DIY: Six free web editors for coders

By Jack Wallen in DIY IT Guy, June 2, 2011, 3:49 AM PST

Komodo Edit, Bluefish, CoffeeCup Free HTML Editor, NetBeans, KompoZer, and Aptana Studio 3 make Jack Wallen's list of the best free web editors. Read overviews about each tool.

Even if your small shop's website is hand-coded, it doesn't mean the coding has to be done with a straight-up text editor. There are web editors built specifically for editing HTML, CSS, XML, etc. that can make a hand-coder's life much easier. These are the best graphical user interface (GUI) web editors I've found for businesses on a tight budget.

Komodo Edit

Komodo Edit might be the best XML editor on the planet. The open source editor works flawlessly with XML, and it offers numerous features for CSS PHP, Python, Ruby, JavaScript, Perl, Tcl, XML, HTML 5, and CSS 3. Komodo Edit also has a great plugin system that adds features.

The one drawback to Komodo Edit is ads, which means you'll have to deal with some "What's new with ActiveState and Komodo" announcements. Don't worry, though, that pane can be minimized.

Komodo Edit is available for Linux, Windows, and OS X.

Komodo Edit

Bluefish

Whenever I need to manually edit HTML, I look to Bluefish first. You can get plenty of work done in a text-based editor (such as vi, gedit, or Kate), but why not use a tool that offers features such as: project support, multi-thread support, recursive file opening, snippets sidebar, integrated external components (make, lint, tidy, javac, etc.), unlimited undo/redo, inline spell checker, auto-recovery, upload/download sync, syntax highlighting, and code block folding.

Bluefish is available for Linux, Mac, and Windows.

CoffeeCup Free HTML Editor

CoffeeCup Free HTML Editor is a full-featured web design system with built-in FTP uploading, table wizards, frames, popups, fonts, support for HTML5, and CSS3. The difference between the free version and the full-blown version is that the free version does not contain the visual editor.

CoffeeCup Free HTML Editor is available for Windows.

NetBeans

NetBeans has been a longtime favorite for many HTML coders. However, keep in mind that this powerful tool can be intimidating for new users. With bundled IDEs for Java SE, Java EE, C/C++, and PHP.

Netbeans is available for Windows, Linux, Solaris, and OS X.

KompoZer

KompoZer is a complete web authoring WYSIWYG system that combines a great visual editor and web file management tool into one product. Even folks without technical skills can build sites with KompoZer.

KompoZer is built around Geko, so the UI is about as simple as it can get. With KompoZer, anyone familiar with Dreamweaver will feel right at home. KompoZer's features include:

WYSIWYG editing.
Integrated FTP file management.
HTML code creation that works with all popular browsers.
The ability to jump between WYSIWYG Editing Mode and HTML using tabs.
Tabbed editing.
Support for forms, tables, and templates.

KompoZer is available for Linux, Windows and OS X.

KompoZer

Aptana Studio 3

If you develop more for JavaScript or other Internet-application building elements, then you might want to take a peek at Aptana Studio 3. This tool offers support for HTML 5, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and Ruby. Aptana Studio 3 takes this one step further by offering information on each web browser's support for each element. Aptana Studio 3 also includes a nifty deployment feature that allows you to deploy your code using FTP, SFTP, and FTPS either by full upload or by synchronized uploads. Aptana Studio 3 is free and is available for Linux, Windows, and OS X.

Aptana Studio 3

Conclusion

If none of these web editors suit your needs, you will most likely have to look beyond the "free" category. Unless, you're an absolute purist and only want to edit with vi or emacs. However, if you are using vi or emacs, you know you already have the definitive editor for every need.

Also read on TechRepublic:

About Jack Wallen

Jack Wallen is an award-winning writer for Techrepublic and Linux.com. As an avid promoter/user of the Linux OS, Jack tries to convert as many users to open source as possible. His current favorite flavor of Linux is Bodhi Linux (a melding of Ubuntu ...

