarily powerful.
Arachnophilia [Careware]
(http://www.arachnoid.com/arachnophilia/index.html)
This is an excellent HTML editor with many features. If you like editing HTML and don't really want a WYSIWYG interface, then this is probably the editor for you. Highly recommended. By the way, this product is "care ware", meaning if you keep it you must "care" for a short time.
NoteTab Pro [Shareware - inexpensive]
(http://www.notetab.com/ntp.htm)
This is a very powerful and cheap HTML editor. It has a dictionary, clipart, a handy global-replacement feature and lots of other things to help make the webmaster's life easier.
FrontPage 2000 [Very expensive]
If you just want to get your site up and running in the minimum amount of time and don't want to bother learning HTML, then FrontPage 2000 is the editor for you. This editor has just about everything you could ever want, including full WYSIWYG support, dynamic HTML, forms and so on. On the downside, FrontPage 2000 does not support CGI, SSI or PHP at all - in fact, if your site uses CGI then you will note be able to use FrontPage 2000's upload capabilities. Use caution when choosing this editor - while it's great for getting a site up fast, it can be very frustrating for more advanced users, and if you take advantage of the templates you will certainly be labeled an amateur. Also, using any FrontPage special features such as forms requires that your web host have FrontPage extensions installed, which limits your choice of providers.
FrontPage XP [Very expensive]
This is a product which I cannot recommend. Frontpage 2000 was tolerable, FrontPage XP is simply bulky and awkward. I would say Microsoft has made a large step backwards with this product. Out of everything on this list, this
is probably the only editor which I would state is not recommended for any application.
Dreamweaver [Very expensive]
Another good choice is Dreamweaver, which in many ways is the best editor of them all (at least so far). You can actually combine the two (Frontpage and Dreamweaver) to take advantage of the best features of each product. This is
fairly expensive, however. On the downside, Dreamweaver has a very high learning curve for most users and it can be cumbersome to perform simple tasks.
Out of all of these editors, probably the most useful all-around program is Arachnophilia. Simple to learn, easy to use, quick to get things up and running. Dreamweaver is highly recommended if you want a WYSIWYG editor, although it can be a difficult program to learn. FrontPage 2000 is acceptable, but stay away from any extensions, templates or special features.
About the Author
Richard Lowe Jr. is the webmaster of Internet Tips And Secrets at (http://www.internet-tips.net) - Visit our website any time to read over 1,000 complete FREE articles about how to improve your internet profits, enjoyment and knowledge.
This HTML editor is the most powerful and flexible tool for building, testing, and deploying web content for Windows. Created for web developers, it's appropriate for people who want full control over their coding and design environment.
It's main features...
- Editing - access local and remote files, insert and convert files, set bookmarks, automatically convert special characters. In fact, the built-in editor is the best multi-purpose editor I've ever seen. The Extended Find and Replace command across multiple documents and with regular expressions is a great tool that can reduce hours of manual editing to mere clicks.
- Tag Inspector - edit HTML codes in a customizable property sheet interface.
- Browsers - preview web pages in multiple browsers, automatic detection of installed browsers.
- Templates and Wizards - quickly create basic pages, tables, frames, JavaScript and DHTML elements, and synchronized RealAudio content.
- Style Editor - easily create, edit, preview, and link Cascading Style Sheets.
- Proofing and Testing tools - maintain site content with search and replace, spell checking, code validation, and link verification.
- And on and on...
This is one of the most popular HTML editors in the world. It's inexpensive, easy to use and has a powerful set of features. CoffeeCup HTML editor comes with more than 25,000 graphics, icons, photos, animated GIFs, and background images. It also includes 125 JavaScript scripts, a frame designer, a table designer, a font designer, and an HTML code cleaner.
You can work on and test multiple pages at once. Other features include an internal browser for testing and editing from the Web, an image-previewing utility, a thumbnail image-creation wizard, a sound gallery, right-click FTP upload, online help, a step-by-step web design guide, and references for the latest HTML 4.0 tags.
This is the best WYSIWYG HTML editor on the market, available for both Windows and Mac. It allows beginners and professional web designers to...
- Insert text or images or set the values of lists, check boxes, input fields, and other tag attributes without writing HTML codes.
- Bind objects on your page to dynamic content with a drag-and-drop interface.
- Format the data any way you want it while working in the visual view.
- And lots more...
Free HTML editors
This is a new powerful open source WYSIWYG HTML editor. Nvu runs on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and has a solid feature set, including...
- WYSIWYG editing of pages.
- Multiple file editing with tabs.
- Multiple views per file: WYSIWYG, Tags, HTML, and Preview.
- Strong CSS support.
- Site file management with integrated FTP.
- On-the-fly spell checking.
This is powerful free HTML editor and web site workshop. Arachnophilia is written in Java, which means it will run on any platform that supports Java 2. It's main features...
- Internal browser "Instant View" mode shows your HTML changes as you make them.
- Interactive spell checker with 120,000-word dictionary.
- Accepts fully formatted text, tables, automatically creates HTML pages.
- Supports multiple web browsers, switches between them in a flash.
- Supports development of HTML, frames, CGI, Perl, C++, Java and Javascript with many intelligent tools and functions.
- Built-in FTP client automatically uploads changed files.
- Global search & replace across all open documents.
This is a free HTML editor for Windows.
Quick overview of 1st Page 2000 features...
- Customizable Toolbars.
- 450+ Javascripts/VBScripts.
- DHTML Zone with re-usable DHTML scripts.
- Full support for SSI, CGI, Perl, Cold Fusion, ASP.
- HTML Source Compressor - Reduce web page file size.
- Flash 4/Shockwave/Java/ActiveX Support.
- Includes over 20+ CGI/Perl scripts from Matt's Script Archive with complete instructions on usage.
- Syntax Highlights Perl, CSS, HTML, CF, ASP, SSI, Javascript, CGI files.
- Instant Tag Help anywhere, anytime.
- Spell Checker.
This is a free HTML editor for Windows designed to help HTML, XML and script authors to edit, format, lookup help, validate, preview and publish web pages. It's main features...
- Open, edit and save local and remote files online or offline.
- Color coding support for HTML, XHTML, XML, CSS, JavaScript, VBScript, ASP, PHP, Perl, Java, Python, C/C++, Pascal files with customizable file extensions.
- Extendable spell checker with multiple main and user dictionaries.
- The customizable "Active Preview" window to automatically preview the current document as you type.
- Quickly preview pages in multiple external browsers. Internet Explorer, Netscape, Opera, NCSA Mosaic, WebTV and Amaya can be automatically detected, other browsers can be added manually.
- Context sensitive online help for HTML, CSS, JavaScript, VBScript and PHP.
- Validate documents using the graphical user interface for W3C's HTML Tidy and view automatically corrected code in the output window for side-by-side comparison.
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