For many many many years now, I’ve maintained my websites using SoftQuad’s HoTMetaL Pro 6. This was a very good and very powerful HTML editor that, alas, has been abandoned over the years (SoftQuad was sold to Corel, who sold the product to BlastRadius, who abandoned HoTMetaL in favor of XMetaL). What did I like about HoTMetaL Pro? A number of different things:
- A tags-on view that was a mix between WYSIWYG and being able to edit tags. In a sense, it was like “Reveal Codes” in WordPerfect, where you could edit the content of tag.
- Easy to use editing of tables in existing HTML files.
- It was easy to highlight text and surround it with a tag.
- It was easy to select all text surrounded by a tag.
- It was easy to insert and manipulate comments.
- It was easy to validate links and manage a website.
CSS support was rudimentary, but this was a 1990s era tool. Alas, it is no longer supported, and I’d like to have something more stable on Windows 7… as well as something that knows more modern HTML techniques and such. Thus, I’ve been on the hunt for a new HTML editor. So far, I’m not pleased with what I’ve seen. In general, I’m not focused on free software, although Dreamweaver CS5, at $399, is out of my price range.
So what have I looked at?
