HTML Tutorial
WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) code generators offer speed and ease of use. Many of these editors do not require any knowledge of the programming languages generated by the software. Pages are often produced in a proprietary format and then exported as finished code; the exported pages cannot usually be imported for further editing, but new pages can be exported from the original proprietary file after it has been edited. Exported files tend to be larger than hand-coded pages (those produced with a text-based HTML editor or a plain text editor). WYSIWYG generators tend to be better than word processors at producing highly graphical and interactive pages. HTML Editors
Aptana IDE is an interesting take on Web page development. Instead of focusing on the HTML, Aptana focuses on the JavaScript and other elements that allow you to create Rich Internet Applications. One of the things I really like is the outline view that makes it really easy to visualize the DOM. This makes for easier CSS and JavaScript development. HTML-Kit is a free Web editor with a lot of features. It's one of the more popular ones available for Windows. It has tag completion and HTML and CSS validation and a lot of features you wouldn't expect in free software. The only issue I have with it is that it doesn't default to XHTML, you have to convert your documents to that. It has a lot of XML and XHTML support, it just doesn't default to them. KompoZer is a great WYSIWYG editor. It is based on the popular Nvu editor - only it is called the "unofficial bug-fix release." KompoZer was conceived by some people who really liked Nvu, but were fed up with the slow release schedules and poor support. So they took it over and released a less buggy version of the software. Nvu is a great WYSIWYG editor. I prefer text editors to WYSIWYG editors, but if you don't, then Nvu is a great choice, especially considering that it's free. I love that it has a site manager to allow you to review the sites that you're building. It's surprising that this software is free. Feature highlights: XML support, advanced CSS support, full site management, built-in validator, and international support as well as WYSIWYG and color coded XHTML editing. Amaya is a bit hard to use, but it's endorsed by the W3C, so you know that pages you build in it will be standards-based. It offers features like CSS editing and will edit XML really well. Feature highlights: XML support, scripting support, advanced CSS support, built-in validator, and international support as well as WYSIWYG and color coded XHTML editing. The CoffeeCup Free HTML editor is a text editor with a lot of potential. A lot of the features it has in the menus are reliant on other CoffeeCup products to use - such as FTP, the photo gallery maker, CSS editing, and so on. This is still a powerful HTML editor, but I would recommend you purchase the full version of the editor to get the real juice from this product. One important thing to note: many sites list this editor as a free WYSIWYG editor, but when I tested, you had to buy the full version to get WYSIWYG support. The free version is a very nice text editor only. Selida is a very nice WYSIWYG Web page editor for Windows. It offers a lot of features that make it easy to edit Web pages and is free. SeaMonkey is the Mozilla project all-in-one Internet application suite. It includes a Web browser, email and newsgroup client, IRC chat client, and composer - the Web page editor. One of the nice things about using SeaMonkey is that you have the browser built-in already so testing is a breeze. Plus it's a free WYSIWYG editor with an embedded FTP to publish your Web pages. PSPad is a programming editor for Windows. It offers a lot of features applicable to Web editors such as HTML syntax highlighting, integration with TopStyle Lite for CSS editing and a built-in FTP client to manage files online. Arachnophilia is not free - it's "careware", but just because you don't have to pay cash for it doesn't mean it's not a good product. In fact, it's a great text HTML editor with a lot of functionality. The color coding makes it easy to use. It may or may not work on Mac and Unix. Feature highlights: Color coded XHTML editing. |
