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Best Web editors for the Mac

jwolf6589

jwolf6589

macrumors 601
Original poster
Dec 15, 2010
4,935
1,650
Colorado
I currently use Sea Monkey as my primary editor. I would use iWeb but it cannot open then files created in other editors so iWeb is out of the question. It also cannot upload to FTP as I understand. Sea Monkey is fine with one problem and that it cannot publish to FTP without me knowing the remote path of the folder. Unlike Text Wrangler which lets me select the folders to upload too.

Anyone got any suggestions? People have told me about Word Press, however I would then need to re-convert/import my entire website which would take a very very very long time, especially since I have code created from the Claris Home Page days. Sea Monkey is able to read those files and edit them just fine with the one major annoyance of having to launch a separate FTP app to upload my files to the web server.
 
tersono said:
Coda
Click to expand...

$100??? You are joking right? I did not see any formatting toolbars in Coda. Is this a WSYMG client, or something else?

Anyways some on IRC suggested I try BlueGriffin which does in fact have a FireFTP add on allowing me to publish right from the client and not bother me to open a FTP app.
 
Are you joking, you never specified a price in your post? Coda is hands down the best editor and FTP client rolled into one. It does not have direct WYSIWYG editing, but anyone serious in web design or development should be coding using Coda or whatever. That said Coda does have a preview feature where you can see what the website looks like, but to make changes you have to change the code. If you were using sea monkey I assume you were doing a least a little coding, so what is the issue with not having WYSIWYG. If you have no idea how to code anything I suggest you learn, but anyways, KompoZer is a free WYSIWYG editor. For FTP you can get Transmit, but being $40 you will probably ask me if I'm joking. Just to point out though, Transmit is included with Coda free. Finally, why can't you use textwrangler? You said you liked its FTP compatability.
 
I use Sea Monkey and have done a little coding, but these days I try and focus more on writing rather than coding. This means that I'd rather focus more on the content of my site, than all the technical ye hah to make it possible. For FTP at the moment I have been using CyberDuck (which is free and better than Transmit in my POV and for my needs). I hate having to launch a separate FTP app just to publish a page, so today downloaded a new HTML client called Blue Griffin. This one has a built in FTP manager and by all appearances looks to be a very nice client. More features will be added soon as I expect the client to catch up to Sea Monkey and Komposer in features.

Text Wrangler has a nice save to FTP server feature, but this client requires I know a bit of HTML which I do not. Its been a while since I have done much HTML as like I said I try and focus more on the CONTENT of my site than on the technical ye ha that makes it possible.


testcss said:
Are you joking, you never specified a price in your post? Coda is hands down the best editor and FTP client rolled into one. It does not have direct WYSIWYG editing, but anyone serious in web design or development should be coding using Coda or whatever. That said Coda does have a preview feature where you can see what the website looks like, but to make changes you have to change the code. If you were using sea monkey I assume you were doing a least a little coding, so what is the issue with not having WYSIWYG. If you have no idea how to code anything I suggest you learn, but anyways, KompoZer is a free WYSIWYG editor. For FTP you can get Transmit, but being $40 you will probably ask me if I'm joking. Just to point out though, Transmit is included with Coda free. Finally, why can't you use textwrangler? You said you liked its FTP compatability.
Click to expand...
 
I admit I am actually pretty impressed with Blue Griffon's support for CSS3 and HTML5. It doesn't look like that bad of an editor at all! I would suggest learning how to code in CSS and HTML eventually, though, Blue Griffon seems to be a pretty good alternative.
 
testcss said:
I admit I am actually pretty impressed with Blue Griffon's support for CSS3 and HTML5. It doesn't look like that bad of an editor at all! I would suggest learning how to code in CSS and HTML eventually, though, Blue Griffon seems to be a pretty good alternative.
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How do I code in CSS3? Also whats the advantage to doing it via an editor verses using Word Press?
 
jwolf6589 said:
How do I code in CSS3? Also whats the advantage to doing it via an editor verses using Word Press?
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You can code CSS3 in any text editor but it is easier in a dedicated code editor such as text wrangler because it gives you hints and highlights the parts of the code to differentiate it. CSS3 means Cascading Style Sheets and just tells the browser how your website should look so i.e. if I type in

Code: 
body {
background: blue;
width: 1000px;
}

I'll get a background that is blue and 1000px wide. This is just an example but overall CSS is very easy to learn. The CSS "3" adds more functionality to CSS. With CSS3 comes imageless reflections, shadows, gradients, and rounded corners. Additionally, transitions, transforms, and 3D effects/rendering are a focus of CSS3. With CSS3 web designers can make amazing websites and designs. More benefits of CSS include the ability to change the look of an entire site with a few lines of code. The way CSS works is that you create a CSS document ( for example mysite.css) then you link the stylesheet using HTML. So if you called the CSS document mysite.css you put this in between the <head></head> tags in your HTML document.

