News & Commentary: 2007-09-20

The Quest for a Nice HTML Editor

So, everyone knows that HTML is the go, and we want CSS with that too. It's kind of weird the way every 10 years or so we invent a new standard for document markup but that's what progress is all about.

What can you use to write HTML?

The best thing I have found is KompoZer. It has all the things you want:

• Free software (both download for gratis, and Open Source MPL).
• Based on the gecko engine (same as Firefox).
• Multi-platform (runs on MS-Windows, Linux and Mac).
• Support for CSS stylesheet editing.
• Proper CSS rendering (part of gecko engine).
• Easy to apply CSS classes to page contents.
• HTML sourcecode view (just like a regular text editor).
• WYSIWYG rendered view (just like the browser would show).
• Hybrid rendered view containing yellow HTML tag markers (easy to see layout structure).
• Clean HTML output (your tech-team will respect you).
• Lots of helpful menu and toolbar options.
• Don't need to be an HTML/CSS expert to get good results.
• Suitable for re-editing existing HTML/CSS sites without massive butchery of what already is known to work.
• Integrated "push" to webserver via FTP.

KompoZer is based on Nvu (that is short for "New View"), and the features are very similar. Nvu development has slowed down a bit so the KompoZer team are forging ahead with bug fixes.

Read the features for yourself. This program can certainly be recommended for anyone who wants to launch into HTML editing quickly, cheaply and easily.

What's wrong with an ordinary Text Editor

Nothing is wrong with a text editor.

The one niggle I have with KompoZer is that it's just a fraction sluggish to work with. My laptop is not all that powerful and it seems that KompoZer gives the CPU and RAM a good thrashing even for simple tasks (just like Firefox does). A text editor is certainly faster. On the other hand, the advantages of KompoZer over a text editor are:

• Much easier to preview your work.
• KompoZer keeps open/close tags balanced automagically with no effort from the user.
• KompoZer's menus and toolbar have knowledge of all the commonly used HTML syntax so you just pick from a list or fill out a popup dialog rather than looking up the details in the standard document.
• The CSS editor has dialogs for all the common CSS entities of which there are rather a lot and which can be difficult for many people to remember.
• When applying the CSS classes to your document, it keeps the list of available classes updated as you define new classes, or as you link to different style sheets. Very handy for jumping in to edit someone's existing site.
• Sorts out escapes for & and < and similar so you don't get tricked.
• HTML and CSS are not much good to work with in the raw. They are clunky, verbose formats with arbitrary syntax and annoying inconsistencies. It's kind of nice to hide the ugliness.

It also has features to ensure that it is not much worse than a text editor for people who want to indulge in tricky tinkering.

• It has a direct sourcecode editing mode so you can flip over to raw HTML editing any time you want to.
• It knows about PHP and will leave the PHP chunks alone.

So and So tells me to use Front Page or Dreamweaver

Everyone hates Microsoft's Front Page. The page authors are constantly arguing with their technical teams over browser compatibility and site maintenance. Then someone wants to integrate a CGI and it ends up looking like a sore thumb and completely out of place with the rest of the site. Let's not go there.

Adobe Dream-weaver gets good reviews... mostly from Mac fans. Sadly, the same people also buy overpriced iPhones (then have their hands out for a refund when Apple admits to ripping them off) but they will keep on loving Apple just like battered wives keep coming back to their husbands and kidnap victims fall in love with their kidnappers. This fact makes it a bit difficult to get an honest feeling for what Dream-weaver really is like as a product. I guess a quick summary is that it is expensive, and doesn't suck as bad as MS Front Page.

For people already entrenched in a particular way of doing things, probably nothing I say will make a difference. For people who want to get started, KompoZer is fast to dowload, and cheap, and easy to start building sites. Source code is available for people who want to hack their special features and give themselves a competitive edge. The license has minimal restrictions so you can just get in there and get going.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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