Editors for Web Programming

When doing web development (or any development without an IDE) you need a good text editor. Many people might think of MS Word when I say text editor, but that is a word processor. While it can serve as an adequate WYSIWYG editor for creating websites it isn't intended to be used to do real programming (most html tags are "misspelled"). With more interest in web development in my family lately I have gone though my Gnome applications list and have some editors to suggest...

For WYSIWYG editors, Word actually does an ok job, as does OpenOffice but something specifically intended for web development might be better. If you have some money to spend there are plenty of great alternatives, but if not you might want to look at NVU. Unfortunately NVU's development has been slower lately, but has all the features you need to do basic (or even more complex) web development. Something it doesn't do is close tags in the source editor, but you can't have everything. There is an unofficial bugfix/fork of NVU called KompoZer available too, but I haven't tried it yet. Another choice, is the integrated editor in the Mozilla suite (now called SeaMonkey). It is very similar to NVU but with some features missing. You can open the Mozilla composer by clicking this button:












While any of these also offer a source editing mode, a dedicated source editing package might be better for those that know some of the web development languages and html. The best (free) editor of this type that I have found in my short quest is Bluefish. Bluefish supports a variety of languages for syntax highlighting and will automatically complete html tags (as well as a few other types). For some reason these features aren't on by default and need to be enabled on a per document basis from the Document menu. The big disadvantage of Bluefish is it's sketchy Windows support. There is a Windows port available here, but I'm not sure if its any good.

If you want a more generic text editor you can't go wrong with vim (VI Improved for anyone familiar with vi). Unfortunately it does have a fairly steep learning curve (hint press i to insert/append text, escape + :w + enter to save, escape + :hardcopy to print, escape + d + arrowkey to delete a character, etc). vim will do color syntax highlighting on just about any language (including the web ones). You can get a copy here, along with a nice GUI. Windows users may prefer a copy of Programmer's notepad, which is a bit easier to learn and has some of the same features.

Of course, this is no where near a complete list, though it should get you started. Anyone have a favorite editor not listed? Unix people may also like things such as nano, pico, joe, etc but this is for a more general audience. Once you get an editor you like, check out webmonkey and start learning to build websites.


Well back to my homework, believe it or not this was a quick post (if not short) so feel free to complain if something doesn't make sense ;-)