Free Webmaster Software

Free HTML Editors, Web Editors, WYSIWYG Web Editors and Site Builders

Looking for a better editor (or perhaps even your first editor) to design your website? This page lists free HTML editors, Web editors, WYSIWYG editors, web site builders, as well as specialized editors optimized for Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) or even the numerous web scripting languages such as PHP, Perl, Java, JavaScript, ASP, etc.

The editors are separated into two sections: the WYSIWYG Web Editors / Site Builders allow you to design your website using a What You See Is What You Get interface - somewhat like a wordprocessor where you can see what your page will look like (mostly) as you type; and Site Builders that allow you to design your site from pre-packaged templates (and sometimes also allowing you a WYSIWYG interface to change elements from that tempate).

The other section lists the Free HTML Editors / Free PHP/Perl/JavaScript (etc) Editors which are basically ASCII text editors with additional features that make it easier for you to code pages for the web. Very often, this includes syntax highlighting for the HTML/CSS elements (and perhaps also for PHP, Perl, JavaScript, ASP, Java elements as well). If you write your pages using raw HTML, or if you plan to learn to write HTML, these are the editors you will want to check.

Related Pages

• Free Programming Editors and ASCII Text Editors - more editors
• Microsoft FrontPage 2003 - famous commercial web editor
• Macromedia DreamWeaver MX 2004 - another famous commercial web editor

Disclaimer

The information provided on this page comes without any warranty whatsoever. Use it at your own risk. Just because a program, book or service is listed here or has a good review does not mean that I endorse or approve of the program or of any of its contents. All the other standard disclaimers also apply.

Free HTML Editors / ASCII Text Web Editors

This is a well-known Windows CSS editor that can also edit HTML code. The editor's speciality is that it allows you to create Cascading Style Sheets in a fairly simple manner - you can select the features you want from a side panel of the editor and it will generate the corresponding style sheet (you still need some CSS knowledge though - this is not a WYSIWYG editor). You can also edit HTML code with the editor. The Lite version, which is free, only allows you to create inline Cascading Style Sheets. The Pro version (not free) allows you to create external style sheets and includes built-in validators that checks your style sheets and HTML documents for correctness (among other features).

This is the freeware sibling of the commercial Standard and Pro versions. It is a general text editor that has lots of features, including a useful "Clipbook" facility that has numerous HTML editing conveniences. Its commercial cousin Notepad Pro comes with syntax highlighting. (Note: to get Notetab Light, click the Products link.)

HAPedit is useful for people who develop both dynamic and static web pages. It provides syntax highlighting for HTML, ASP, PHP, JavaScript; provides a project manager; features code completion, an SQL console, FTP manager, PHP code "compilation", integrated PHP help, brace matching, search and replace with regular expressions, statistics on your page (ie, rendered size, images, links, etc), and so on. This is a Windows program.

Web Notepad is a text editor for editing HTML files. It has a tabbed interface, has syntax highlighting and comes with a built-in FTP facility for you to upload your files to your web server.

PSPad is a full featured text editor that you can use to edit HTML, PHP, Perl, JavaScript, C, etc. It even has built-in facilities allowing you to edit binary files. There is project support, the ability to directly edit files via FTP on your server, a macro recorder, search and replace in files, text comparison (differences between two files with the differences highlighted in colour), syntax highlighting, spell checking, internal HTML preview using IE and Mozilla, integrated HTML TIDY (for validating HTML code and fixing them), code explorer for Pascal, HTML, PHP, XML (etc), matched bracket highlighting, etc.

TSW WebCoder is a web editor that supports an internal preview of your page, built-in FTP client, integration with HTML Tidy (see the Free HTML Validators page), integrated validation, code libraries, CSS inspector, syntax colouring, multiple documents, etc. WebPad, the other editor available on that site, is a lighter-weight editor that features syntax highlighting, an FTP client, multiple documents, integrated HTML Tidy integration, etc. It is targeted at people who want something more than Notepad but without the frills of WebCoder.

