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Mac
Notepad
I used ultra edit in the past and liked that.
Is there anything remotely close to a wysiwyg for doing php? I am thinking it may be worth it just to learn the basics of it, but I am faster learning new programs than I am learning languages.
Allen
I have yet to see a WYSIWYG editor that generates anything close to streamlined HTML - and bandwidth is a major concern for me, since I'm running my site on a shoestring budget. I've found that in general, I can write HTML code that's about half the size of what the editors give me. And half the time I can't make the editors do what I want them to, anyways.
Over the years, though, I've found that the syntax highlighting editors are a nice middle ground, and can really improve productivity. UltraEdit is nice because it's very well featured and very low overhead. XMLSpy is nice because it has so many great features. But in the future I plan to migrate my site to ASP.NET scripts from PHP scripts because I want to take advantage of the power of Visual Studio.NET. I work as a programmer in my day job, so I'm *extremely* familiar with it already, and it's a very, very powerful development environment when you get used to it.
Don't like the look of version 5 though, so I'll stick with 4.0
noSanity
Unfortunately those that know the code, end up having to clean up all the bad code generated by WYSIWYG code designers.
It's just bad code, ugly performance, wrong syntax levels, lots of duplicate fonts and divs.
It always pays to know the code and do it raw.
Better readability.
Lots of Commenting
Indenting as logic flow.
Absolute Table/Content Positioning.
I have nothing against css, as long as I limit where I use it.
Just a note, whatever GUI/WSIWYG you use, Edit Plus is the best hand editor, highly configurable, nice ccolor coding, best find and replace I've encountered, plus a browser plug in so you can get a GUI/WSIWYG feel from it. Plus a thirty day trial and the unlock costs 20 or 30 bucks.
conText
[fixedsys.com...]
Crimson Editor has a particularly great feature where by if you click on a brace in your code, it underlines it and underlines the corresponding closing brace. Very good for learning purposes.
Crimson Editor
[crimsoneditor.com...]
Forgive me if they have been mentioned before!
:)
I mainly use conText and Crimon Editor, which are great free text editors.
Agreed. Those are two nice, free editors. Of the two I like Crimson a bit better.
Here's one more:
tsWebEditor
[tswebeditor.net.tf...]
MS Interdev is nice, but how do you get it to work w/ .php files?
On sites that I don't plan on adding to or changing regularly, I'll use Dreamweaver.
The downside of NetObjects Fusion is, of course, that the HTML it produces is bloated and not entirely efficient, that changes made to a site outside of NOF can be problematic, and that it tends to be unpredictable once a site has reached three or four hundred pages, or more.
I used to enjoy putting a site together for the sake of getting the HTML right, trying new things, and making them work; but now, when I put a site together for myself, it's the content that I am interested in - and I just want to get to it without too much fuss.
Homesite 4.5 - One time I went dumpster diving and found the software with a site licences :P
Oh dear, Elite Web! You've just altered my image of you quite sharply! :)
Before I go into my story, I should here explain that I started designing web sites in the early 1990s, before there were any WYSIWYG editors, or even frames! I, in fact, beta tested both HoTMetaL, HotDog, and later Front Page when they were new.
By the time Front Page hit the stores, I was what I now call an "HTML snob," part of a group of people who thought that somehow using an HTML editor was somehow cheating. I remember getting in several heated discussions on various boards on the internet about the slackers who used editors.
Then, one Thanksgiving, we were seated around my mother's table when my step-father, a journalist from the front in World War II, began talking about his Underwood. (For those of you who don't know, that's an old fashioned, non-electric typewriter with no screen whatsoever!)
He went on to rant further about people who "pretended" to be journalists yet used word processors. It changed my entire outlook on things.
I use DreamWeaver 4 for most sites. I use NetObjects Fusion 7 for very large sites. And I use Arachnophilia 4 (the non-Java version) to clean up code or tweak stuff.
The hubby runs a local news site which has become too cumbersome for words and is about to start using eMediaAdmin, specifically for news sites.
<added>Oops! I see the hubby already posted here, though he didn't mention that specific site, so I'll just leave that part in.<added>
Since Macromedia bought the product line from Allaire (or did they buy Allaire?) it's only gotten better. And now, with DreamWeaver integration it's even better.
-u4ea
For larger sites I prefer some kind of CMS: makes it easier to maintain consistency in layout and linking.
Multiple use covers most languages by far the best VSL.
-gs
I use hotmetal pro 6
a bit dated perhaps but I think still excellent value for money as a wysiwyg editor
I use notepad and increasingly TextPad which I agree with other posters is fast has blazing max memory capabilities and well ... I do need to send them the money .. I have been evaluating it too long :-)
I am and will be using databases as much as possible .. they expand on the possibilites available from css and ssi .. there is just no need to complicate the very different tasks of "page design" and "content production" by muddling them together which causes minor mental chaos at times :-)
There is an emacs interface to HTML-tidy, but I prefer to use that program separately in batch mode. May try it out, though.
I'm surprised that CSE HTML Validator hasn't been mentioned. It's not WYSIWYG, but is also has spell check, code validation check and links to the W3C standards for different versions of HTML, XML, and CSS. It is easy to use tags that you don't use often, they are all listed in a menu system.
It will validate and colour highlight for: HTML, C, C++, CSS, Delphi, Perl, Java, VBScript and SQL. So it's quite flexible for many tasks.
