Which HTML editor do you use?

Me too! I was starting to use Dreamweaver more and more though (but then I upgraded to v. 4 and it barely runs on my computer... too slow, so I'll have to wait until I get a new machine). I'll use textpad or webwerx (my first HTML editor - it's a little buggy, but small and fast and has all the basic HTML editor features) for small changes, but homesite for anything big. I've never really used notepad on a regular basis. It's much harder to make mistakes with actual HTML editors (not to mention the fact that keyboard shortcuts speed things up a lot!)

The only thing that bugs me about Homesite is the petty error messages when using the tag validator. I probably use the search and replace option the most.

Homesite for me too. There are so many great little add-ons which help ASP scripting so much. I started on Notepad, then at work I had to use Micro-monopoly Visual Interdev, I can't stand using that anymore, not since HomeSite.

M$ InterDev
I haven't tried HomeSite in like 4 years or sumthin. I may have to try it again, detox.

I started out before there was such a thing as a WYSIWYG editor. I used to hand code monthly racing schedules into complex tables. Yuck! So when PageMill 1.0 came out, I bought it and never looked back. Currently using GoLive.

I can still "get under the hood" when I need to, but I'd rather spend my time designing and building rather than coding.

hmmm...
I guess that's why I've never been really impressed with WYSIWYG editors. I've never really had the need for them. Instead of creating complex tables, and coding static info in them that is a pain to update, I make one template page, and store all the content in a DB. Then I use an HTML 'admin section' that I create to control the site, including content.

I dislike designing. For personal projects, I have my bro draw something up in PhotoShop and cut it up. Then I get it and can put it together fairly easily in HTML. I really enjoy programming back end stuff. I tell people "I like my work to be experienced, not seen."

there are two people in our 'coding' section, myself and another guy. He writes his asp/html code as a program, a bit like you Mark, running it of a db with subs to write out the html, and everything linked to a db. I use to simply hard code it all - include Asp in HTML and all that. He has really opened my eyes with ASP. It is a sturdier way of coding. Plus you can simply make global changes to the entire site.

Homesite. I just love the thing to death. I've tried Both Dreamweaver and Front Page but Homesite still gives me the best control over the code. I'll use front page from time to time when i have to kick out 10 or 15 page really fast but for realy nice code that new coders can understand and learn from I use Homesite.

Homesite, me too. i never use their WYSIWYG-feature, but i like their tips to type less (when you type in

A year ago I would have said "vi",
but I guess now I use SciTE more and more.

On the other hand ... I stopped editing HTML a long time ago. Usually I use WML to generate the HTML, but since that includes "native" HTML I guess that counts.

Yes, there is a update for Cute HTML but the newer versions get rid of a lot of the functions that I have learned to cope with in version 1.2.
I don't know, but I like doing all my coding from scratch, and all CuteHTML is, is Notepad with color coding and a 'Preview' button. That's mainly it.

So for all of you chumps using Notepad, download CuteHTML 1.2 (don't bother with 2.0, waste of downloading time)

CodeDude,

Quote: So for all of you chumps using Notepad

.

I don't see anyone in this post mentioning the use of notepad, except in my initial post that it was a good learning tool. I have used Cute HTML before. About the biggest piece of garbage I have ever seen.

*I* use notepad.. have tried wysiwyg editors and cutehtml-type things... Frontpage and Pagemill and golive... I keep coming back to notepad. I like doing it all from scratch. GoLive is a great program though...

I prefer HTMLED32 It's a simple editor and much better than Notepad and it's free(shareware). If you are an experience HTML coder, then you don't really need a WYSIWYG editor as you can easily control graphics/text placement on a page with less code and further optimizing a page loading time.

Editpad Lite (can't afford Pro)

great replacement for notepad, has everything except spell check, thing I love apart from search and replace is the ability to have over 500 pages open in it at once without even a hic cup.

Homesite all the way. But using it since someone introduced me to it a year and a half ago, never went to anything else.

I have no qualm with the WYSIWYG editors except for the fact that the code is VERY unstable, and it usually generates about 3 to 4 times more HTML than it should.

I did my very first site in Pagemill with no previous experience, then moved swiftly onto Dreamweaver and haven't looked back! Just upgraded to version 4 of both Fireworks & Dreamweaver & Flash 5. Suppose I like Macromedia

Hi everyone!

I started out with notepad, then went to edit plus. The colors help a lot.
But that's about all it did for me. Then, when I began learning asp, I installed a 90 day demo of visual interdev. Its a very clever program except for two things;
1)
You cannot edit the style sheets directly. You can only define properties which it encodes for you. But there are some css things that you can't define with the vi style sheet menus. So you have to open the stlyle sheet in notepad and then resave it.