Webniac is a text editor for web page development. It has syntax highlighting for HTML, CSS, Java, JavaScript, VBScript, PHP, SQL, Perl and XML. It includes some JavaScripts which you can use on your site, a CSS generator, facilities for constructing tables, etc.

Quanta Plus is a Linux HTML editor for KDE. It contains an assortment of features such as syntax highlighting, easy configuration of toolbars, site uploading facility, the ability to update a site from CVS (with a plugin), document structure tree, etc.

Matrix Y2K is a HTML editor with support for multiple languages, multiple documents, syntax highlighting, search and replace, character maps, links validator, internal preview of your page, external preview (launches browser), image file browser, table wizard, forms support and the ability for you to create a library of scripts.

HTML Builder XP Lite features syntax highlighting (for HTML, PHP, ASP, Perl, VBScript, JavaScript, etc), a meta tag wizard, HTML Tidy integration, TopStyle CSS integration , spell checker, thesaurus, project management, table management, included DHTML scripts and JavaScripts that you can insert into your page, an FTP plugin, etc.

From the announcement by one of their development team: "Bluefish is a programmer's HTML editor, designed to save the experienced webmaster some keystrokes. It features a multiple file editor, multiple toolbars, custom menus, image and thumbnail dialogs, open from the web, CSS dialogs, PHP, SSI and RXML support, HTML validation and lots of wizards." I've seen a lot of good things said about this editor by other webmasters. Bluefish runs on Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, Tru64/Alpha, NetBSD, OpenBSD, HP-UX and Mac OSX.

This HTML text editor is intended for use by web developers, and comes with support for writing HTML, XML and scripts. Among its features are internal preview of your web pages (requires IE 4.x and above to be installed), integration with HTML Tidy (a HTML and CSS validation program), auto-completion of keywords, etc. HTML-Kit can be extended using plugins, and runs on Windows 95, 98, NT and 2000.

1st Page 2000 is a very professional, fully featured HTML editor that is nonetheless free. Besides being able to create and edit your HTML files using a syntax highlighted editor, you get JavaScript wizards that enable you to create drop down combo boxes, frame killers, browser detectors, etc. It even comes with loads of JavaScripts and VBScripts (450+), CGI Scripts (20+), a colour picker, image size calculator, etc. The feature list is extremely long. This is a Win32 program (ie, Windows 95, 98 and NT).

This HTML editor provides the usual facility to edit and create HTML files in a convenient tabbed interface. It comes with an assortment of wizards that allow you to quickly create specific HTML features like forms, tables, etc.

This editor comes with built-in FTP facility, making it possible for you to author your web page and publish it without leaving the editor. It has a spell-checker, an internal browser view mode that is able to show your HTML changes as you type, a global search and replace facility across all open documents, built-in tutorial on HTML, JavaScript, frames; etc. There are apparently two versions available - the older one runs on Windows systems, the newer one is written in Java and is apparently cross-platform.

An editor that supports a host of features useful for HTML editing yet has an uncluttered interface. It is free for non-commercial use.

Free WYSIWYG Web Editors and Website Builders

Nvu is a WYSIWYG editor that is designed to make the creation of web sites as easy for novices as it is using commercial web editors like FrontPage and DreamWeaver . It is based on the Mozilla Composer web editor (see elsewhere on this page) and includes new features that will eventually make its way back into Mozilla Composer. This open source editor is available for Linux and Windows.

Mozilla, the web browser, comes with a WYSIWYG web editor that allows you to quickly code web pages using a wordprocessor-like interface. For more information, please read the detailed review of the Mozilla Compose on affiliated-business.com .

Trellian WebPAGE is a free WYSIWYG web editor with a drag and drop interface, a preview screen that allows you to see your page under three common screen widths (640, 800 and 1024), built-in FTP uploader, table creation wizard, form creation tool, etc. It also has a syntax highlighting HTML editor for people who may want to switch to the HTML mode for some fine tuning.

