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wysiwyg html editors, freeware or shareware.. any ideas?

not really

i've tried one or two and i always felt they just wern't that good... either they are code based with a preview page like allycode... which is fine but not really wysiwyg or they have weird as fuck interfaces and spew out dodgy code

i mean even dreamweaver isn't fantastic working in design mode and it beats the pants off of most of the competition

so no sorry havn't seen any free wysiwyg editors that i could recommend
 
I can't download a copy of dreamweaver, I have to have legal software.

I do have an old program Softquad HotMetalPro which in its day was pretty good (and not that expensive) but I am pretty sure its JavaScript engine is out of date so it may damage the code on some of the pages I want to work on.

I may just do a test to see if it will work.
 
I still use an ancient copy of Hot Metal Pro for the web site I look after, but I've never even thought about doing Java Script.

I have had Kompozer (free download) recommended to me, but don't know if it does the Java thing.
 
A CMS is an option for the future, (Actinic and Magento are options) but with them I am concerned about producing search engine friendly pages.

I like HotMetalPro, if I can use it it would save me a lot of time as I know my way round it.

Thanks for the other suggestions, FrontPage and Nvu and Kompozer .. at work I have Office Pro for 2007 (I think) I didn't notice FrontPage bundled with it but I may take a check on that.
 
Is hotmetal pro still going, must have been the first HTML editor I used way back when.

I dont think MS do Frontpage anymore, the last stable release was 6 years ago. You'd be looking for Expression Studio instead, which certainly isn't part of Office.

Kompozer (at least on Linux) has a Javascript console built in, as well as CSS editor.
 
A CMS is an option for the future, (Actinic and Magento are options) but with them I am concerned about producing search engine friendly pages.

I like HotMetalPro, if I can use it it would save me a lot of time as I know my way round it.

Thanks for the other suggestions, FrontPage and Nvu and Kompozer .. at work I have Office Pro for 2007 (I think) I didn't notice FrontPage bundled with it but I may take a check on that.

For the love of god, please dont inflict a frontpage created site on the internet.
 
yeah dont do front page ever!!!

Just go with a cms type thing if you need wysiwig and canne nick dreamweaver.


Actually scratch that, dreamweaver is in my bad books, been trying to work out what the fuck went wrong with a webpage for the last hour and it turns out dreamweaver had decided in its infinite wisdom to add a &nspb; to a line of code, which was breaking it. Piece of shit!


dave
 
New versions of dreamweaver are fairly good not really had a problem with cs4 and am hoping for even better with cs5. Although I spend most of time in code view. My company is cheap though and I have mx on this machine which is just shite.


dave
 
It isn't a frontpage site.

It is a proper site which I want to be able to edit, add new and delete pages etc ...

All I need is a suitable tool.

As to whether HotMetalPro is still going, I think it reached its maximum development with HMP6 which I used for years, it is good but not up to date these days. Mind you, all I want to do is some wysiwyg html editing, nothing ground breaking so perhaps it will do. Hope so.
 
Well then you need a CMS! Honestly, it will make your life a million times easier. Wordpress couldn't be simpler and there are loads of free themes out there so it'll look great.

Seriously, have a Google. You don't even need much knowledge of coding, if any.
 
I am not going to use wordpress.

We already have four html sites with shops on them. We don't want to replace our sites, (at least not yet) we just want to edit pages, add pages and delete pages to our existing sites. And I have plenty of experience doing just that, I must have built 20 sites from ground up with excellent search engine performance.

There is nothing you can do with a CMS or wordpress that you can't do with a half decent html editor and ordinary html pages.
 
Even if you didn't want to use wordpress or whatever learning the minimum html/css required and using notepad would still be a better option than a wysiwyg html editor. You can produce perfectly SEOed pages in wordpress nothing to worry about there.
 
Even if you didn't want to use wordpress or whatever learning the minimum html/css required and using notepad would still be a better option than a wysiwyg html editor. You can produce perfectly SEOed pages in wordpress nothing to worry about there.

I am pretty good with coding html in textpad or notepad (textpad is better) but mucking about with nested tables and the like, I just can't be bothered to do them in code, HotMetalPro just does them with clean code in seconds, it honestly is not worth the hassle to try to do them in code.
 
Actually scratch that, dreamweaver is in my bad books, been trying to work out what the fuck went wrong with a webpage for the last hour and it turns out dreamweaver had decided in its infinite wisdom to add a &nspb; to a line of code, which was breaking it. Piece of shit!

