What WYSIWYG HTML /Web page Editor will you recommend?

July 5, 2005 11:28 AM

What WYSIWYG HTML / Web page Editor will you recommend?

A friend wants me to create a website for her small bookstore. I have limited experience in creating websites but am looking forward to the experience. I'm very excited to learn how to create sites. She knows that this will be built whilst I learn and she's fine with that. What editor would you recommend for a beginner that will also be good for me as I pass the novice stage and into possibly a professional stage? W3C standards are seen as an important issue here. Also, ideally, I will be able to show her how to make minor edits (news, events, book signings) to the pages I have created. Sub question: she has her domain name(s) parked. Now, who to go through for hosting? Why?

posted by horseblind to computers & internet (17 comments total)

Nvu. It's free and full-featured. Runs on Mac, Linux, and Windows.
posted by pmbuko at 11:32 AM on July 5, 2005

While free, Nvu is okay but not great, and lacks in usability and features. A better quality choice might be Contribute (for her) or Dreamweaver (for you), albeit not free options.

To answer your second question, these two threads (#4940 and #15279) cover quality, low-cost hosting options.
posted by Rothko at 11:38 AM on July 5, 2005

For someone just learning, I would reccomend Nvu too. Dreamweaver is more powerful, but its probably overkill and too complex for someone getting started.
posted by gsteff at 11:45 AM on July 5, 2005

I feel dirty for doing this, but Segment Publishing is the best hosting money can buy.

Nvu looks pretty good. I think, however, that you'd still be much better off learning how to do it by hand. Then again, I am a curmudgeonly old web developer.

Remember, WYS is not always WYG depending on the different quirks of all the leading browsers.
posted by zerolives at 12:02 PM on July 5, 2005

Hand code with NotePad. You can use Elizabeth Castro's HTML for the World Wide Web. For a simple site, this will probably do, and you'll learn more about how things work than if you dive in straight away with Dreamweaver.

On preview, I'm not curmudgeonly, but I do agree with zerolives
posted by TimothyMason at 12:04 PM on July 5, 2005

zerolives (or for that matter, anyone that might recommend learning by hand): I have no issue with learning to write by hand, so, in addition to viewing source of existing pages, can you recommend specific books, sites, tutorials, etc., that may help in this endeavor?
posted by horseblind at 12:08 PM on July 5, 2005

I agree whole-heartedly with TimothyMason about hand-coding is preferable to WYSIWYG (and that Castro's book is a good intro to HTML), but disagree whole-heartedly about using NotePad. There are a lot of much better general purpose text editors for Windows than NotePad but any of them is painful to use compared to a dedicated HTML text editor. Context-sensitive help, tag completion, multiple browser preview, etc., make the job much more pleasant. You don't have to give up your sanity while giving up WYSIWYG. Building a site with NotePad is like building a house with just a screwdriver; yes, it can be done, but why? On windows I like the free HTML-Kit but there are lots of others.
posted by TimeFactor at 12:48 PM on July 5, 2005

Editors
A big vote for the rarely mentioned HTMLPad as html/css editor - very simple to use but with lots of functionality. And the autocomplete feature is a great learning tool in itself.

Westciv's StyleMaster and Nick Bradbury's TopStyle are also highly recommended for css editing.

The still free HTML Kit is good too.

Online learning:
Westciv have an excellent tutorial on learning web standards.
Lots more at and Holy CSS Zeldman. Oh and keep an eye on the del.icio.us css pages for links to many other resources, especially accessibility issues.

Books
Molly E. Holzschlag's Cascading Style Sheets: The Designer's Edge is extremely well written and will take you from beginner to more advanced.
Rachel Andrew's CSS Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks and Hacks isn't the hoch poch of tips the title might lead you to believe, it's a very structured, extremely well written guide to css via standards.

Templates
A huge resource of free templates to be found at OSWD (Open Source Web Development), great to download and tinker with as you're learning.
posted by ceri richard at 1:04 PM on July 5, 2005 [1 favorite]

I don't know that I can suggest sites for a complete newbie, but I can name a few that have helped me improve the code I write.