Amaya is an open source browser and WYSIWYG web authoring environment that purports to allow its users to develop web pages without knowing anything about HTML or CSS. You can create your pages, view them, and upload them to your website using this software. It supports CSS (including CSS 2), HTML, XHTML, MathML 2.0 (which allows you to browse and write web pages containing mathematical symbols), etc. There are versions for Windows (a separate one for NT/2000/XP and 95/98/98SE/ME), Linux and Sparc Solaris.

Netscape (yes, the browser) comes with an easy WYSIWYG web editor that allows you to get started with your own web page quickly and easily. It supports the usual text and graphics and is generally adequate for the beginning webmaster. To get it, simply download the full Netscape package. Note that Netscape Composer is probably just an older version of Mozilla Composer (also listed on this page).

Free Programmer's Editors, ASCII Text Editors (Plain Text Editors), IDE

This page lists free programmers' editors, Integrated Development Environment or IDEs, ASCII text editors or plain text editors, syntax highlighting code editors, and the like that are useful to programmers and web designers for writing the source code of a program or writing the HTML/PHP/Perl code for a website.

Disclaimer

The information provided on this page comes without any warranty whatsoever. Use it at your own risk. Just because a program, book or service is listed here or has a good review does not mean that I endorse or approve of the program or of any of its contents. All the other standard disclaimers also apply.

Anjuta DevStudio

Anjuta is a programmer's IDE for Linux with an editor that has syntax highlighting, code folding (or code hiding), automatic code formatting, autocompletion of code, line number display, text zooming, calltips for Linux/GNOME function prototypes, automatic indentation, etc. It also has an integrated debugger (gdb), application wizards to create GTK, GNOME and terminal applications, dynamic tags browsing, project management, etc.

This is the freeware sibling of the commercial Notepad Standard. It has lots of features, and can handle multiple files up to 2GB in sizes, if your memory permits. One handy feature it has is the ability to display a tab for each document you have open under the toolbar, which makes it convenient if you are navigating around with a mouse. In spite of the fact that there is no source code syntax highlighting, it's one of my current favourites. (To get the free version from the above link, click the "NoteTab Editors" link on the side panel.)

CUTE is a text editor that is extensible using Python. It supports projects, syntax highlighting of various programming languages (C, C++, C#, Java, Python, JavaScript) as well as HTML (etc), multiple documents (tabbed or child frame), ctags, auto-completion, search and replace with regular expressions, bookmarks, undo/redo, has an integrated file browser, themes, key macros, etc. Binaries (executables) are available for Linux. The source code is released under the GPL.

Notepad2, subtitled by the author as "yet another Notepad replacement", is a lightweight text editor that comes with syntax highlighting, undo, redo, a toolbar, handling of favourites, support for Unicode, UTF-8, Unix, Mac and DOS/Windows files, the ability to handle different code pages, and numerous other functions. It comes with source code.

mi is a text editor for Mac OS X, Mac OS 7.x, 8.x and 9.x. (There are versions for PPC Macs and 68k Macs) It has syntax highlighting for C, HTML and others.

Open Perl IDE is an integrated development environment for Windows that allows you to write and debug Perl scripts. It has a syntax highlighting editor which you can customize and it also allows you to debug your Perl scripts from within the IDE (for example, you can insert breakpoints, view and edit variables, etc). Open Perl IDE is open source and released under the Mozilla Public Licence.

#develop is a free Windows IDE for C# and VB.NET programs. It is released under the GNU GPL.

Jedit is a programmer's editor written in Java , so it runs on platforms that support Java, like Windows, Unix, Mac OS X, VMS, Linux, etc. It has syntax highlighting, a macro language, extensible plugin architecture, autoindent, word wrap, etc.

syn is a syntax highlighting programmer's editor that supports numerous programming languages. It has autocomplete facilities, drag and drop editing, customizable shortcuts, unlimited undo and redo, highlighting of matching braces, etc. You can also extend its features using Microsoft's Active Scripting. This is a Windows editor.

Visual MinGW is an IDE designed specially for use with the MinGW compiler (see the Free C/C++ Compilers page). The editor has wizards to create skeleton code for things like dialog boxes, SDI and MDI applications. It also has a project manager. The IDE is open source.

