ARCHIVED: For HTML, what editing software is available?

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To create HTML files, you can use simple text editors, or desktop applications such as word processors, to manipulate code by hand. You can also use specialized HTML authoring systems to automate the coding.

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Text editors

If you prefer to code HTML by hand, you can use a simple text editor to create web pages. Brackets is an excellent free HTML editing application from Adobe available for both Windows and Mac. Common text editors for Windows include Notepad and WordPad; both programs are standard in Windows. For Mac, TextEdit (standard in Mac OS X) and TextMate are popular. Also for Mac, BBEdit is a combination text and HTML editor. Major Unix text editors include Nano, Pico, Emacs, and vi.

Note: If you use a text editor or other desktop application to create web pages, be sure to save these files with the .html or .htm file extension. Also, avoid filenames with two or more words unless the words are linked by dashes or underscores. For example, this filename would not work:

  my file

But this filename would:

  my_file.html

Web authoring tools

Dedicated HTML editing programs offer a variety of web-oriented features not found in other programs. Many allow you to quickly and easily incorporate Java applets, JavaScript, animated graphics, web forms, and other advanced features. These programs also allow you to quickly design whole web sites with dozens of different pages. An example of a web design program is Adobe Dreamweaver. A freeware web design program called Amaya is available from the World Wide Web Consortium.

Adobe's Dreamweaver, and a great deal of other Adobe software, is available to IU students, faculty, and staff for download via IUware, or on DVD through campus bookstores. See Individual Adobe software titles available at IU

Note: If your web authoring software doesn't include an SFTP publishing option, you will need separate SFTP software to transfer your files to the web server. Examples of SFTP software include WinSCP (Windows) and Cyberduck (Mac); both are available from IUWare.

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Last modified on 2021-09-08 10:23:44.