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Jennifer Kyrnin

Is a Free HTML editor the best kind of HTML editor?

By , About.com GuideJune 15, 2004

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I often get email asking about what is the best HTML editor to use. But often what most people are really asking is "what's the best free HTML editor."
money
Image courtesy Modrobiz from StockXchng #643674.
I struggle with this because while there are a lot of good free software options out there, most of them have issues of one kind or another. And none of them can I recommend as my #1 first choice in any situation. Your best bet is to figure out the best Web editor for what you need, and then decide on price ranges. But if you must go with free, and that is the only criterion, then check out these links:
Comments
September 18, 2007 at 11:25 am
(1) Bob says:

You did not include gedit in the list of Linux HTML editors. For a text only HTML editor, I find gedit to be full of useful features and is installed by default on the Gnome desktop. My favorite feature is the tabbed interface, where multiple files can be opened in tabs.

September 18, 2007 at 12:17 pm
(2) Sean McGee says:

Jennifer,

May I suggest Aptana IDE? (http://www.aptana.com/)

They promote themselves as an AJAX application development program, but I have found it great for even regular web programming. It includes a Dreamweaver-like interface along with code assist on JavaScript, HTML, and CSS; plus, a JavaScript debugger to troubleshoot your code.

I love it and I have it on my Mac, PC and my Linux Laptop. (It works on all 3.) It’s worth checking out.

September 18, 2007 at 5:42 pm
(3) Debra F says:

Taco is awesome for the Mac!

September 20, 2007 at 2:19 am
(4) bLiTzJoN says:

You have some pretty robust freebies out there you can’t rule out: NetBeans or Microsoft Visual Studio Express.
Once you get use to the IDE you can then jump into middle-tier development and migrate from web pages to web applications.

October 6, 2007 at 6:38 am
(5) Sandy says:

RJ TextEd is well worth taking for a test drive

November 29, 2007 at 10:52 am
(6) Nils Hendriks says:

I couldn’t find ActiveState’s Komodo Edit 4 in your list. It’s fast, good and free.

November 29, 2007 at 12:50 pm
(7) Jennifer Kyrnin says:

Hi Nils,

I’ll take a look at it. I have Komodo IDE on my list – it is ranked around 38 overall. But I didn’t know they offered a free version.

Thanks!

August 7, 2008 at 3:15 pm
(8) Jean Valjean says:

Screem, no doubt

thank you

August 7, 2008 at 3:19 pm
(9) Jean Valjean says:

oh, pardon,

easyeclipse for ruby on rails is great both for ror and html, very handy, painless install and startup

February 19, 2009 at 2:18 pm
(10) Mike says:

Pagespinner – what do others think of it?

April 21, 2009 at 6:39 am
(11) Harmon says:

I really like Notepad++. You can find it at
http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm
You can set your preferences for Window, UNIX or Mac. It has a tabbed view – it opens multiple tabs so you can edit your html, css, and js at the same time. Just toggle to each tab to view the code. You can save each document to a multiple of programs – php, css, html, c, c++, and a multiple of others.

March 29, 2011 at 10:32 pm
(12) Chris Sansone says:

Completely agree with the above. Notepad++ is great for writing html, css, php, and a bunch of other languages I’ve never even tried.

February 8, 2010 at 11:41 am
(13) Stas says:

I suggest to review also free PHP/HTML/CSS/JavaScript Editor – Codelobster PHP Edition

February 20, 2010 at 7:01 am
(14) Bill Mac says:

I have been using Max’s HTML beauty ++ 2004 text editor.

I think it is great, however i am going to try some editors from your list and compare.

February 24, 2010 at 12:19 pm
(15) maybe_sometimes says:

I don’t think you always need a program sometimes something as simple as an online tool works just fine.

May 17, 2010 at 11:40 am
(16) vincent says:

I think the free WYSIWYG HTML editor from http://ckeditor.com/ is not bad!

September 9, 2010 at 2:25 pm
(17) TheronB says:

Bluefish for Linux. I’ve used it for several years – simple, works great!

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