Who can argue with free stuff?
Monday September 17, 2007
I spent the weekend evaluating 44 free Web editors to determine which ones met my criteria of being the best Web editors available for the price. I'd love to know if there are other free Web editors out there that I didn't evaluate - please comment if you know of any. I've listed them all in my order of preference, based on the operating systems they work in. I didn't find very many free Macintosh editors - so if you know of other native Macintosh Web editors, please let me know. And, yes, I know that most Linux applications can be ported to the more recent versions of Macintosh OS, but I didn't evaluate tools that require you to know something of programming or compiling source code to get to run. What are your favorite free Web editors? Are they on my list? Near the top? Near the bottom? Why do you like them more or less than I do?
Comments
I started out using Arachnophilia exclusively for all my web design/HTML/Perl. Today I do much of my work in Homesite 5.5 (not free) but I still use the Arachnophilia - the global replace and unlimited number of open files is great, especially come new year and 2006 -> 2007 time.
I also do my Perl and text file editing in Arachnophilia.
I stuck to version 4.0 - the interface seems quicker and more familiar. I am sure the Java versions do quite well, but .. I still use 4.0.
everything I do, I do in Zend
Taco is a great editor for the Mac. I Love Homesite 5.5 for my Win XP but also used Amaya. I tried Amaya for my Mac and it kept having gui errors. KompoZer did not understand z-indexing. When I first loaded my html page for editing, it displayed in the correct order. The minute I edit something on the page, the z indexing would not render correctly in the tool.
I found Taco HTML Edit and I love it. Located here: http://tacosw.com/
Page three of the four is a broken one.
Hi RSWallace and everyone else who noticed the broken pages,
Thank you for your reports. Unfortunately this is something to do with the CMS that About.com uses and I have no control over it. I am going to have to go into the tool and remove all the items above a certain number (10 possibly 20) until the developer returns from vacation and can fix the problem.
If you would like About.com to notify you when the problem has been solved, please write to them on the Customer Care form at: http://webdesign.about.com/gi/pages/pform.htm
Thanks again for your reports, and believe me when I tell you that it’s just as frustrating to me as it is to you.
If you are going to include jedit for windows then you need to include Scite too since it is a very light editor that supports several languages and has a tabbed interface. Although jedit is a bit better because of the extensive amount of plugins that are available for it. Overall good list!r
Arachnophilia. I started with an early version years ago and have updated to ver 3.9. In amongst all the wonderful tech stuff, I like the facility to adapt to changing web needs (such as changing all the BR to BR /, and the P to P ~ /P). (Oh, and that “all open files” thing… One site used BR a lot, so I opened all 116 files and did a search-replace to change them to BR /; all done in seconds… it was a thing of beauty!)
The first free one I’ve ever used was AceHTML Free. I used it for 8 months then purchased the PRO version. I’ve never had the need to switch.
Happy Dae.
http://www.ShoeStringGenealogy.com/ssg1.htm