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By Jennifer Kyrnin, About.com Guide to Web Design / HTML since 1997

Poll: Which Web editor do you use?

Thursday July 3, 2008

I was asked today what editors people use and while I have an old poll asking the question, it's over 2 years old and doesn't include such popular editors as FrontPage. So I decided to ask again. There are hundreds if not thousands of Web editors available. So it's quite possible that I didn't include your favorite on the list. If so, you can reply in the comments with the editor your prefer.

Personally, I prefer Homesite, but I've recently switched to a Mac for most of my work, and Homesite isn't available for Mac. So now I use several different editors, depending upon the site I'm working on and the content. I use Dreamweaver, Komodo IDE, and TextWrangler. The majority of my work I do in Dreamweaver.

I didn't include Flash because while it's possible to use it to build a complete website, I don't think that's a really good idea. If that is the only Web editor that you use, please mark the "other" option and post a comment.

One thing to keep in mind is that just because one editor is more popular than another doesn't necessarily make it the best. I have reviewed hundreds of different editors, and I've only found one that I couldn't recommend in any circumstances. If you're looking for a new editor, I have a a questionnaire that can help.

Comments

July 3, 2008 at 10:53 am
(1) Luther says:

I use a bunch of ‘em depending on which I think is right for a particular project (and free).

1st Page 2000–general use

Arachnophilia 4.0–can make up an infinite variety of custom toolbars for repetitive work (though this isn’t user friendly)

Notepad++–for quick revisions

FrontPage Xpress–for forms wizard

Kompozer–for quick and dirty visual page creation.

July 3, 2008 at 12:00 pm
(2) Cassius Zedaker says:

33% (so far) say they use “Something Else”. What, “Else”?

July 3, 2008 at 2:31 pm
(3) Martyn P says:

I answered NoteTab or Notepad++, but I actually use Notepad2. Those were the closest options… I think…

July 3, 2008 at 3:46 pm
(4) frann says:

On Windoze I use CSE Html validator, which is a great editor, as well as validator.

On linux i use gedit with lots of plugins.

July 3, 2008 at 5:43 pm
(5) Bob Scott says:

I use Eclipse with the Flex plugin.

July 3, 2008 at 5:47 pm
(6) Gerry Williams says:

Coffee Cup HTML Editor - although it leaves some things to be desired with respect to CSS I like the ‘tidy’ implementation and the preview option. I NEVER use the WYSIWYG option. ” Cadre WebWorks=”">

July 3, 2008 at 11:38 pm
(7) Randall says:

I have used EditPlus for about 7 or 8 years.

I tried a lot of editors, including Homesite, Notepad++ maybe I am just used to EditPlus it is powerful and simple.

I do use kindasorta WYSIWYG rich text editors in Drupal (TinyMCE and FCKeditor mostly) but I end up editing the source a lot, sometimes just to clean it up or to achieve a format the editor can’t seem to get.

I loathe Dreamweaver - I have to fix up these sites with crazy tables and all the css styles are numbered (what the heck does style77 mean?) the only good thing in Dreamweaver is the automatic upload of saved edits but so what?

I have tried the free version of CoffeeCup if I used WYSIWYG I might use that.

Again, I think it comes down to 1) the right tool for the job and 2) what you’re used to

July 4, 2008 at 12:50 am
(8) Doug Knoodle says:

I use a program called WeBuilder. Can be found at http://www.blumentals.net/webuilder/ integrates a ton of very useful items, tidy, good CSS editor, ect. Can be used for just about every web language you can think of. Enjoy!

July 4, 2008 at 6:11 am
(9) Elliott Rodgers says:

Personally I generally use CoffeeCup HTML Editor for a vast majority of my work (they do a free editor with some features disabled). I agree with Gerry (6) above with regard to “visual editor”. I’ve often found that visual editors regardless of who supplies them bloat code with tags.

I also use good ol’ notepad for a quickie.

July 4, 2008 at 7:10 am
(10) Marcia Purse says:

I still use Hippie97!

July 6, 2008 at 5:28 am
(11) Hermann Ingjaldsson says:

on windows: rj textedit.
on kubuntu: quanta.

they are the best.

July 7, 2008 at 6:43 pm
(12) J. Vanol Jr says:

I use vi, Gedit and Netbeans.

July 8, 2008 at 7:35 am
(13) computerlady says:

HTMLPad has worked great for me.

July 8, 2008 at 7:39 am
(14) Lillian Simmons says:

I use quanta.

