

Ask HN: The best HTML editors for windows? - michjeanty

What's the best HTML editor for windows? Is dreamweaver the best? How about an open source one? Which one do you use?
NB. Any comment would be helpful.
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albertsun
Just a simple text editor is best. My favorite for Windows is Notepad++

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lhorie
There is no "best" editor. It depends on your preferences and workflow.

All editors will let you type HTML (obviously), but some have more bells and
whistles - Dreamweaver has autocompletion turned on by default, and a WYSIWYG
mode, which helps when drawing image maps, for example (the downside is that
editors with more features usually have longer startp-up times).

The toolsets can also be quite different (e.g. switching from Linux to Windows
line breaks is a breeze in Notepad++, DW has facilities to integrate with
other Adobe products, VS comes with a js debugger).

Just pick an editor from one of the comments and try it (even the commercial
ones have free trials).

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thristian
When I have to write HTML, I use Vim and Firebug.

I believe the primary advantages of GUI tools like Dreamweaver are supposed to
be ease-of-use and visual feedback, along with workflow tools like automatic
site uploading. Since I already know HTML, I don't need the WYSIWYG part (if I
did, I'd use Nvu or Kompozer or Mozilla Seamonkey); for feedback, nothing
beats hitting F5 in a bunch of actual real-world browsers; for site-uploading
on small sites, I'd much rather script the deployment myself with rsync or
sftp, while on large sites there's usually some deploy-from-source-control
script that renders Dreamweaver's tools moot.

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bdfh42
In my opinion, the best editor for everything on Windows is 'e' a TextMate
clone ( <http://www.e-texteditor.com/> ). The cost is trivial and you get a
chance to try it out to make sure it suits you.

This editor is extensible using Ruby or Python and supports the full range of
TextMate bundles so you can get up and running editing your language of choice
right from the start.

The support for HTML is good without being intrusive - plus the colour coding
of the text keeps things readable and helps you find typos.

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ScottWhigham
I'm a .NET guy and I've tried both Dreamweaver and the Visual Studio shell and
I prefer Visual Studio. It can get in my way sometimes but, since I'm likely
in it anyway writing C#, it keeps me from having to use two IDEs.

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bdfh42
You are not wrong about the capability of the Visual Studio IDE (well VS2008
anyway) when it comes to HTML editing but if you are looking to just edit HTML
then VS would be just a little over the top I think.

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nreece
Notepad2

