The 10 Best Macintosh Web Editors for Professional Web Designers

Dreamweaver is one of the most popular professional web development software packages available. It offers power and flexibility to create pages that meet your needs. I use it for everything from JSP, XHTML, PHP, and XML development. It is a good choice for professional web designers and developers, but if you're working as a solitary freelancer, you might want to look at one of the Creative Suite suites like Web Premium or Design Premium to get graphics editing capability and other features like Flash editing as well. There are a few features that Dreamweaver CS5 lacks, some have been missing for a long time, and others (like HTML validation and photo galleries) were removed in CS5.

Version: CS5
Score: 235 / 76%

If you are a graphic artist and then a web designer you should consider Creative Suite Design Premium. Unlike Design Standard which doesn't include Dreamweaver, Design Premium gives you InDesign, Photoshop Extended, Illustrator, Flash, Dreamweaver, SoundBooth, and Acrobat. Because it includes Dreamweaver it includes all the power you need to build web pages. But web designers who focus more on graphics and less on the purely HTML aspects of the job will appreciate this suite for the extra graphic features included in it.

Version: CS5
Score: 215 / 69%

Amaya is the W3C web editor. It also acts as a web browser. It validates the HTML as you build your page, and since you can see the tree structure of your web documents, it can be very useful for learning to understand the DOM and how your documents look in the document tree. It has a lot of features that most web designers won’t ever use, but if you’re worried about standards and you want to be 100% sure that your pages work with the W3C standards, this is a great editor to use.

Version: 11.3.1
Score: 135 / 44%

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 since 2007.

Version: 0.7.10
Score: 127 / 41%

Sandvox Pro offers more features than the basic Sandvox. One really interesting feature is the integration with Google Webmaster Tools. This can help you keep your site on track with SEO and give you options like a sitemap and other features.

Version: 1.6.7
Score: 126 / 41%

Nvu is a good WYSIWYG editor. I prefer text editors to WYSIWYG editors, but if you don’t, then Nvu is a good 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.

Version: 1
Score: 125 / 40%

Good Page offers a lot of the features of a great text editor while also providing some WYSIWYG support. I like the structured views of the document — this makes it easier to see the DOM for JavaScript development. Another cool thing is the CSS editor, which includes the specificity right on the property. If you’ve ever fought with a very complex style sheet you’ll recognize the value of that.

Version: 1.3.4
Score: 115 / 37%

Style Master takes a different approach to web page design. Instead of focusing on the HTML, it focuses on the CSS — so that you can work on the design of your sites in an intuitive way. I’ve found that many websites have much more complicated CSS than HTML code, so this is a great program to use to untangle the mess. Style Master is first, and foremost, a CSS editor that allows you to edit your web pages.

Version: 5.0
Score: 104 / 34%

EditLive! is WYSIWYG HTML editor that companies can use to embed in web applications such as content management systems (CMS). It offers the ability to edit both in WYSIWYG mode and in HTML mode. One of the things I liked was that it has a built-in accessibility analyzer. This makes it easy to write accessible pages. I couldn't find an HTML validator. This is a great tool for web designers who include a CMS or wiki in their deliveries as then clients can maintain the pages themselves after they are built.

Version: 7.5
Score: 49 / 16%