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HTML hand coding program that makes life easy!

D

dingdongbubble

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 1, 2007
538
0
Hi

Can you please suggest a simple, low resource using HTML and CSS coding program? Basically I want to do the same that I so on a simple text editor but this program makes my life a bit easier by coloring different tags and stuff, putting up buttons or keyboard shortcuts for commonly accessed tags, completing my tags by closing them with the flick of a button. I dont want a WYSIWYG but a low end program for typing out HTML and CSS.

Preferably I want it cross platform. If not then can you suggest a program for Windows as well.
 
There's a very handy 30 day trial of Coda (and that's 30 days of use, not 30 days from the first time you open it). There's also a rebate it you also own Transmit, which, IMO, is the best ftp program out there, well worth the money even if the free CyberDuck is all right and does its job...

I'm considering migrating my html, css and php hand coding from my favourite texteditor, the free BBEdit nephew TextWrangler, to Coda.

Don't know anything about cross platform as I'm not using Windows without a gun to my head...
 
HTML hand coding program that makes life easy!

I am looking for a program which will make hand coding for me easier. I am not looking for a WYSIWYG editor at all. Basically I want to replace my simple text editor with this new program. I want it to take very little resources, including disk space and performance. Much like my text editor. I would prefer it to be cross platform and if not then can you suggest a program for Windows as well. I do not want a program which can do HTML but has WYSIWYG as well because I already have Dreamweaver for that. I want to learn hand coding and I want make my life easier instead of using a simple text editor.
 
Resources

It takes up RAM and stuff. When I am on someone else's computer, I dont want to install a whole copy of Dreamweaver. Kind of important part is that the WYSIWYG tools might distract me or tempt me to depend on them. I am a beginner and I want to learn rw hand coding first so that I know how a website works and stuff.
 
I have yet to find one text editor with syntax highlighting that's available across all (or most) platforms.
Well, there's one which is recently released called Komodo Edit, but I don't like it that much since it feels heavy.

Back when I used windows, I would use Crimson Editor. Doesn't seem to be updated anymore, but it still does its job well.

On Mac side, I recommend Smultron

At work, we use Kate, which I like the most but unfortunately not available on Mac. Or, does anyone knows how to make Kate runs on Mac OS X?


Btw, eb6: "What's wrong with just using the code view of Dreamweaver?"

One is the resources usage, and the other is the cost.
Actually, make that the other way around.


-stndn.
 
I swear by Taco HTML Edit (http://tacosw.com/).

It has has a friendly interface and some good features (live preview, PHP integration/previewing). Really lightweight and straightforward, best of all it's free! :)
 
I have been playing around with Coda, which has a lot of really great features, including built in ftp. It's a very Mac like app, with a few quirks but very elegant.

I use Transmit for ftp.

However, after being a long time user of BBEdit, I have now switched to TextMate - I love it.

Also CSSEdit is good for, well I am sure you can guess!

Other tools I find useful are DigitalColor Meter (which is probably in your Utilities folder) great for finding hex values of colours and the Art Director's Toolkit - the ruler I use all the time for measuring stuff, particularly for CSS development and troubleshooting.

For Windows users I can only offer NotePad... But l I am sure there will be some cool apps on this platform too.
 
Mitthrawnuruodo said:
There's a very handy 30 day trial of Coda (and that's 30 days of use, not 30 days from the first time you open it). There's also a rebate it you also own Transmit, which, IMO, is the best ftp program out there, well worth the money even if the free CyberDuck is all right and does its job...

I'm considering migrating my html, css and php hand coding from my favourite texteditor, the free BBEdit nephew TextWrangler, to Coda.

Don't know anything about cross platform as I'm not using Windows without a gun to my head...
Click to expand...

WoW!!! Coda is so AWESOME. That is what I was looking for for years. I allways came back to Windows and HomeSite when it came to HTML, PHP etc. Editing but this is it!!! Will order some copys at the office here! WOW! You made my day.

CrossPlattform. Well Coda seems to be inspirated by HomeSite so someone you feel godd to work with CODA on mac and Homesite on pc!?
 
I've been investigating these things for a few months now, and nothing I've seen seems to come even remotely close to what I had w/ HomeSite and ColdFusion Studio on Windows. Maybe my needs are just different.

I'm gonna post my needs, and maybe y'all can give me some advise...

1. Basic HTML input. I want a big "B" at the top of the page. If I have text selected and click the "B" (or do a Command-B), I want it to bold the text. If I want to convert a list of 100 (non-formatted) items to be an unordered list, I want a quick way to do so. Simple things like Command-Shift-P to surround my selection with paragraphs. Command-Shift-space to create a space.

2. Basic HTML editing. If I right-click in a radio button form element, I want it to bring a a prompt with a place to fill in the name, value, etc. This prompt should be pre-populated with the values that already existed for those attribues.

3. Multi-file find/replace with regular expressions. I perform this on hundreds of files at a time, so it must be fast and not overload the system. Also, the ability to do multiple find/replace items on multiple files at the same time would be great! I currently have a Text Factory set up in BBEdit that executes about 20 different find/replace commands on multiple files. I'm aware this may be a pipe-dream, and I don't mind sticking with BBEdit for this.

4. An app that won't freak out if I try to open 50 files.

5. Custom snippets that can be grouped by folder (I have a few hundred of them, so one long list won't do).

6. It would be really nice if items #1 & 2 worked with ColdFusion tags too. Hell, I'd even be willing to write a custom library, if that's what it came down to.

What I'm looking for, is Dreamweaver with RegEx, a little speed, and a lot less bloat! I'd be willing to buy Parallels and Windows just to run HomeSite+ if they were still developing it.

Any thoughts?

Thanks.
 
Textmate is THE most powerful editor on the mac platform. I don't really understand why people don't see it. I love coda (I bought a license the day it came out) and I really want to use it because it is a great web development suite, but in the end textmate is just so much more powerful. I probably posted these a million times on this site, but it really shows what it's capable of:

HTML Bundle:
http://macromates.com/screencast/insert_html_tags.mov
Text Transformations:
http://macromates.com/screencast/html_text_transformations.mov
Numbers and Columns:
http://macromates.com/screencast/math_and_column_selections.mov
 
For CSS it is hard to beat CSSEdit.

The CSS override functionality is extremely useful.
 
Alright

Thanks everyone for your great suggestions. I will use CSSEdit, Textmate on MAc most prolly.

But now I need a suggestion for Windows. I have found Macromedia Homesite. Its an old program but it has a great rating. As I am just a beginner, I will be making simple websites, so I dont think its lack of features would be a big problem. But even then do you think it is good enough for me as I will tackle CSS as well soon.
 
HomeSite is the best text-based HTML on the market for any platform, imo.

For CSS, it comes with a copy of TopStyle Lite... At least it used to. I purchased it years ago.
 
Alright I got myself HomeSite and I agree with you. I have started LOVING it. TopStyle Lite was included with it. Its free.

What I want to know now is how I can assign keyboard shortcuts to common tags. Like pressing CTRL+P for a paragraph tag. Or CTRL+B for a line break.

This would really help me.

I have one question related to hand coding. Why do people use the TAB button to leave space before some tags?
 
I have a little extra questions please as I am a beginner. From what I have learned uptill now, HTML is for the contect of the page like text, forms, lists etc and CSS is for making that content look attractive and give it the looks. SO for example if you go to CSSEdit's website and have a peak at their source code, at one point, you can see the HTML for the navigation at the top that has been listed sideways under MAc Rabbit. So basicallt is it true that the listing was simple and was done under HTML but they used MAC Rabbit to make it look like it is right now (attractive and complicated)?
 
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