HTML Editors

[Eric Renderking Fisk]

I wanted to restart this tread again.

What are the best HTML Editors out there? What else is there besides Web Expressions and Dreamweaver?

[Cousi]

Notepad + a few good HTML books

[Eric Renderking Fisk]

That's how I started making websites - using Notepad to write the code and using Elizabeth Castro's Quickstart HTML Guide to learn what I was actually doing. If you just go through the book chapter by chapter you too can be as good as me! (Or even better since there's some sections I skipped until recently.)

I wish I had that HTML tutorial that I wrote for you folks because I would repost it in a heartbeat. That was one of the best things I wrote in a long time. I should try and find it on our server or HD's...

I started writing a rant about how my family is slowly taking over some of the other computers in this house. The XP machine is used by the kids to play games on the PBS website, and the Laptop with the HDMI port is hooked up to the Widescreen TV in the living room. I inherited the Netbook my wife and I bought for herself instead of an iPad that doesn't run Windows7 and is hard to come by. But as I keep working with it more and more and I'm not having as much problems with it and she just hates it because she says its slow, it's clear that she's either getting an iPad or a Palm Tablet... and I'm going to use this netbook when ever...

The question is... how can I load an HTML editor on this machine so I can get Fedora Chronicles work done on it and not have it slow it down?

[Cousi]

Eek - most really good HTML editing/site design programs tend to be resource hogs because they deal with images as well as text. Hmmm .... I shall try to use the power of the web to see what I can find.

[Cousi]

Arachnophilia seems to be a decent one that's free and not much a resource hog. Its not perfect but it seems to be resilient with minimal quirks.

[Eric Renderking Fisk]

Microsoft Visual Studio Express is one solution, but not the best one.

I'm a huge fan of Microsoft's Web Expressions, a huge upgrade from the HTML editor that I used before - Front Page. As soon as I loaded Web Expressions on my XP machine and started using it, it was clear to me that they put a lot of thought into it. It's very intuitive, it's like driving the best car you ever owned for the first time. Everything is just where you expect to find it. Except that where the wiper-blade control is, you find the CSS properties table and the FTP tool is where the shift lever should be.

Microsoft Visual Studio Express is an answer to the age old questions I've had and I think you have, too: What happens to the rejected programs that are developed but are never sold? Microsoft's answer to this question is pretty obvious now - the release them as web-apps!

Everything Web Expressions could have been and thankfully wasn't. It's clear to anyone who has used WebEx before and uses MVSE now can clearly tell that MVSE is clearly a rejected build, patch or upgrade.

Does it work, though? Amazingly so, yes. But it's like borrowing your neighbors beater, like a driving a VW or SAAB after driving Fords all your life. It's hard to understand why they put things were they do, like that aforementioned CSS and FTP tools, but once you figure out where they are and how they work it sort of make sense.

It makes sense in the fact that they make it so hard for you to make a mistake that you can't do anything at all until you learn how to do it right. I don't recommend it because I haven't found the manual yet.