RHIDE is an IDE for the GNU family of compilers that runs on MSDOS, Linux and Windows.

Eclipse is an open source extensible IDE. At present, it works well as a Java IDE, and includes Java development tools. It requires that you have the Sun Java runtime environment (JRE) installed. The IDE supports Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows 98, Windows ME, Linux, Solaris, QNX, AIX, HP-UX, Mac OS X, and possibly other systems as well.

This free programmer's editor supports syntax highlighting (HTML, C/C++ , Perl , Java , Matlab, Latex, PHP, Delphi , ASP, Euphoria, Ada 83 , etc), multiple documents (tabbed interface), multi-level undo/redo, word wrapping, spell checker, ability to execute user-defined tools and macros, edit remote files via FTP, find and replace, multi-byte support, auto-indent, etc.

Leonardo IDE

Leonardo IDE is a Macintosh-based IDE, compiler and debugger for C programs. The Windows and Linux ports are said to be under development. It has a syntax highlighting editor, an ANSI C compiler, a compiler for the ALPHA visualization language, a graph editor, a reversible virtual CPU, etc. Note that the programs are not compiled to native code but to code to be executed for the virtual CPU. The virtual machine and debugger allows you to execute code forwards and backwards and supports multitasking. The IDE comes with animated algorithms, plus example source code for games like Tetris, Checkers, etc. The IDE is useful for checking and debugging your source code, search for memory leaks, etc.

This editor, written in Visual Basic supports the syntax highlighting of a number of programming languages, including Visual Basic , ASP, etc. Other features include find and replace facilities (including searching and replacing in files), multiple undo/redo, auto-indentation, templates, etc.

The MinGW Developer Studio is an IDE for the MinGW compiler. It features a multiple document interface, syntax highlighting, code folding, help integration, project management, debug and release project configuration support (like Visual Studio), debugging support, code calltip, makefile support, smart indent, etc.

This editor features syntax highlighting (C, C++ and probably others), the ability to search in all opened files and in the current path and subdirectories, bookmarks, project management, macros, etc.

This programmer's editor comes not only with the usual syntax highlighting support for programming languages, it also supports Control Structure Diagram (CSD) - that is, it displays control structures which allow you to understand and follow the program logic more easily. Ada , C , C++ , Java , and VHDL are apparently supported, and there are versions for Windows 95/NT, Linux and various Unix systems. There is also a Java version, called jGRASP, which is currently the only version that is still under active development.

In the days of bloated software, this editor is a real marvel. It's only about 400Kb in size in a single executable. It has the usual features (multiple files, tabbed document interface, etc) although not the advanced features of some (no syntax highlighting, project management, search and replace in disk files, etc).

This integrated software development environment for Windows allows you to generate native Windows applications using Oberon-2, and it includes an Oberon-2 compiler. The IDE also supports Java and C/C++ . The Oberon-2 compiler is a full implementation of the language and comes with the Oberon-2 library OPAL which allows you to create Windows programs without having to directly access Windows API.

This syntax highlighting editor supports numerous programming languages including C/C++, Delphi, Pascal, Java, JavaScript, Visual Basic, Perl, HTML, SQL, FoxPro, 80x86 assembler, Python, PHP, Tcl/Tk, etc (you can customize the syntax highlighting). Other features include code templates, customisable help files for each file type, export to HTML/RTF, file conversion (DOS, Unix, MAC), bookmarks, commenting, uncommenting code, capturing the output from console applications, etc. It's a Windows editor.

Nedit is an X Windows text editor with a GUI interface reminiscent of Windows and Macintosh. It has a good support for mouse based actions including dragging selections, etc. Other features include syntax highlighting, for C++, C, Java, Ada, Fortran, Pascal, Yacc (the parser generator), Perl, Python, TCL, csh (C shell), awk, HTML, LaTeX, VHDCL, Verilog, etc; auto-indent; programmable language-sensitive smart-indent; block indentation adjustment; parenthesis flashing and matching; compiler errors matching to source lines; tab emulation; ctags support; C-like macro language; etc. Precompiled binaries are available for Silicon Graphics, Sun (Solaris and SunOS), HP-UX, Digital Unix, Ultrix, IBM AIX, Linux and VMS. Source code is also free, for those who want to tinker even further with it. You will need either Lesstif or Motif on your system to run the editor.