&nspb; is the bane of design view
that and the general problem of distinguishing between <p><br /> or something that should be a list
 
i would say that tables in code are a fucking pain

but i also say.... why are you using tables?

i'm guessing it's a legacy from the days when tables where still used for design...

switching to a CMS would be a fucking chore even if it would possibly be less work in the long run so i can see why you don't want to

also yes doing stuff in code is probably going to produce the tightest code but it is also quite masochistic i mean i do it but then i mainly do php and i also teach webdesign so i have to know html and css from text up

i would say if this is a long term work project they really should fork out for dreamweaver yes it's expensive but it's not that expensive and it's going to be a lot better to use then a chepo/free wysiwyg editor even for all it's oddities especially with a legacy site, if it's a one man band i can understand why you don't want to fork out that much but it's a legitimate business expense for a web based business

microsoft expressions is a little cheaper while still being quite good and has the bonus of the old IE checker
 
html css and javascript are all text based wysiwyg editors try to make things easier for you(some with more success than others) but if you know it already all you need is text baby*




* it's the all you need is love for the computer age
 
There really aren't. Well, possibly FTP upload etc but not in terms of the actual code.

HotMetalPro6 will link check the whole website and present it to you as a clickable virtual map (quite useful), it will also verify you are using correct HTML which notepad will not, also it constructs complex tables in fractions of a second and presents pages in three views, code, tags and as in a browser, again things that notepad does not do.

Plus, I know my way around it (because I used it for about 5 years) so I can work quickly. I hope that I am able to use it for these sites. Hope so.
 
i would say that tables in code are a fucking pain

but i also say.... why are you using tables?

i'm guessing it's a legacy from the days when tables where still used for design...

Yes, I am behind the times, I should be using css for layout but for the time being I will probably still use tables for tabular information.

I doubt I will use them too much.

switching to a CMS would be a fucking chore even if it would possibly be less work in the long run so i can see why you don't want to

I am not yet convinced that either of the ecommerce packages we are considering - Actinic or Magento will produce fully SEO compatible pages for the non ecommerce parts of our websites.

I need full control over TITLE, Meta Description and Keyword tags, H1, H2, H3 etc ... Body code in P, images and alt and title and links inc title tags ... I am not yet sure Actinic or Magento offer that level of control on the non ecommerce parts of their websites.

i would say if this is a long term work project they really should fork out for dreamweaver yes it's expensive but it's not that expensive and it's going to be a lot better to use then a chepo/free wysiwyg editor even for all it's oddities especially with a legacy site, if it's a one man band i can understand why you don't want to fork out that much but it's a legitimate business expense for a web based business

It might come to dreamweaver. It would not be a wasted investment as I would have the opportunity to use it in future but for me there would be a learning curve.

What we are doing is trying to extend the life of three websites which at the moment are prohibitively expensive to add content to. The current pages have loads of SSIs and the like and are notoriously a pain to play with. I am converting them to static html and will then take responsibility for adding content away from our web services supplier.

The most convenient is if I can use HotMetalPro6 because i know it well. But there are other options also.
 
Yes, I am behind the times, I should be using css for layout but for the time being I will probably still use tables for tabular information.

I doubt I will use them too much.



I am not yet convinced that either of the ecommerce packages we are considering - Actinic or Magento will produce fully SEO compatible pages for the non ecommerce parts of our websites.

I need full control over TITLE, Meta Description and Keyword tags, H1, H2, H3 etc ... Body code in P, images and alt and title and links inc title tags ... I am not yet sure Actinic or Magento offer that level of control on the non ecommerce parts of their websites.



It might come to dreamweaver. It would not be a wasted investment as I would have the opportunity to use it in future but for me there would be a learning curve.

What we are doing is trying to extend the life of three websites which at the moment are prohibitively expensive to add content to. The current pages have loads of SSIs and the like and are notoriously a pain to play with. I am converting them to static html and will then take responsibility for adding content away from our web services supplier.

The most convenient is if I can use HotMetalPro6 because i know it well. But there are other options also.

Re: Magento... there's an SEO module that allows you to easily edit everything you need to. £75, mind. Well worth it though.
 
Re: Magento... there's an SEO module that allows you to easily edit everything you need to. £75, mind. Well worth it though.

Aha, that is good to know. Magento is the choice of my favoured bidder at the moment. It would be good if we can use it.
 
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