What is a free window-based application for creating HTML / CSS pages?

Question

My little brother would like to start building sites, and I suggested Frontpage or Dreamweaver. What are some good free alternative programs for it?

Answer 1

Aptana Studio is pretty good. It has intellisense for html and css, which will help it learn a little faster. HTMLDog is also a good learning site.

Answer 2

How bad does your brother really want to know something? If he really wants to learn how to do it right, I would start with a simple text editor, possibly with code highlighting and using a free image editor. Then he can really delve into the courage of semantic HTML, CSS and how web servers work at a basic level, without being distracted by learning a complex tool.

It’s like learning how to ride a shock, it’s a pain in the ass, but in the end you’ll probably get out of a better driver. This is considered double if he is interested in learning a web programming language later, like PHP, JSP or ASP.NET. I think that many people don’t get the basics when they start creating web programming, so in the end it feels like black magic (I look at you in ViewState).

Examples:

• Text Editor: Notepad ++
• Image Editor: Gimp or something from this list: Photoshop Internet Alternatives

Answer 3

Personally, I would suggest a reading list - possibly depending on how old he is - and Notepad (or Notepad ++).

I know this is probably a steeper learning curve, but if he uses WYSIWYG to get started, he will damn well understand what he can safely - and should - take out, and how to manage the code himself, later. When I first started to understand xhtml and that way, I found Notepad the best editor I could find. He did the job, and he made sure you found out.

Now, on Linux, I still prefer Gedit to the other options I tried (with the apologies of fans of Vi and Emacs). Of course, maybe I’m just against it. This has been suggested before ... =)

Answer 4

Visual Web Developer Express. http://www.microsoft.com/express/vwd/

Answer 5

nvu is a pretty nice solution. It is also cross-platform Window, Mac and Linux.

Answer 6

I like NVU if you don't want to learn Html. My suggestion is to use an editor that processes html, css, etc., so that it finds out how tags work, how css works, etc. To this end, I can recommend 2 editors that I have used a lot in the past:

Html-Kit: http://htmlkit.com/ (free with tons of plugins) Aptana: http://www.aptana.com/ (also free with great functionality - javascript is well implemented).

For CSS, I'm leaning towards visual editors for these kinds of things, and I bit the bullet and bought a license for TopStyle: http://www.topstyle4.com/ There is an older free version that works quite well.

Best of luck to your brother.

Tab

Answer 7

If you want to edit the code (rather than WYSIWYG), you can use the lightweight notebook replacement discussed here . For windows, I suggest trying Intype , e-texteditor and editing komodo .

Answer 8

I think Shea and ricebowl : does your brother want to make some mediocre sites, or does he really want to know how and why HTML and CSS work, so he has the basis for creating great sites?

Web page-type applications are great if you a) do not know HTML or CSS and b) you need to create a small website with limited capabilities in a very short period of time. This is where Frontpage succeeded because it allowed someone to create a web page. Unfortunately, all the convenient functions “click this link to add a link” and “drag here to include it in your page” will not help you as soon as you need to do something that the application itself cannot do.

What if you want to embed a Google map on your site, but your application does not have a corresponding toolbar button? How do you fix a site if it is not suitable for users of Opera or Internet Explorer 6, and there is no menu item "Make the site 100% compatible"? Who are you calling when your amazing site requires access to dial-up users in 5 minutes?

The main page (now, I believe, Microsoft Expression Web) and similar programs isolate you from the main technical problems, which ultimately become the responsibility.

Notepad ++ is a good choice, and therefore TextPad ; either one provides syntax highlighting and coloring, which can be very useful if you start. The first is free, the second is conditional. Eclipse is fairly versatile and free, although it may be intimidating when you start with it.

Answer 9

The WYSIWYG open source NVU editor has been discontinued, but its version, based on the same source code, is under development of the name kompozer and is found at http://www.kompozer.net/ . If you're looking for something along the lines as Dreamweaver without the cost or higher end features, then this is a pretty powerful free option. This is usually a good idea to get some idea of ​​HTML and CSS even when using the WYSIWYG application.

Answer 10

It's not free, but for Mac OS X, but it's worth it to invest in a new computer.

Coda .