That's realy stupid, Bill

2)
The on the fly scripting help it gives you is really cool. You type a period, and a selection of possible properties and methods pop up. It will even tell you the names of the arguments that you defined in your own javascripts when you satrt to type in their values. Well, sometimes it does this for me.
the problem is that sometimes this scriping help leads you astray. Recently, I was stuck for about an hour when vi give me the name of a form in lower case, even though it appeared in the html as upper case. I couldn't imagine why the browser did not recogize the form as an object. I took its name directly from VI. what could be more accurate? Then I decided to type the name of the form from memory (the one in my brain) and it worked.

So now, that my vi 90 day period is almost over, I figured I'd better start getting used to something else that will help me with asp and styles sheets
and may a table here and there. So I downloaded 1st page 2000 and really like it so far.

Now I have Three questions that I hope some of you will have time to answer.

1)
I doesn't want to load the global asa file that was created by vi. Why is this? I haven't used global asa files yet. When I do, will I have trouble without visual interdev?

2)
Can I download the online help provided in visual interdev? How? I looked all over the microsoft site and couldn't find it.

3)
Why didn't anyone mention 1st page by Evrsoft in this thread? Do pepole know about it? What does it lack that the other good ones have?

I use DreamWeaver 4 and DreamWeaver UltraDev 4 most of the time. I also use HomeSite and Microsoft InterDev occasionally.

So what's the difference between DreamWeaver 4 and DreamWeaver UltraDev 4 then??

Quote:
3)
Why didn't anyone mention 1st page by Evrsoft in this thread? Do pepole know about it? What does it lack that the other good ones have?

I haven't used it lately but when I did have it I found that it was almost exactly like Homesite - a little too much like Homesite if you ask me (kinda makes you wonder), but without the extended search/replace function and there was something about opening files that bugged me but I can't remember what it was - I think it was that the file navigator sidebar didn't show up until you actually open a file, which you have to navigate all through your file structure to find the one you want. Homesite loads with the file sidebar open to the last directory you used - handy.

Anyway, if I couldn't have Homesite I'd use 1st Page

DreamWeaver UltraDev has all the features of DreamWeaver plus live data preview, ASP, CFML, and JSP coding support, and a bunch of additional server and behavior objects designed for creating dynamic (database driven) web sites. When I'm not dealing with ASP, CFML, or JPS I prefer to use plan old DreamWeaver, as it loads a tad quicker and doesn't take up as much resources as UltraDev.

I agree with Megan about Evrsoft. It had some cool features but I like HomeSite better. I'll defiantly give it another try when they come out with the next version.

Oooh, I don't think I need UltraDev, I don't get involved beyond html, wouldn't know where to start!

What do the others offer then, or makes them different to Dreamweaver? I have never thought about using anything else.

Those are server side languages.
ASP = Active Server Pages.. commonly used on NT servers, compareable to PHP (though some would argue)
CFML = Cold Fusion Markup Language... that's all I know
JSP = Java Server Pages (I believe)... that's all I know

I only use DreamWeaver UltraDev occasionally and usually it's to edit an ASP web site or incorporate database fields into a JSP project I worked on a while ago. It has some good perks but for ultimately it's not a solution or alternative to "learning to program". It's fun to play around with though.

Visual InterDev is similar in some ways. It offers a WYSIWYG page editor with support for ActiveX, Java, Applets, DHTML, etc, has database design and integration tools, debugging capabilities, site management and design tools, etc. I've been starting to use it more and more frequently.

DreamWeaver standard is still by WYSIWYG editor of choice though.

Dreamweaver and Fireworks all the way!

~Chris Riviere

To me it is all what you are used to. I have used UltraDev but felt like I was giving it too much control of my design which I didn't like.

I started out with notepad about 3 years ago and have tried Frontpage just recently. I found that while trying to figure out the Frontpage interface and how to make things "appear", I always got antsy and just hand coded it in notepad or either in the HTML view of FP. Much faster for me.

Dreamweaver seems to be a little easier but I can still put things up faster with notepad sometimes. About the only time I use the WYSIWYG editors is when I need a quick table. I will draw it out and then copy and paste away, filling in the text or whatever in notepad. Anybody else do that???

Is it just me or is Frontpage and Dreamweaver kinda hard to figure out if the only thing you have ever used is Notepad?

disaster-master

Yeah, I mainly use Dreamweaver for tables. I too found the interface to be a little bit cumbersome at first - there are so many little popups for different things and I hate having all that on top of my design all the time. CSS is particularly annoying and cumbersome to use in DW - I'd rather hand code it. I often find myself swtiching between homesite and DW a lot - nice that HS has that little send to DW button built in!