Yudit is a Unicode text editor for Linux that has direct True Type support. The website claims that you can easily edit Unicode text without having to learn a new keybinding. It also supports the older non-Unicde character sets like ISO 8859, KOI8, JIS, GB, BIG5, KSC, EUC, and HZ. UTF-8 is its default encoding. You can enter any language's characters either by configuring your keymap, or by Unicode number, SGML name or RFC 1345 mnemonic.

This XWindows C/C++ IDE has project management; a dialog editor which will generate the dialog box source code for you; a class browser; an integrated debugger; application wizards that can generate menu bars, toolbars, status bars, a mini KDE application, a Qt-only based application, a C/C++ terminal application; integrated editor with syntax highlighting; integrated Unix tools; a powerful help system; a class generator; etc.

V IDE works with GNU g++, Borland C++ 5.5 and Java and runs on Windows and Linux. It includes a syntax highlighting editor for C/C++, Java, Perl, Fortran, TeX and HTML. It has a built-in code beautifier, macro support, ctags support, project manager, integrated support for the V applications generator and icon editor, integrated support for the GNU gdb and Sun's jdb (for Java), etc.

This syntax highlighting editor (for many languages and HTML) comes with source code and supports the Linux, Win32 and OS/2 platforms. It handles large files, has multiple levels of UNDO, support for an external spell checker, regular expression searching, support for executing a compiler, etc. It handles multiple documents but it loads them in split windows: the current version (at the time of this writing) does not support overlapping windows.

Xenon is a X-Windows editor that is supposed to be small and fast. It has unlimited undo and redo, and can handle multiple files in multiple windows. To get it to run, you need Linux, SGI or possibly other Unix implementations. Source code is provided.

A programmer's editor complete with syntax highlighting. The program is currently still under development, and it lacks documentation. I also could not get certain keys (such as Ctrl-O) to work and other keys (such as Alt-C to invoke the Command menu) does other things (it restores the window size to its original size). Latest note: The software appears to be abandoned.

Elvis is a VI clone with syntax highlighting, multiple files in multiple windows, integrated support for FTP and HTTP, etc. It has ports to Windows, Linux, Solaris, OS/2, MSDOS

This is the well-known GNU Emacs editor. Some swear by it, others detest it and many flame wars have been fought by its adherents and its detractors. There are binaries for a multitude of operating systems (including the various flavours of Unix, Macintosh, and, would you believe it, DOS). It is supposed to be very configurable, and supports a number of computer languages.

A programmer's editor that can be used even on remote terminals. The editor is supported on Linux. I'm not sure about other systems.

A terminal text editor for Linux that has syntax highlighting, the ability to edit both Linux and DOS text files, and a configurable keymap. It runs on Linux and probably other Unix systems.

A console mode editor intentionally designed to be lightweight and devoid of frills. It runs on the Linux platform and is released under the GNU GPL.

A notepad replacement for Win32 and Win16 system, with the ability to edit multiple files in one go, spell check, etc.

VIM, or VI Improved, is an editor in the spirit of the Unix "vi" editor. It has many extensions and has a special mode that allows it to mimic the Unix "vi" exactly. There are versions for a multitude of operating systems, including Win32, Unix, DOS, MacOS, OS/2, VMS, etc.

Free FTP Clients, Secure FTP (SFTP) Programs

This page lists some free FTP programs (clients) that you can use to upload your website and files as well as download files and web pages. There are a few here that are also designed to be download managers, and some clients can handle HTTP downloads as well.

Disclaimer

The information provided on this page comes without any warranty whatsoever. Use it at your own risk. Just because a program, book or service is listed here or has a good review does not mean that I endorse or approve of the program or of any of its contents. All the other standard disclaimers also apply.

Core FTP Lite is a Windows FTP client that supports uploading/downloading/deletion of directories (folders) and files, browser integration, SFTP (or secure FTP), SSL/TLS, handling of file permissions, transfer bandwidth control, etc.