Code: 
<head>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="css/mysite.css">
</head>

Now every HTML document you link to the stylesheet is affected by it. This saves a lot of time because now the design of a site is in one easy place. To learn CSS do a google search on it. It is really easy to big up and is connected to HTML (so if you understand a little HTML you will get the point of CSS better).

Wordpress uses a more complicated language called PHP to build webpages, but it works with CSS. So really knowing CSS helps you everywhere you are designing something. I haven't used Wordpress in a while but I believe you can just get templates if you don't want to learn CSS, but if you want to customize them at all you must know at least a little CSS.
 
It sounds like you're a blogger or writer. In that case, I suggest you take the leap into WordPress. It's a great, albeit limited, content management system. I also highly suggest MarsEdit as a desktop client to manage the install. The best thing is that you're in for $40 bucks.
 
kufford said:
It sounds like you're a blogger or writer. In that case, I suggest you take the leap into WordPress. It's a great, albeit limited, content management system. I also highly suggest MarsEdit as a desktop client to manage the install. The best thing is that you're in for $40 bucks.
Click to expand...

I would. But converting my entire site to Word Press I am not sure how.

www.cerm.info

Got any ideas?
 
Looking at the code for you site it seems that you would really benefit from moving into a content management system such as WordPress or Drupal, they can be a little tricky to set up (you need to setup databases etc and not just hard code your pages as you are doing now) but once you get the hang of it its really powerful and will save you hours when you do updates.

I would follow the guide at http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress to start, you may want to learn CSS too, there are plenty of guides online to get started.
 
For a pure text editor, my all-time favorite tool is Ultraedit and it now comes in a Mac flavor. It has a FTP client built in so you can edit files directly on the server.

I agree with previous posts, however, that you should seriously consider Wordpress. CMS is the way to go these days.
 
Cyberduck is a free FTP client and has everything you need for ftp transfers.

Flux 3 is fantastic, WYSIWYG but also allows you full coding control. Unfortunately does cost a bit, but I got it a while ago at 50% discount on Macupdate. Very happy with it!
 
I'm fairly new to learning HTML but I've found Coda to be fantastic. Can really be configured to do what you need it to do, the clips module is awesome, and some of the plug-ins are great. I'll also use TextWrangler for some stuff.

If someone suggested iWeb then you could try Sandvox. Similar but with a bit more flexibility. My wife uses it for her website.
 
I've always used Dreamweaver, like since it first came out. And Homesite before that back in the day. I still end up just typing out my code the old fashioned way 99% of the time, and just use DW's preview pane to see how it looks as I go. And it's import tabular data thingy is great for when I gotta make a table based on a spreadsheet. I can cut and paste the cells right from Excell, but then I get all that yucky Word html.

Never tried Coda, maybe I'll check it out one of these days.

DW might not be an option for you though if you're looking for something cheap. I use it now since it comes with Adobe CS and my company always has the latest version going, so they let me keep the previous version for myself whenever we upgrade :) So I run CS5 at home and CS5.5 at work :)
 
Flux

try flux, its an amazing web editor that uses html 5 and even has a built in html 5 video player you can use. all and all. i'd call it the photoshop of WYSIWYG.
;)
 
iDisk said:
BBedit anyone? especially with the new price drop
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If I wasn't so used to my Coda workflow, I'd use BBEdit for sure now. That price drop is fantastic and BBE 10 looks like an awesome update.

If Panic slacks at all with Coda I'll switch. Kind of flumoxed that Panic doesn't have a Coda update for Lion yet - being able to run full-screen in it's own space should be a dream. Is BBEdit Lion-updated?
 
I guess im the only one that likes Dreamweaver....

I tried using Coda but I couldn't see a way to use external style sheets.
 
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