I'm looking for an editor--freeware mind you--that would let me edit HTML documents at the code level but on a more intuitive basis like when writing a document in Word. Note that I don't necessarily mean a WYSIWYG editor, which is as far as I'm concerned a myth. I mean something where you could tell it, say, that when you hit Ctrl+T it might put in a <tt> tag, and when you hit Ctrl+T again it will take it out or close it as appropriate. Something that lets me do this at a fairly raw level would be great. Most editors are of the WYSIWYG variety and I just don't have time to look through them all.
It's just a pain when writing a technical article to constantly keep typing out certain tags. I'd like an easier way.
Lummox JR
ID:276039
 Apr 16 2005, 5:33 pm (Edited on Apr 16 2005, 5:45 pm)
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i'm very partial to http://chami.com/ 's HTML Kit. while you don't necessarily have a "'CTRL-T' makes tables" sort-of-thing, you do have a variety of wizards available from a tab-bar that lets you quickly define a table's structure, and it pumps out the appropriate code. comes pre-defined with lots of code helpers like that, and there are many free plugins available for other functionality. and you can integrate browser previews, or compilers (like PHP, Perl, etc.) into the system. properly set up, it can handle BYOND projects too, i feel.
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digi turned me on to HTML-Kit awhile back, and I have to say I quite like it as well. It's got lots and lots of stuff you can use and configure. I'm very partial to the built-in FTP that lets you edit anything remotely.
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I use http://www.htmlbeauty.com/. If I could figure out how to modify the syntax highlighting, I'd edit DM code with it. (Sometimes I do anyway, just for some of the handy features.) I've never sampled HTML Kit, so I don't know HTML Beauty stacks up against it. I haven't felt the need to look for other editors since I found it.
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Well, so far I've run into a lot of serious disappointment. NVU is a nice editor that doesn't do jack along the lines I'm looking for. HTML Beauty is nice for editing code, but doesn't really give me an option to quickly insert a particular tag in any way or even create a macro to do so. And neither one of these includes the <tt> tag in their menus! Even more frustrating is that I can't change the keyboard mappings in either program, which to my mind is an absolute must for any decent editor.
I'm quite unwilling at this point to check out HTML-Kit without knowing a lot more about its actual capabilities, lest it turn out to be another editor that's useless to me and will be difficult to install or get rid of. (Worse, HTML-Kit is some form of shareware, not quite freeware, and I'm wary of it.) I generally dislike installing a lot of software, particularly if I'm keeping only 1% of it, and so this having to install something just so I can find out it's useless to me has begun to seriously piss me off. Is it too much to ask that an editor be able to do something with other tags that it can do easily with <b> and <i>? I don't think so, but none of the editors I found are even capable of a crappy menu-with-shortcuts workaround. Right now I'm hard-pressed to find anything these editors will do well that a text editor can't. A preview or faux-WYSIWYG is nice, but I don't need it. What I need is ease of editing, not wizards, and no tool I've found has that. What about just plain text editors? Is there a text editor that's just HTML-savvy enough to help me? Lummox JR | |
http://www.textpad.com/
It even has the indentaion feature like in DM, where you can select multiple lines and use tab to indent them all at once. It has macros, and more. It's pretty decent. ~X | |
Xooxer wrote:
http://www.textpad.com/ Hrm. I use TextPad on my laptop but don't on my desktop machine, and it's been so long since I've used it at work that I don't recall how far its features go. I'm wondering if it's quite enough for this task. It was the first thing I thought of, and so far does seem like the stand-out favorite. Lummox JR | |
HTML-Kit isn't shareware. It has 2 or 3 plug-ins that require registation, but that's it. There are hundreds of free plug-ins, and besides, you don't actually need the plug-ins to accomplish anything.
HTML-Kit allows you to change the keyboard mappings. HTML-Kit includes <tt>. HTML-Kit is all that you're looking for, and possibly even more, but you're too stubborn to download it! =P | |
Lummox JR wrote:
What about just plain text editors? Is there a text editor that's just HTML-savvy enough to help me? It's not freeware, but UltraEdit (http://www.ultraedit.com) is my choice of text editor. It has some nice HTML features, and the ones you requested are amongst them. When you are done writing, just select the text and click a button to have it converted to html entities. /Gazoot | |
You could give Vim a try. It's free. I'm not sure if it does what you want, because I don't use it to it's full potential, but I'll take a look.
Yes, it does seem to have an 'insert text' function. I'm still not sure if you'll like Vim or not, but here's a link. http://www.vim.org | |
Gazoot wrote:
Lummox JR wrote: Wonderful, I have fallen in love. Not too bad for near fourty bucks. Looks like the school will be buying me this program to manage the site, with a tad convincing. ~@ | |
DarkView wrote:
You could give Vim a try. It's free. I'm not sure if it does what you want, because I don't use it to it's full potential, but I'll take a look. Good gads. If it's based on Vi, the most hideous text editor ever to walk the earth, then free isn't good enough. They should pay people to use it. Lummox JR | |
Lummox JR wrote:
Good gads. If it's based on Vi, the most hideous text editor ever to walk the earth, then free isn't good enough. They should pay people to use it. Them's fightin' words. | |
Wizkidd0123 wrote:
HTML-Kit isn't shareware. It has 2 or 3 plug-ins that require registation, but that's it. There are hundreds of free plug-ins, and besides, you don't actually need the plug-ins to accomplish anything. I second, third, and carry that motion! *and* it's not a pain to install OR de-install. i've been using HTMLKit for a couple of years now- for free, mind you- and it continues to do it's job for me (which is primarily whipping up HTML/PHP templates quickly, and working on PHP/Perl code). a nice feature i use is building up library snippets of HTML/PHP code that i use often, and are accessible from a pulldown menu. | |
Have you looked at Nvu? (http://www.nvu.com) It seems very powerful and freeware.
I know what you mean, I translated some text a couple of days ago and it's just impossible when dealing with tags.
/Gazoot