Hi, Here's a bit of what I've learned jumping from editor to editor.
1) Don't pay for and editor, unless your filthy rich or can freeload one off a company you work for. There are free alternatives that are at least as good as the one's you pay for.
2) WYSIWYG (point and click) is pure evil. I used to think it saved time. It doesn't. It may be that a new WYSIWYG editor will appear that will prove me wrong, but in my experience they produce invalid code and what's worse is it's unreadable so that you have to rewrite the page if you ever want it to validate of change it to XHTML.
3) You'll probably want to keep a couple of them on hand in case your working on different types of projects since each one is better at different tasks. Currently I'm using Eclipse at home (for my own server, Apache/PHP) and PSPad for work (an IIS/ASP server).
A short review of a few I've used (just google to find downloads):
1) TSW Webcoder: Not bad for newbies. It requires regristration to get rid of the popup things which is anoying. It is basically for HTML/CSS coding only. It has no support for server-side scripting like PHP or ASP besides serverside scripting and no support for XML, which is why I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else. The program itself looks nice and the build in ftp manager works well.
2) PHP Coder (Maugma Studios): I got this during my search for decent PHP indegration. PHP Coder and Maugma Studios are essetially the same program with the difference that Maugma Studios will inseccently bug you to give them money. PHP Coder is a good program for PHP coding as well as basic HTML/XHTML but I really wouldn't recommend it for anything else.
3) TopStyle Lite: This is _the_ program for CSS. Granted I haven't really looked around for alternatives, but this one is pretty good. What I really like about it is the buit in style inspector that will allow you to quickly view what broswers and want version of CSS your code is compatible with.
4) Eclipse: This is an IDE developed by IBM. It is open source and highly extensible which is what makes it such a gem. With the PHPEclipse plugin, it is hands down the best program for PHP developement. There's also plugins for just about everything else under the sun (even games).
5) PSPad: This is an excellent text editor. One thing I really like about it the multitude of options it has for syntax hilighting as well as the multihighlighter. I also has a multitude of options that I haven't even looked at. The one fault in this thing is the FTP manager. It locks the program up while your transfering files. On a dial-up connection that can mean that your spending a while twidling your thumbs during uploads. The solution is simple though, just use an external program for FTP.
There you go. Hope that helps.
Alan Trick
Paul wrote:
I have been writing html code for awhile now and and starting to realize how inaccessible and non-web compliant my pages are. I have always hand written code in Edit Plus 2, is there a better editor I can use for web standards ( like Dreamweaver MX ? ) and where should I start for tips on accessibility and standards compliance.
Thanks for any help.
Paul
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