FileZilla is a free, open source FTP client for Windows distributed under the GNU General Public License. You can do the usual stuff, upload and download files, as well as resume uploads or downloads, works with firewalls, supports SFTP (Secure FTP) and SSL secured connections, handle queues of files to be uploaded/downloaded, etc.

Cyberduck is an open source FTP and SFTP browser for Mac OS X. It supports drag and drop, resuming of uploads and downloads, synchronisation of files on a local computer with a server, uploading and downloading of folders, etc. It is licensed under the GNU GPL.

WinGet is a download accelerator that speeds up downloads by splitting a file into different parts and downloading each part simultaneously. It can resume downloads and is integrated into your browser (IE, Mozilla and Opera). It supports proxy servers, authentication and cookies.

Fugu is a free open source frontend for SFTP (Secure FTP), SCP and SSH. It is released under a BSD license, and supports Mac OS X.

Net Transport is a download manager for Windows that support multiple download streams using HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, MMS (Microsoft Media Services), RTSP (Real-Time Streaming Protocol) and PNM. You can perform batch downloading, categorise your download files, work through multiple proxies, schedule your downloads, limit the speed of downloads, etc. There are language files for numerous languages.

This is a Linux / Unix file downloader manager that is capable of using the FTP and HTTP protocols to download files (even if you are behind a proxy server) from the Internet. It can download using multiple connections simultaneously, giving you the possibility of a faster download. It allows persistent connections, has a built-in scheduler, pausing and resuming of downloads, etc. In spite of its name, it is able to work even without X - just use the command line. It is an open source software.

Prozilla is a download accelerator for Linux that supports downloading of files via the FTP and HTTP protocols, allows multiple connections for the same file simultaneously (hence the supposed acceleration), resuming of broken downloads, FTP search, etc. This is an open source software.

Putty is a free open source set of programs. It includes a Secure Shell client (SSH), an SCP client (secure copy), a command line Secure FTP client (SFTP), a Telnet client, etc.

NcFTP is a free command line FTP client for Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, and a large number of Unix and Unix-type systems. It comes with source code.

EFTP is a free portable Windows FTP client that does not leave traces of itself in the registry. It saves its settings in an INI file, and may be carried around in a floppy disk or one of those encrypted file systems. It is also able to do encrypted FTP if you're connecting to an EFTP server (ie, it does not use the standard Secure FTP protocol).

Like other FTP clients, FTP Commander can upload or download files, create and delete directories, rename files, activate multiple downloads, and keep a session log. It is a Windows program.

FTP Surfer is a Windows FTP client that uses an Internet Explorer user interface. It supports both FTP and HTTP downloads, FTP uploads, handles multiple server connections (ie, you can download many files simultaneously), handles reconnection for poor connections, supports remote file editing, supports ftp chmod, etc.

i.FTP is a Windows FTP client that comes with source code. There is also an earlier version for BeOS.

Star Downloader handles both FTP and HTTP downloads, can resume broken downloads, contains an integrated unzipping facility, supports proxies, has the ability to split a file into several parts and download them all simultaneously (theoretically saving you time to download), integrates with browsers (to be the browser's default download manager), handles different languages, includes a scheduler, integration with your antivirus software, includes a text viewer, etc. Note that, as its name suggests, Star Downloader is a download manager not a full fledged FTP client, so if you're looking for a tool to upload your site, this is probably not the correct tool.

WS_FTP LE is a Windows FTP program with the usual uploading and downloading features. It is free for non-commercial home users, students and staff of educational institutions and governmental employees. The program has not been updated since March 14, 2000.

This is a freeware version of the commercial FTP client. It has the usual FTP features that allow you to upload and download files and manage your website.

This FTP program is free only for personal and educational use. It appears to be highly configurable and useful for both downloading of files as well as maintaining your website.

This free FTP program appears to be an ad-ware product. It supports the usual features of an FTP client.

LeechFTP is a free FTP program with the usual features. It is no longer under development.