your favorite html editor?

[Josh42]

I want to make a web page soon. What editor(s) do you think I should use. I've tried download.com but most expire before I can get any real work done. I suppose I'll end up purchasing one, but for now what do you recommend for free? Thanks.

J. Ciolkosz

[samwichse]

Since I like to use pure text-based html, CuteHTML is what I use, small, trim, and uses practically no resources.

[OuTpaTienT]

Notepad.

[Dove19983]

Well I use Notepad.
You may want to download 1st Page 2000 . Very well done program has easy, normal, expert, and hardcore modes. Usefull for when you know all most nothing about html and usefull for when you know everything and just dont fill like typeing everything. It has soem free scripts done in cgi, html, perl, javascript.

[RobRich]

On the freeware side of things, most opt for Netscape's Composer or Microsoft's FrontPage Express. Other free favorites I can recommend:


CoffeeCup Free HTML

Arachnohilia

Myself? I use FrontPage2K and AceHTML Pro for most basic content with straight manual coding for more advanced options, such as JavaScript. After a couple of debugs and cleanups, everything usually works fine. Then again, I've been known to publish straight FP code code when I feel extremelty lazy, but is not exactly a user-friendly idea.

Robert Richmond

[club_med]

Frontpage 2000 simple and easy to use.

cm.

[MiKe85]

In school I used Frontpage..
At my house I use Arachnohilia.

[club_med]

really ? hmm maybe i should look into dreamweaver then ?.

cm.

[rh71]

I use ColdFusion Studio at work, which is pretty much equivalent to HomeSite and the aforementioned 1stPage2000 is a copy of it. All really nice programs. It doesn't matter if you are an expert or beginner. The tools it provides help a lot...

Tell me Notepad gives you Remove Development Service (even thru FTP) or shortcut keys that can insert code for you around highlighted blocks of text. Don't forget the special characters and the extended find/replace through directories/subdirectories. This stuff rocks.

[Beemer]

samwichse is of like mind. I might start with Front Page 2000, work into Dreameaver for the Flash applications, finish off with CuteHTML for the cleanup. Front Page has some proprietary junk that can be weeded out of the source code. (shrink'er down a bit in file size.

eg:
<strong> </strong>
can be changed to
<b> <b>

You don't have to end off your ordered list tags either.

<ul>
<li>
<li>
<li>
</ul>

Beemer's Windows Tips

Take a look at the Source Code on other peoples web sites and you'll get the idea of what does what in no time. This will help you understand how things work.

If you upgraded from I.E. 5.0 or there abouts, you might have the Front Page Express program. The learning curve isn't a hard one to achieve and will get you up and running in no time. Here is a teaching link of HTML and web page layout and design. I had this as a link during the Internet Proficiency course I recently attended.
http://www.ingenius.bc.ca/course

It covers what is needed within the page code to make your pages, "search engine friendly" and easily found by your piers as well as strangers across the world.

Text relavency, Title match, alt tags, header tags, etc. Yahoo is a directory service which is the most populer way to search for stuff on the WWW. It is human browsed for ranking and subject relavency. You submit a URL and they go take a peek. Other sites are not so forgiving in their ranking practices. Alta Vista ranks according to a bot survey. Could be a spider. Essentially the same thing. You submit a URL, and via automation, a computer program checks your meta tag info.
Keywords
Description
Title
against the words used in the text of the body.

TIP: (spiders and bots, can't read Flash)

The more times the bot or spider finds a word in the body that is one of the keywords and the title, the more hits you gain in the ranking.
Some sites only rank you by the size of your wallet. This isn't really fair to the searcher as how do you know if you are getting the best page from your query?

Lots to learn. Lots of fun.

Cheers!

[Inanis]

I must agree with OuTpaTienT, Dove19983, and probably many others. If you know HTML, use Notepad.

If you dont know HTML . .. learn it, and use Notepad. )

[NDC]

Adobe Golive 4 & 5!

[Yar1182]

I learned on Frontpage and have since moved on to Dreamweaver. It's just easier to get the formatting right.

[hawkman2]

UltraEdit32!
http://www.ultraedit.com

[OuTpaTienT]

Actually, maybe I should revise my answer to be more technically correct. Ya see, I have replaced my Notepad with a better text editor called Metapad. It's free. You can get it here:

http://www.liquidninja.com/metapad/

When I say I replaced Notepad with Metapad, I mean exactly that. I deleted Notepad.exe in my Windows directory, then renamed Metapad.exe to Notapad.exe and placed it in the Windows directory.

Metapad has many helpful functions, mainly search & replace, that Notepad doesn't have. But it's just as fast as plain ol' Notepad. I highly recommend it.