What choice of WYSIWYG editors do I have?
NOTE: The below are recommendations made by participants in alt.html. They include both Open Source and proprietary products. This page is not meant to be a definitive recommendation but rather a list of thoughts of alt.html posters. You are advised to download trial editions of commercial products and try them out yourself before splashing out significant amounts of money.
- Namo WebEditor: Take a look at Namo WebEditor 4. About $80 US, with great functionality. The HTML it creates if fairly clean, and it allows you easy access to clean it up. It has several JavaScript applications which work well. I do feel that it is important to know HTML especially if something doesn't look "quite right". Then you can go in and clean it up. Namo uses Internet Explorer to show you a preview. Make sure you check out your page on Netscape. 9 times out of 10 it is going to need additional "tweaking". If you hand code everything, you are less apt to have this problem, however the time it takes to create a site is significantly increased. (very favorable rating on C-Net's software review) because I really need the features I listed above for some advanced sites I want to build. It stands out for its Database features.
- HomeSite: A tag based editor better suited for a web developer than a web designer. There is a simple wysiwyg design mode, but this is frequently left unused by web developers.
- 1stPage 2000: Free Homesite clone. Highly recommended, and has a large cut-n-paste script library. Caters for all levels of web development skill.
- Dreamweaver: pretty decent, though it costs like $300 for the program. (Unless you are planning on using it QUITE often its not suggested you buy it. Very complex and more geared for professional web designers
- Screem: An open-source integrated web development package running under GNOME in *nix based systems. Looks like a bug-free version of Frontpage under X.
- ScriptWorx:
- IBM Websphere Homepage Builder: Easy to use, and doesn't rely so heavily on the templates. It doesn't change the markup to something it likes if you hand code and with the built in validator its really hard to make a mistake. Even the wysiwyg will only produce html4.01 compliant code, and also has a built in w3cwai accessibility checker.
- Netobjects Fusion: it seems to rely too heavily on its "Site Styles".
- HotMetal Pro
- Serif webPlus 6: Its pretty good. It builds some really nice looking web sites and is pretty easy and quick to learn. For the money, this is a incredible, easy-to-use, powerful little WYSIWYG web site builder. WebPlus6 is easy-to-use, inexpensive and does a very good job for simple web sites (and don't need to import an existing site or provide dynamic database support).
- Adobe GoLive: very complex and more geared for professional web designers
- FrontPage Express: If you must use a free Web page editor (other than 1st Page 2000), some have found that FrontPage Express (which comes with Internet Explorer) is satisfactory in emergencies. It's not good for sophisticated layout, but in terms of basic text formatting and inserting images it's fine. The only problem, of course, is that the markup it generates is horrible.