12 comments

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spacepioneer

I didn't see Free HTML Kit v2.92, available at www.chami.com. it is an excellent editor, even considered by some to be the Rolls Royce of free editor. It has over 400 plugins to help with coding, a preview option, split screen and many other features for it. It is my choice for raw coding. check it out!!

Dethpod

Though I rarely just code in just HTML with out a server side language, but with all the JS and AJAX that I have been doing lately it is becoming more common, But when I do Aptana is fantastic. Especially with it's support for the different JS libraries (jQuery, Prototype etc.), with code inspection/completion for these JS libraries and even your own hand rolled libraries. Plus it is Eclipse based and thus supports just about any language out there...

eCubeH

When I researched FOSS web IDE / tools for Fedora / Linux some 5 years back, Quanta Plus was quite highly rated, which is why I chose it. Since then, I have been using it for PHP, all kinds of XML, CSS etc. Powerful and very easy to use. Nice documentation. Supposedly designed for KDE, but I have been using it on Gnome 2.x without problems.

kernwormite

I was introduced to Notepad++ in a introductory course at a community college. It has many support languages and is very simple to use.

jeffpk

KomPozer is derived from Nvu, a great open source HTML editor thats been around for years. If you dont want all the file management features of KomPozer, Nvu is a great choice.

C-3PO

I love Komposer and it's predecessor NVU because of the WYSIWYG - I understand code, but find it cumbersome and much quicker to throw pages together in a WYSIWIG editor... but Komposer still works like a text editor - the components that could be added are not easily included (drop menus, templating, etc.). It hasn't been updated in some time, and I think these improvements would really help - speaking as a relative neophite. I just want to get my web page up and running without the hassle of having to fart around with HTML, Java, pearl and any number of languages that require my spending R&D time before I get to the design... Even in the paid products, none of them look "easy" - so there's the challenge - anyone up to it?

dregeh

1 Like

This is a great tool, and allows the "beyond html" development in the microsoft world.

Alpha_Dog

For a Linux environment it is about the closest thing to what I used a couple of years back. FirstPage2000 was an awesome context highlighting text mode editor that allowed you to visualise the changes made in its own browser window before committing. This was especially handy in the odd times when a quick adjustment was necessary on a live page since it had a built in FTP client that allowed access to the web server as though it was a networked drive. The company released the new and improved model later for a rather high cost and took down the old free versions. The new one had some pretty advanced features like a wysiwyg mode allowing tweaking of existing code (great for tables!) and other features, but it ran terribly slow on anything but high end equipment. The last time I used it was 8 years ago, about a year before our complete migration to Linux. It's one of the few (about 3) software titles I miss from our Windows days.

Spitfire_Sysop

This is very similar to the article: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/webmaster/free-or-inexpensive-online-web-design-tools/332 by Ryan Boudreaux I mentioned in that thread that he didn't mention the official standards compliant editor of the W3C. Amaya is a WYSIWYG editor from the W3C so it helps you push out standards compliant code the first time. It's free and it's been around since 1996. It's got context highlighting for HTML, CSS, XHTML, MathML, and SVG. Distributions are available for Linux, Windows and now MacOS X PowerPC and Intel. http://www.w3.org/Amaya/

Justin James

... because the last time I used it (a few years ago) it was riddled with bugs. :( Great app to stay compliant, but the bugginess was simply unacceptable. I've been using Microsoft Expression Web for a while now and love it, it's the closest thing I found to the defunct Home Site. J.Ja

usr19x@

I also found Amaya buggy, which was disappointing since it came from W3. And like yourself miss Home Site memory leaks and all. Crimson Editor is a close replacement and is free.

Justin James

I'll take a look at Crimson Editor. HomeSite was more than a great, NON-WYSIWYG tool, it was a good file/publication manager, which Expression Web does OK as well. I can't bring myself to use Dreamweaver... ugh. J.Ja

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