I still use notepad - I'm not trying to 'make' a point or anything, I just like it because if I want to quickly make some changes to a page, I pop up notepad, and it loads in 1 second or less, compared to other editors, which can open in up to 10 seconds.. This sounds crazy, I know, but sometimes I just make quick changes, and it's much faster to do it in notepad.

As far as the 'features' side of editors, the truth is that I've never used one to make a site - I just couldn't understand why, if I'm using HTML, I wouldn't just use notepad. I've never thought highly of text highlighting, it's almost like the way the Americans highlighted the hockey puck (Yes, I'm Canadian )

Bah, maybe someday I'll learn and use something other than notepad, but for now, It's my preferred program.

U currently use DW, hyperedit (notepad with UNIX linebreaks) for PHP, and notepad if I don't want to start hyperedit (too lazy).
Currently, I'm looking for a PHP syntax highliting editor, if exists, WYSIWYG would be nice.

Quote: Originally posted by m0dulus
it's almost like the way the Americans highlighted the hockey puck (Yes, I'm Canadian )

How else do you expect those drunken couch potatos to follow the puck around their TV?

I downloaded homesite, and it looks pretty good, sad about the 90(60?) day trail.

In my experience, anyway, it doesn't actually stop working after your trial is up.

Oh OK. Anybody know of a PHP editor?

I could not dream of developing 3-5 projects simultaneously, managing updates to various maintenance contracts and still hit my deadlines by using notepad!

While I definitely prefer to work in a code environment, I don't think I could function efficiently without the time saving features offered by programs such as Homesite. Sure, I am capable of typing out every tag attribute and file path by hand - but why would I want to?

I'll even do the occasional quick edit in Dreamweaver (gasp!) for the same reason

It may be rather late to join this thread, but I thought I'd mention a nice little HTML editor that's Freeware.

Ever heard of Arachnophilia? It's loaded with features. Of course, like anything, it takes a while to find your way around.

Those who are still using NotePad might want to give it look. Don't let the "freeware" scare you. This is a great product. I've been using it for years.

If you check out the homepage below, there's a lot of options and information about which program file to download, but I've always downloaded the 1st link for the "full version" exe file with no problems.

http://www.arachnoid.com/arachnophilia

I love Dreamweaver for three main reasons.

1. Simultaneous view of both the layout and the source code.

2. FTP site management feature.

3. Doesn't screw up embedded PHP code. (GoLive messed it up)

I use Dreamweaver 4 now and really like it, but ever now and again I use editplus. I was using HotDog Pro and textpad before that but doubt that i'll ever turn back now.

I use Cold Fusion Studio, which is Homesite's big brother. I have projects that use combinations of plain HTML, Cold Fusion, JSP, PHP, Perl, CSS, JavsScript, Java, and C. Nothing else helps me get a grasp on all these languages in one shot. The color coding helps immensely and the project handling is top notch. I work on a Win2k desktop, but my servers are all Unix, so I also use vi to get work done quickly directly on the server.

I also keep DW around to help clean up other developers' jumbled glob they refer to as a "completed page". It helps me sort things out when someone decides nesting twenty tables is a good way to format a page. :csaw:

I cut my teeth using Notepad. I then progressed to Hotdog, which at first glance, was overwhelming. Once I actually understood HTML, Hotdog really proved itself as an excellent development tool. I still found it a little slow to get quick conceptual design ideas up. I started using Adobe PageMill 3.0 (ugh) to create the basic layout and then tweaked the code in Hotdog.

I avoided early versions of Dreamweaver, because I was convinced it encouraged bad coding skills - i.e. layers. Everyone seemed to be using layers and not very well, I might add.

Eventually, I downloaded a demo of Dreamweaver 3 and was so impressed with the ability to have the design and code windows open at the same time, that I bought the complete web design studio. I have not loaded Fireworks or Freehand (which were in the pack) because I am a Photoshop and Illustrator fan.

A 19" or 21" monitor running high res is a MUST!

Sadly, Hotdog, which I think is still a great product, hardly ever gets used these days.

Well All i have to say, i use a huge variety.

* Dreamweaver
* fireworks
* flash
* front page
* paint shop pro

+ tripod page builder for hand coding as well as.... NOTEPAD!

Every one of the has there uses for something, so i use them all, beause u need to when your doing several sites, and meeting deadlines.

