A fair number of HTML editors are available for Web designers and Webmasters. Many people prefer to stick with text editors and the “save, refresh in browser, fix” cycle. But if you are looking for more out of your HTML editor than syntax highlighting or perhaps a bit of HTML auto-completion, check out these five HTML editors aimed at the experienced HTML coder.

Note: If you’re new to Web design, you might want to start with one of the tools listed in Five HTML editors for Web novices.

1: Microsoft Expression Web

My favorite HTML editor for a long time was HomeSite — until Adobe shut it down. Since then, I’ve found that Microsoft Expression Web is a great choice. It has fantastic preview functionality, even letting you easily see the differences between how various browsers render the page. It has the same level of site management that HomeSite had, and it can do some basic ASP.NET forms and such. Most surprising is its adherence to Web standards, given that it is a Microsoft product.

2: Dreamweaver

Dreamweaver is the choice of many professional Web developers, and it’s probably the most well-known right now. One of Dreamweaver’s neat features is that as you develop, it can show you what the page will look like on different screens, like tablets and phones, at the same time. Dreamweaver also has lots of support for AJAX, PHP, and a variety of content management systems.

3: CoffeCup’s The HTML Editor

The HTML Editor is very much like the late, great HomeSite. It has a stripped-down feature set focused around a code-only view. While it lacks some of the features that other editors have, if you are the kind of Webmaster or designer who prefers to 100% hand code things and you don’t care for the tool doing things on its own, The HTML Editor deserves a look.

4: Aptana

Aptana is an open source Web development IDE built on top of Eclipse. It is also designed to work with both PHP and Ruby (and Ruby on Rails). Although it has a lot of features for Web development beyond HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, the nature of the languages it supports means that it also needs to be a good HTML editor. It ties to the Git source control system and can deploy not only over the usual routes, but also through Capistrano and to Rails hosts in the cloud.

5: HTML-Kit Tools

HTML-Kit Tools has a number of novel features, including built-in file versioning and the ability to have a real-time update window on a second monitor that changes as you type. If you find that its already low price is too much, you can use the previous version for free.

Your picks

Have you had a good experience using any of the tools on this list? What HTML editor is your all-time favorite?