First of all, there are about a dozen ways to code anything, and of those dozen ways, probably no one agrees what's best. One of my favorite sources for understanding the arguments behind different markup is Dan Cederholm's SimpleQuiz, which was a series of blog posts where people were invited to comment on what they thought was the best way to markup a specific section of a page. (Dan's written a couple of books that might help, too.)

456 Berea Street has lots of articles you might find helpful, some of them more complex than others. Bookmark his best-of list, some of it will be helpful now and the rest will be helpful once you're more skilled.

If you need help with CSS, sign up for the css-discuss mailing list. They have a wiki, too.
posted by katieinshoes at 1:05 PM on July 5, 2005

On the book front, I find it is almost impossible to go wrong with an O'Reilly book. They are a little slower going than some computer books, but the knowledge they contain is not superficial, unlike some computer books.

I have an (pretty outdated) O'Reilly HTML: The Definitive Guide and it's a good book.
posted by teece at 2:04 PM on July 5, 2005

Hand code with NotePad.

I remember when everyone claimed to code in notepad. As someone else said, its a bad choice. Doesn't mean you have to use dreamweaver though. Lots of tools in between those two Something that lets you have control while also lending a helping hand.

Also, dreamhost hosting. Good mixture of value and support. (way better value than segment).
posted by justgary at 2:08 PM on July 5, 2005

HTML-Kit, definitely. Color-coded, with incredible helpers, features, and libraries. Type <a and a pop-up will show a possible attribute list (href, title, onmouseover, etc.). There is a handy "preview" tab on your editing window, but it's not true WYSIWYG — but really, learning basic HTML will be infinitely worth it.

If she doesn't want to learn HTML, I would not even offer the WYSIWYG option — a good CMS might be all you need to change the front page content. I've heard good things about drupal, but never used it.

I use OnSmart for my hosting. Excellent customer service (24 hour chat tech support), great speed and uptime, and all the features you could ever want — MySQL, PHP, subdomains, et cetera. Enthusiastically recommended. That said, Dreamhost is probably a better bargain, but if you're going to be using pre-built PHP scripts you might run into some trouble with their implementation.
posted by rafter at 2:49 PM on July 5, 2005

I use the Blooberry Reference for all my HTML/CSS needs (of the encyclopedia/dictionary variety, not so much the tutorial variety, which has been covered well already).

I'd also highly recommend not using a WYSIWYG editor for the simple reason that there really is no such thing as WYSIWYG. Starting off believing that there is such a thing is a big mistake, and leads to a lot of frustration later on when you want to flex your designs. Coding by hand is extremely simple when you get down to it, more rewarding, and much more flexible. I recommend JEdit. Be sure to get the Stable version.

A good CMS, on the other hand, is notably different from a WYSIWYG editor, and something I'd recommend looking in to more. CMSes allow you to edit a page without worrying about the layout and design - which is exactly what HTML and CSS are meant to let you do.
posted by odinsdream at 3:51 PM on July 5, 2005

Just wanted to second Dreamweaver for a wysiwyg editor. I'd agree with the above poster that it's something of an overkill and has a sharper learning curve than other programs, but you seem to have a good attitude about learning these new skills, so you might as well learn a program that will scale up with you as you learn.

Eventually you're going to want to learn HTML and CSS yourself, and only use the editor to automate repetitive tasks. I'd never recommend anyone designed in Notepad, especially when there's TextPad. There is no shame in using an editor, and don't let the fact that the Web is full of Web designers make you think differently!
posted by Hildago at 4:20 PM on July 5, 2005

I'm a big fan of the free Crimson Editor for raw HTML handling.
posted by puckupdate at 5:43 PM on July 5, 2005

Sorry about NotePad; I've not done HTML on a Windows machine for some time - I actually use TextWrangler, but that's only for Mac - and BBEdit would be preferable.
posted by TimothyMason at 2:08 AM on July 6, 2005

All these heretical text editors, geez. One uses Vim. There simply is no other ;-)

Get it for Mac, Windows, and all Unices under the sun. I actually do really like it, but then again, I'm probably crazy.
posted by teece at 2:13 AM on July 6, 2005 [1 favorite]