HTML editor

March 15, 2005 1:47 PM

What HTML editor would you give your dad? OK, it's not my dad, but you get the point. I'm looking for a very simple WYSIWYG Windows HTML editor that will allow a computer novice to easily edit static pages on one of my hosted web servers.

The website is on Dreamhost, btw. I just want to give him the server URL and login, which he can set up in preferences (it's ok, he co-owns the site anyway), then he can go in and edit pages as desired. He's not good enough to write the HTML from scratch, thus the WYSIWYG requirement. And I want all the upload/download stuff to be as transparent as possible.

Packages like Microsoft FrontPage, Dreamweaver, etc are serious, serious overkill. A simple freeware/shareware app will suffice. My user (who co-owns the website) just wants to change the text, set up a few tables and links here and there, and maybe insert a photo. The HTML has been handcrafted from scratch and uses only the most simple tags. What simple package would be appropriate for this?

I've heard BBEdit might work, but I haven't yet tried it and don't know if it's available for Windows.

posted by rolypolyman to Computers & Internet (17 answers total)

Best answer: How about Nvu? It's a freeware WYSWYG editor with a fair amount of buzz about it as a potential Dreamweaver killer down the road, but perfectly usable right now for non-web programmer types.
posted by AlexReynolds at 1:56 PM on March 15, 2005

I am a complete HTML-idiot. I second Nvu.
posted by noius at 2:01 PM on March 15, 2005

I got my old man to use Blogger just because it takes care of so much stuff for him.
posted by inksyndicate at 2:05 PM on March 15, 2005

Nvu is great. It also doesn't seem to generate really hideous markup like FrontPage and Dreamweaver do.
posted by cmonkey at 2:07 PM on March 15, 2005

You should look at WebCoder.
posted by JohnR at 2:08 PM on March 15, 2005

Contribute works pretty well for people I've had ask a similar question. It's like Dreamweaver without anything except edit and upload. For what it does, it's not cheap though. It'll run you around $80.
posted by mike_bling at 2:28 PM on March 15, 2005

This is slightly not what you are looking for, but I am in a similar situation with the library web page that I have designed and now will need to teach someone else how to change. I found that the WYSIWYG editor that they tended to use [Netscape Composer] did really weird things like let them upload a 1MB image and then rezise it onscreen to fit. Don't know if other ones are like that. However, my solution was to upload WordPress and use it as sort of an online tagging tool. You don't have to use it as a blog, you can just edit any page that is writable and it has most of the common tags available as little buttons, sort of like word "select text, click bold" which might be familiar. Other good news is that it's online in your web space, so accessible from everywhere, not browser/computer fixed and you can log in at the same time as your user and figure out what they're doing if they have problems. I added shortcuts to every page on the system [all 16 or so] at the bottom of the "write" page and then it's one click to edit any page on the site, no uploading. I know this isn't quite what you were looking for, but I think it's a different way of solving a similar problem and so far it's working here.
posted by jessamyn at 2:30 PM on March 15, 2005

Whats wrong with vi? ;o)
posted by everichon at 2:34 PM on March 15, 2005

Seriously, I have had good experiences with a non-clueful web client and setting them up with Contribute, just to second mike_bling.
posted by everichon at 2:35 PM on March 15, 2005

You can install WordPress at Dreamhost pretty easily, then add a WYSIWYG editor to WordPress.
posted by kirkaracha at 3:06 PM on March 15, 2005

I use Contribute for my web site and find very easy to learn and use.
posted by dclawyer at 4:17 PM on March 15, 2005

I just tried Nvu. Still beta and the ftp functions are limited, the
WYSIWYG editor is exactly what I needed, Thanks for the tip AlexR
posted by JohnR at 4:36 PM on March 15, 2005

Nvu gets my vote too, but consider cityDesk, It'll allow you to set up a basic look and feel & FTP download sites which can then be added to and easily edited.
posted by seanyboy at 4:41 PM on March 15, 2005

Everichon: It's not emacs. ;-)
posted by five fresh fish at 4:52 PM on March 15, 2005

(You've already gotten good recs, but for what it's worth...)

Cross BBedit off your list of candidates. It's a fantastic product but it's a (Mac-only) text editor, not a WYSIWYG editor. He'd need to handcode his markup, though BBedit would be happy to display a rough preview for him once he's done that. He'd also need to understand enough about FTP or SFTP basics to use the built-in file transfer client. Sounds like a total mismatch with his needs.
posted by nakedcodemonkey at 5:47 PM on March 15, 2005

AlexReynolds:

How about Nvu? It's a freeware WYSWYG editor with a fair amount of buzz about it as a potential Dreamweaver killer down the road

Are you kidding me? I downloaded the Windows version of it and when you click "bold" or "italics", the code it inserts is [span style="font-weight: bold"] instead of [strong] or [b] (and ditto for the italics version)


Wow, real good.
posted by madman at 12:28 AM on March 16, 2005

Mozilla's HTML editor keeps getting better with dynamic image and table resizing, quick insert and delete of table cells, improved CSS support, and support for positioned layers. For all your simple documents and website projects, Composer is all you need.
posted by Lanark at 4:23 AM on March 16, 2005