Notepad is great to learn , and develop good HTML skills, but you need more than that in most cases in the big wide world.

I use notpad, to write up scripts, mostly perl. Then cut and past into Tripod for testing, I suppose we all have our likes and dislikes.... we are all individuals.

Well - I'm amazed and astonished! I've scanned through this thread and, unless I missed it, there's no mention of the best of them all - NetObjects Fusion. You can find it at netobjects.com .

You'll find advocates and detractors for just about every program out there, but most have trial versions which you can download and test. I would suggest that you try out those mentioned here and see which suits you best. I'm willing to take a (very small) bet that you'll go for Fusion!

BOF,

Take a look at this - looks like NetObjects isn't doing so well.

[url="http://investor.cnet.com/investor/news/newsitem/0-9900-1028-6873848-0.html
"]
NetObjects, Inc. Announces Financial Results for the Third Fiscal Quarter Of 2001[/url]

Quote: NetObjects does not have sufficient cash to continue operation through the end of its fiscal year on September 30, 2001.

I will try Fusion out when I get a chance.

Yes, Megan - they apparently are cash-strapped!

There's a move afoot among NOF users to support NetObjects. Anyone interested in becoming involved should visit http://www.darkstardesigns.com/savenof/

The effort is becoming international, with publicity in Germany and, I think, in the UK. It's such a good program that we users believe it's worth trying to save.

I've used NOF. At least, I've played with the demo. It is ok as far as WYSIWYG editors go but is still a WYSIWYG editor.

If I had to rank the big 3 WYSIWYG editors from my limited experience it would be as follows:

1/ Dreamweaver - I actually use this on occasion when I'm lazy/strapped for time.
2/ NetObjects Fusion - Simply because I dislike FrontPage even more.
3/ FrontPage

None of the above come close to text editors.

I use CoffeeCup's html editor. I still end up hard coding everything within it, but it has some features that I like. I've looked at GoLive but have really tried to do anything with it.

please, before deciding which HTML wysiwyg you use, run it's output quickly through an html validator( e.g. http://validator.w3.org/). If that says your HTML is bad, so is your editor/designer.
(This was the reason the local university got rid of NOF.)

A second test would be a size analisys of the produced HTML.
(Netmechanic used to do this for free, but not anymore.)
Bandwidth is cheap today, but that's not a reason to waste it.

Quote: Originally posted by anti
A second test would be a size analisys of the produced HTML. (Netmechanic used to do this for free, but not anymore.)

Here's my favorite alternative: http://w21.hitbox.com/world/page.cgi?doctor

Quote: Originally posted by Gyrbo
Oh OK. Anybody know of a PHP editor?

Editplus and Ultraedit will highlight keywords and syntax.

I must admit I'm a FrontPage Fanatic....

I built my first site using FPExpress which, to be completely honest was about as hopeless as my first site

Since the I progressed through FP 98 and now FP2000. I must admit the version I'm using now suits me fine. Its great for making sure my site is correctly laid out through the folder explorer bar and its dead easy to quickly create tables & stuff. The only downside is that because its made by Mico$oft the preview feature doesn't support ColdFusion So I have to constantly have IE open and refresh the screen to preview any work I have done.

first page 2000

its buggy but it lets me test unlimited browsers

andrew

I use an HTML Editor called Namo. It was
rated as one of the top html softwares at
CNET. It is not widely known, but works
great! I used it to make the transition from
a brand new webmaster to actually going into
the code and making changes.

You can check out their site at http://www.namo.com

Since I was on a budget, like most people I
used this editor to start a web page solely
dedicated to free tools for webmasters.

http://www.gowebpage.net

NetObjects as a company has now closed its doors, but their premier product, Fusion MX, remains one of the best WYSIWYG editors out there. It is still available for purchase at http://www.netobjects.com/purchase/index.html .

Support for the product is gaining momentum - even promises to be better than with NetObjects! a good example is at http://barye.org/nof/index.html . There's a developing forum at http://www.netobjectsforum.com/ , and there seems to be a good chance that someone will buy the code and continue development. I would encourage you to give it a try.

Disclaimer: I have no financial or other connection with Fusion or NetObjects other than being a satisfied user.

I usually just use notepad. Then I got a template for a site, and well it was a lot of code and I didnt know what went where. So I looked around my room and found front page for it. I just used the editing part and did not use any of its extra features(which I do not like) and it worked well for me. Of course I didnt make a backup of the first site. Created a new web in it. Then imported my pages, and I accedently hit a theame. So to all my nice pages a bunch of stuff was added. I lost about 4 hours of work. Other then that, for simple editing I prefer front page.