Free Text Web Editors for Windows

Komodo Edit is hands down the best free XML editor available. It also includes a lot of great features for HTML and CSS development. Plus, if that isn't enough, you can get extensions for it to add on languages or other helpful features (like special characters). It's not the best HTML editor, but it's great for what you pay, especially if you build in XML.

HTML-Kit is a free text editor with a lot of features. It's one of the more popular ones available for Windows. It has tag completion and HTML and CSS validation and a lot of features you wouldn't expect in free software. The only issue I have with it is that it doesn't default to XHTML, you have to convert your documents to that. Many of the About.com Guides use HTML-Kit because it is so easy to extend and make macros for. It is also one of the only free editors I've found with support for accessibility validating.

Aptana Studio community edition is an interesting take on Web page development. Instead of focusing on the HTML, Aptana focuses on the JavaScript and other elements that allow you to create Rich Internet Applications. One of the things I really like is the outline view that makes it really easy to visualize the DOM. This makes for easier CSS and JavaScript development. If you are a developer creating Web 2.0 applications, Aptana Studio is a good choice.

KompoZer is a good WYSIWYG editor. It is based on the popular Nvu editor - only it is called an "unofficial bug-fix release." KompoZer was conceived by some people who really liked Nvu, but were fed up with the slow release schedules and poor support. So they took it over and released a less buggy version of the software. Ironically, there hasn't been a new release of KompoZer in over a year.

Nvu is a good WYSIWYG editor. I prefer text editors to WYSIWYG editors, but if you don't, then Nvu is a great choice, especially considering that it's free. I love that it has a site manager to allow you to review the sites that you're building. It's surprising that this software is free. Feature highlights: XML support, advanced CSS support, full site management, built-in validator, and international support as well as WYSIWYG and color coded XHTML editing.

SeaMonkey is the Mozilla project all-in-one Internet application suite. It includes a Web browser, email and newsgroup client, IRC chat client, and composer - the Web page editor. One of the nice things about using SeaMonkey is that you have the browser built-in already so testing is a breeze. Plus it's a free WYSIWYG editor with an embedded FTP to publish your Web pages.

Selida is a very nice WYSIWYG Web page editor for Windows. It offers a lot of features that make it easy to edit Web pages and is free.

The CoffeeCup Free HTML editor is a text editor with a lot of potential. A lot of the features it has in the menus are reliant on other CoffeeCup products to use - such as FTP, the photo gallery maker, CSS editing, and so on. This is still a powerful HTML editor, but I would recommend you purchase the full version of the editor to get the real juice from this product. One important thing to note: many sites list this editor as a free WYSIWYG editor, but when I tested, you had to buy the full version to get WYSIWYG support. The free version is a very nice text editor only.

PSPad is a programming editor for Windows. It offers a lot of features applicable to Web editors such as HTML syntax highlighting, integration with TopStyle Lite for CSS editing and a built-in FTP client to manage files online.

EditiX Lite is a free version of EditiX for non-commercial use. If you need to manipulate XML or XHTML, this is a fine product. You can use it to write valid XHTML documents, but it's major strength is in the XML and XSLT functionality.