Search
Recommended Products
Related Links


 
 

 

 

Informative Articles

Basic Website Design Principles
One thing that sometimes escapes web designers is the need for the end product to be focussed on the customer rather than on what the web designer can provide. While new whizzy things are nice they can be at best unnecessary and at worst so...

Create and deploy a website from start to finish!
Create and deploy a website from start to finish! Need a website for small business, church, sports team, or community but don’t know where to start? Don’t have the time or maybe even the knowledge on how to build and or publish a website? Well let...

DHTML-Introduction
Think of DHTML as not a singular technology but a combination of three existing technologies glued together by the Document Object Model (DOM): 1. HTML - For creating text and image links and other page elements. 2. CSS - Style Sheets for...

Hexadecimal Color Notation on the Web
When designing elements for your webpage, you will often be called upon to specify a color. For example, the code for a span shown below specifies that the color of the text within the span will be yellow. <span...

HTML Editors 101 - Smaller Is Better
Microsoft FrontPage and Macromedia's Dreamweaver aren't the only HTML editors on the market. In fact, niche HTML editors from various independent developer offer a number of advantages over the big boys. SiteSpinner SiteSpinner is a user-friendly...

Lotus Notes Domino and Web: application development – tips for programmers
Beginning with Domino version R4 it has integration with the Web, and the server itself becomes a HTTP-server. The next releases of Domino Web-server add new functionality (for example servlet managers, supported JVM versions upgrade, etc). To...

MAMBO- a full-featured content management system
Content management systems (CMS) store and manage an organization's electronic document and Web content so that even the non-technical authors and employee of the company can reuse the information across different applications which is otherwise...

Showing and Hiding HTML elements using Layers
A long time back I visited a site that had a very fancy, animated navigation bar. Now, as a professional web developer, I'm not in favor of DHTML-supported, fancy navigation bars, but it was very fascinating. What they had done was, whenever you...

The Ten Web Page "Commandments"
(c) Jim Edwards - All Rights reserved http://www.thenetreporter.com ===================================== "What makes a great web page?" People ask me this all the time, though they often encounter difficulty boiling the question down to so few...

Web Design for the No-Talent Artist
Not everyone can hit a 90 mile per hour fast ball 400 feet. That's why there are so few major league baseball players. Most everyone enjoyed art class while in school, but we also realized there was probably only one in each classroom who actually...

 
 
 
Finding a Good HTML Editor

Once you've decided to write your own HTML, and you've got some idea of how it all works, there's one thing left to think about: which program are you going to use to do it? While you can use programs like Notepad or Wordpad that come with Windows, they don't have any specialised HTML editing features, and that can slow you down more than you'd think.

The choice of HTML editors out there, though, is bewildering: there are literally thousands. Here's a guide to things you should look for when you're searching for your perfect HTML partner.

Syntax Highlighting

One of the most vital features for any editor is syntax highlighting. This means that it understands how HTML works, and will make tags a different colour from text, making it easier for you to see what you're doing.

You should try to find an editor that has up-to-date syntax highlighting and checks whether your tags are valid or not. Instead of just colouring anything you put between angle brackets, it should check whether what you're entering is valid HTML, and warn you if it isn't (usually by turning it red).

Another thing to look out for when it comes to syntax highlighting is what the editor supports that you might want to use with HTML: it's good to have highlighting for CSS and Javascript, as well as PHP or Perl (or whatever you use server-side). Some editors mark them in the same colour to indicate 'not HTML', while some highlight them in a useful way - this is what you want.

Tag Suggestion

It's good to get an editor that knows about valid HTML tags and how they're structured, as that means it can let you know what you should be including and let you browse through tags to find the one you're thinking of. If you type '
Tag-suggesting editors can often save you typing, if they come up with a drop-down when you start typing and allow you to accept their suggestions easily by pressing tab or space. This can speed up your HTML editing significantly.

FTP

 


Upload

It will save you quite a lot of time if the HTML editor you choose has a built-in FTP upload facility, allowing you to enter your server, username and password, and upload the files you've just edited to the server. If your program doesn't do this, you'll have to use a separate FTP program and mess around finding where you saved your files.

Easy Text to HTML Conversion

If you're making a lot of text content into HTML, one important feature to look for is easy conversion - otherwise you'll spend a long time putting

tags at the start and end of each paragraph. Ideally, the software should be able to spot pieces of text that are headings, lists and so on, and add HTML tags for you automatically. It won't be helpful for everyone, but for text-heavy pages it's indispensable.

You might also be able to find editors that can accept input in text formats that aren't plain text - Microsoft Word documents, for example - and turn it into sensible HT

A Few Suggestions

Metapad (www.liquidninja.com/metapad). A good drop-in replacement for Notepad, but lacks HTML-specific features.

SciTE Editor (www.scintilla.org) has excellent syntax highlighting, making it easier to be sure that you're writing correct HTML tags and you haven't made any layout mistakes.

Crimson Editor (www.crimsoneditor.com) is popular, although you might find it a little technical. Its biggest advantage is that it has built-in FTP uploads.

HomeSite (www.macromedia.com/software/homesite). Has good tag suggestion features, although it might be a little bulky for some tastes. Very good if you have trouble remembering tags.

As a final note, you might try editing HTML in the 'code view' of one of the visual editors - Dreamweaver is especially good at this, if you have it. This lets you switch back and forward easily to see what effect your changes are having.

About the author:



Original Source: Eclipse-Articles.com - Serving over 25,000 Articles.



Information supplied and written by Lee Asher of Eclipse Domain Services

Domain Names, Hosting, Traffic and Email Solutions.