HTML Editors I have known!

HTML editors: there are a bunch of them out there! From Prego style "It's in there!" to software packages costing bunches of bucks: Chances are you could, at this very moment, with the proper know how, bang out a real webpage! Here are my experiences with some HTML editing applications.

Prego: It's in there!
With your Windows 95 computer came a pair of freebies concerning the wonderful world of words: WordPad and Notepad. WordPad is a true word processing app (though not nearly as powerful as WordPerfect, Word, etc) that can handle several different formats. While WordPad can open up HTML documents, it cannot save/resave documents in HTML format (wadupwidat?). Notepad on the other hand, despite its limits can indeed open, and write HTML documents. Plus, Microsoft Internet Explorer uses Notepad to display the source code when you use the view source command. This means you can save HTML code to view later (Netscape will show you the source, but you can't save it or even copy it!).

Go get this Freebie!
Of course, Notepad has very limited functions in editing and searching text. Available on the net as "postcardware" is EditPad, the creation of a lad from Belgium. EditPad provides a toolbar for your editing pleasure. Plus you can search for text in EditPad with a find and replace option. But EditPad's big plus is the ability to have several documents open, but have only one window to deal with! Documents are accessible by tags on the top of the text window. This can be very handy when you're working on multiple pages. If your contempt for Bill Gates runs deep enough, you can even replace Notepad with EditPad. I am a big fan of EditPad.

I have made extensive use of the essentially free HTML editor, Arachnophilia. Essentially free means you don't pay money for Arachnophilia, but it's issued as "careware". Arachnophilia is for your costs, probably the best value in an HTML editor. It belongs to a different family than the ones reviewed so far: the WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) family. WYSIWYG editors are generally easy to use, and Arachnophilia is no exception. Some great helps provided include color palettes for helping you determine colors for text and background, table and form wizards, and drag-&-drop RTF text to HTML conversion. Arachnophilia has a button that will launch a browser to preview your pages. Right clicks bring up a menu of very handy tags like Paragraph and Line breaks, center, and text tags (B, I, U). You can either browse directories to place images or links, or just place bare tags to be filled in later.

Arachnophilia Tips:
This is kind of a nit-picky peeve, but the Browser Preview button slips off of the right hand side of the screen at 640x480 resolution (Higher resolutions leave plenty of room for the big buttons). I personally don't like the small buttons, so when I use 640x480 resolution I just put up with it. Really you don't have to scroll at all to get to the button, but there's just not a big target to hit!

Also, if you don't have a lot of processor power or memory, you would be better off making pages with lots of text in a word processor in the RTF (Rich Text Format), and use the drag-&-drop feature to make them HTML files. When your system is really pushed, Arachnophilia can be slow to lay down your type. It's not too bad for working with HTML tags, but it can be irritating for composing.

High Horsepower, Moderate Cost

Coffee Cup Software has a pretty good HTML editor in Coffee Cup HTML editor++98. There are plenty of buttons to take care of just about all common HTML tags and attributes. Coffee Cup lets you preview documents with two browsers. The shareware edition has several JavaScripts to use, with over 40 more promised upon registration. Coffee Cup also provides buttons you can use to boot other useful programs of your choosing. The HTML editor also allows integration with Coffee Cup's Image Mapper++ software and their Cascading Style Sheet application (Download each separately). You can hit a button to put a Coffee Cup Button on the bottom of your page (it links to Coffee Cup to get the button!)! Coffee Cup HTML Editor++98 is easy to use and powerful, and with all the additional scripts you get for registry, $40 doesn't seem quite so bad after all!

Warning!
Coffee Cup editor is shareware, and it reminds you of it in no uncertain terms. I have either run into a bug or one of the most deviant nags ever. Let me show you a tag Coffee Cup laid down after extended unregistered use:

<IMG SRC="omo_sgw.JPG" WIDTH="1536" HEIGHT="26112" BORDER=0>

Check out the width and height attributes! Count carefully: that's Twenty-Six THOUSAND pixels high!!!! For the record, those are not the dimensions of the image, nor are they intended to be! If you load a page with an image tag like this, even in preview you'll be sitting awhile as it loads! I ask simply, is that a nasty bug, or an extremely devilish and sadistic nag? Or maybe just what I get for not registering. For the record, I went back to using Arachnophilia and EditPad after this!

High Horsepower, High Cost

In this category would be applications like Adobe's Page Mill, Microsoft Front Page, etc. I do not have experience with this level of editors just yet. I would imagine the experience with these big buck guys would be similar to a souped up Arachnophilia or Coffee Cup, and if they weren't WYSIWYG editors, I would probably revolt or something.

Prego: it's in there part Deux

If you have a fairly modern word processor (Like Word 97), you already have an HTML editor included. Actually, I shouldn't call it an editor, because you really don't edit the HTML in a page. What you can do is save your page as an HTML document, so in essence it's similar to a WYSIWYG type of editor. Of course there are limitations to what you can do as far as designing pages with a word processor as your webpage maker. The big one is type, since you have only 7 font sizes in HTML. You can pump out decent looking webpages, especially big text pages (in fact, you're looking at one right here!). Before you save to HTML, save in the "house format" (.doc, whatever) first and then go to HTML. You will probably be prompted by the word processor to do this if you go straight to the save as HTML option.
Another option is in your DTP/layout applications. Adobe's PageMaker 6.5 has an export filter to make HTML documents. It is covered in the Classroom in a Book for PM6.5, but I haven't tried it out yet.

HTML editors; you've got one or you need one. And these aren't the only ones out there. Search around and see what works for you.

Back to Web Stuff