Date of purchase or download:
June, 2010Name, version and URL of editor
WebPlus X4 from Serif Software.
How much did you pay for your software?
$50 to $99What type of editor is this?
WYSIWYG editorWhat operating system(s) does this software run on?
Windows
My Review
First off NO ONE has ever gotten writing HTML web pages right. No. One. Not Dreamweaver, Amaya, Kompozer, CoffeeCup - no one. If you want to see something that is close to being right - look at WebPlus from Serif. To design web pages what you are really doing is creating a 2D CAD layout. There should be layers you can turn on/off. You should be able to hide/show every item on the web page. And you should be able to easily use/modify every single command each and every HTML/CSS/DHTML/XHTML/DOM Object/Trigger there is. Whether or not it is now deprecated. Based upon what option you select (like CSS1, CSS2, etc...), the program should generate the HTML needed to handle that type of a set-up. Finally, it should create and maintain a Javascript database which allows you to drag'n drop calls to your scripts, add in the code for you, and not allow duplicates so you don't get errors if you accidentally do that. No one program does all of that. They all only do parts of the above.
That said - WebPlus is one of the better editors. It has a WYSIWYG interface, allows you to type in HTML code (sometimes), allows you to modify SOME of the parts of the HTML commands (but not LINKS! Can't change the onMouseOver/out/down/up/left/right/whatever.) Unlike DW which can (and does under the right conditions) mucks things up royally - WebPlus either will - or just won't work with a web page. All items are kept in a special wpp file which is ok but means you can't edit things directly. Instead, you lay out your designs, export them to the site, and THEN fix the problems it creates. And no - this isn't a rant against WebPlus. It's just another program that only does some of what really needs to be done and believe me - at least it works and doesn't crash.
If you took the best parts of WebPlus (great layout and code generation), Dreamweaver (great editing but really sucks displaying which is why they started making LiveDemo because they couldn't display their own code properly!), and Kompozer (absolutely the best 'Let's edit every single thing an HTML element has') and put them together - then you'd have a great HTML editor. Until then - hand code or use WebPlus.
