An HTML editor for the users

November 3, 2015 3:44 AM

I have several clients that need to edit a small HTML template a couple times a month. They have very little HTML knowledge, but they just need to edit the values within the tags. Do you have an editor or workflow that you could recommend?

I have sent these users good templates, but they seem to have a half-life, as with each successive edit I watch their template degrade.

I can work with them to make sure they open the original template each time, which will hopefully help.

I want to try to find an editor that is easy for them to work with, yet will show them when they are missing tags.

Another option, I could write a small program that lets them input their values into the template and outputs the well-formed HTML.

posted by Folk to Technology (6 answers total)

Is it possible to have them use Markdown instead of HTML? That would eliminate problems such as malformed HTML tags and missing closing tags. Markdown editors such as MacDown and MarkdownPad have a live preview pane, so users can immediately see the what they're changing, including formatting. There are many off-the-shelf Markdown-to-HTML converters, including simple online ones like dillinger.io. The downside is that Markdown only supports a subset of HTML tags.
posted by neushoorn at 4:02 AM on November 3, 2015

Depending on the values that need to be modified, I would consider a WYSIWYG editor. A very simple one is Blocknote.
posted by megatherium at 4:42 AM on November 3, 2015

Maqetta is an open-source web-based (front end implemented in Javascript and HTML5, running from a Java server) HTML editor and GUI for designing web-based UIs. It's possible to define custom properties for HTML elements so that when the user clicks on an element they get a form to fill in those custom values (along with the standard HTML properties.) It's not particularly focused on ease-of-use, but it seems much more easy to add custom properties than in other web-based open-source WYSIWYG editors I've looked at, and the server component (which you can run on your own system and access through http://localhost) is designed to write out flat files rather than store everything in a database or anything of that sort.
posted by XMLicious at 5:38 AM on November 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

This may be more than you need, but I really like Perch.
posted by elerina at 12:31 PM on November 3, 2015

There are loads of WYSIWYG editors to help you with stuff (TinyMCE is another example that hasn't been mentioned yet), but I find they create more problems than they solve since they try to "help" a lot. And if you write a program for them to enter files, you might be signing up to modify that every time you want to change the format.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 2:16 PM on November 3, 2015

Are you sure you aren't looking for a Content Management System? This sounds like a problem better suited to that sort of solution (i.e. you have a template, and they enter content into it).
posted by Aleyn at 9:48 PM on November 3, 2015