July 8, 2008 at 9:05 am
(15) Liam K. says:

I use either Notepad or Mozilla Composer usually.

July 8, 2008 at 9:23 am
(16) Richard says:

I used to use FrontPage until my ISP stopped accepting uploads from it. Now I use Dreamweaver. Good color coding and validation is top notch. I use FTP Commander to upload, which FrontPage forced me to use toward the end.

July 8, 2008 at 9:35 am
(17) Bill OConnell says:

I use vi mostly. Although the features are cool in dreamweaver I just never got used to it. After vi, wordpad or notepad are my next highest.

July 8, 2008 at 9:54 am
(18) John Roblin says:

I’ve tried just about every commercial package that has hit the market in the past 10+ years and “cleaned up” sites from all those and more (like FrontPage).

For me, BBEdit is on top and nothing else has come close to knocking it off.

I know it’s Mac-Only, but it’s worth it.

July 8, 2008 at 11:36 am
(19) H Perlman says:

Even though Homesite is “moribund”, I continue to use it, even after trying to switch to Dreamweaver 3 times. If you’re a code-type designer, try it. I can almost say it is the best computer program of any type that I have ever used. Yes, it could use a couple fixes, but overall with all the features and ability to work on a whole site at one time, I haven’t been able to stop using it. I just wish Adobe would bring it back to life.

July 8, 2008 at 11:41 am
(20) Jeff says:

I use Dreamweaver mostly, but I have an old version, so I’ve been using Notepad++ increasingly to edit CSS and XML, which my version of Dreamweaver doesn’t handle well. Frankly I haven’t seen any tool that handles CSS intuitively, so I’d rather work with the raw code.

July 8, 2008 at 3:04 pm
(21) Joseph says:

I use dreamweaver for design and aptana for programing.

July 8, 2008 at 3:34 pm
(22) Daniel Vomhof says:

Namo Web Editor …. does what I need, and if I ever learned it, could do so much more!!

July 8, 2008 at 4:08 pm
(23) Pedro P. Inga says:

I use HomeSite for coding and editing. I am trying to learn Dreamweaver, but it takes lots of time and work to learn the functions. Sometimes, I use Dreamweaver for inserting images and for other functions does not handle well.

July 9, 2008 at 5:52 am
(24) mada says:

i use EditPlus

July 9, 2008 at 8:28 am
(25) Jason says:

I use Notepad++ for Windows and gedit for Linux. My school no longer gives students Dreamweaver for free, so now I use KompoZer for WYSIWYG environments. And, since it’s free, I’ve also installed and learned to use Visual Studio’s Visual Web Designer. Because I teach professional writing/writing (and not web design or development or whatever) it’s as important to me to anticipate what students might use and how they use it as it is to be able to perform the task.

Browser extensions are also important editing tools - Web Developer, Greasemonkey, and Stylish have been essential for me.

July 12, 2008 at 10:11 am
(26) mrmagoo144 says:

I don’t use an editor. My website builder which is free is a HTML generator. It offers unlimited amount of usage. It is the most versatile website builder in the WORLD! If you are interested in seeing all the features go here
I believe the days of the editor is limited. New technology makes if very easy to insert images, videos, php etc… All the tools you would want to use is just a click away.

July 19, 2008 at 3:34 pm
(27) Dean says:

Aptana more and more and Dreamweaver not as much, even though I just popped for the upgrade to CS3 (I got Fireworks, Flash, Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. as part of the deal.)

I’ve always liked Dreamweaver, but the more I use Aptana the more I appreciate its power. And I’m just using the free version. :-)

July 29, 2008 at 9:46 am
(28) Eduard says:

I like DW as a WYSIWYG editor, although I don’t really like WYSIWYG editors too much by themselves. Most often I use DW for laying out a page’s content, then clean up the code via lots of search/replace, grep, etc; and finally go into the raw sources to finnish off the page. I use Notepad++ as my “default” for source editing, but I’m quite comfortable with any text editor, as long as it has a decent syntax highlighting and doesn’t mess up my code without my permission (for example, did you know that DW MX used upper-case by default for XHTML tags and attributes? that’s the kind of stuff I do not want in an editor).

April 25, 2009 at 10:34 pm
(29) Bari says:

I’m new to website building and work mostly on a Mac. I have found that Expresso works pretty well for most of my current needs. I’ve also got a really old version of Dreamweaver that I use occasionally.

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