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> Help finding an HTML editor
Decky
post Oct 9 2021, 12:05 PM
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I originally developed my website (http://www.nhoa.org.uk/) in 2007 and is often used by association members for the latest information so I need to regularly keep it up to date. I originally used Dreamweaver CS3, part of the Master Collection that I paid about £1,500 for. It recently stopped working and kept crashing for no apparent reason. The only way to cure the problem was to reinstall Windows 10 which cured lots of other problems and left me with what was effectively a new PC. Unfortunately, it was after I reinstalled the Master Collection that I discovered that Adobe had closed down their activation servers several years earlier making all disks useless. I tried contacting them but they couldn’t help and even had the cheek to try and sell me the latest version of Dreamweaver at £20 per month!

Can anybody recommend a free and simple WYSIWYG HTML editor that I can use in place of Dreamweaver please (PC or Mac) that won’t involve a steep learning curve? The HTML code is quite basic and apart from the basic editing tools in Dreamweaver the only extra features I used were switching between code view and design view (WYSIWYG) and the FTP to upload files to the server. I’ve looked at various apps but I can’t find anything equivalent with these features (Aptana wouldn’t run at all). I’m starting to think that the best option may be to edit the code using Notepad which will be a pain. Thanks.

This post has been edited by Decky: Oct 9 2021, 12:08 PM
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pandy
post Oct 9 2021, 08:50 PM
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AFAIK none of the regulars here use a WYSIWYG editor. Maybe someone knows about a good one anyway. Afraid I don't.

Just have to ask, did you really create those pages with an old DW in WYSIWYG mode? I peeked at the source. Looks more hand coded than it looks like the messy abundance that used to come out of DW.
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Decky
post Oct 9 2021, 09:23 PM
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Yes I mainly used the design view to quickly input text, tables, pictures, etc. and then went to code view to take out spurious code and enter commands such as <title> for pictures, links and email addresses. Without a WYSIWYG / design view I might as well edit the code using Notepad and keep checking it in a browser. Bit of a long-winded way of doing it.
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pandy
post Oct 10 2021, 04:20 AM
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I suspected something like that. The markup is way to clean to be the output from a WYSIWYG. You've even removed DW's meta tags. smile.gif

But if that's the case, couldn't you just as well use a text editor + browsers? The markup is clean enough and the layout is straightforward (that's a compliment!). To make changes with a WYSIWYG would mess it up and you'd have to clean it up again. There are lots of text editors that are more feature rich than Notepad, many of them free.

When it comes to WYSIWYG there was a free one called Kompozer that was supposed to be standard compliant and all that. It's discontinued, but can still be downloaded, I think. You don't seem to mind to use old software, so you could give it a spin. Nothing wrong with old software as long as it runs. My text editor is from anno-dazumal. happy.gif
https://kompozer.net/
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Decky
post Oct 10 2021, 06:34 AM
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Thanks Pandy, a text editor like Notepad + browsers was the way I was thinking. The problem I tend to have in code view is working out the right place to do an edit in the maze of <tr>s and <td>s, specially with mixed row and column spans and tables within tables. It was straightforward with WYSIWYG because you just entered text in the right place in the table and you knew it was the right place in the code.

Thanks for the suggestions, I’ll give them a go smile.gif.

This post has been edited by Decky: Oct 10 2021, 07:31 AM
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pandy
post Oct 10 2021, 08:23 AM
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I see, it's mainly changes to the text? I would think Kompozer can handle that. Never used it myself, but people thought highly of it back in the day.

I think it comes with FTP, but if it doesn't FileZilla is good and free. Use it myself.
https://filezilla-project.org/
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Decky
post Oct 10 2021, 09:45 AM
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It’s mainly text but also lots of tables within tables (no borders), links, pictures and picture links as you may have seen.

Thanks, I’ll try Kompozer. I tried FileZilla when DW failed but couldn’t get it to connect to the server which could have been due to other problems on the PC at the time.
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Decky
post Oct 12 2021, 09:17 AM
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Kompozer looks ideal, there’s a tick in options that’s supposed to prevent it reformatting the HTML. The problem is that I can’t get the ftp to work properly which would be nice. It keeps dumping spurious files in the top level folder every time instead of the folder I entered in the ftp setup (in various ways). Maybe I have to use FileZilla instead which works fine now. Also, whenever I click on Publish it removes all the background colour from the page in WYSIWYG view (read from a css style sheet). Seems the only way to get it back is to reload the page, maybe a bug that never got fixed.

This post has been edited by Decky: Oct 12 2021, 09:19 AM
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pandy
post Oct 12 2021, 11:14 AM
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Afraid I can't help with most of that since I've never used the Kompozer.

Except the disappearing background. The style sheet probably isn't placed in the right folder, so the URL to it becomes invalid. Do you upload file by file or do you upload the whole bunch in one fell swoop? If the latter the structure should be kept. If the first, maybe you made a mistake?
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Decky
post Oct 12 2021, 12:05 PM
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Thanks Pandy, I do upload the files individually one after the other so maybe because they’re not uploading to the right folders atm, when I click on Publish it then reads the incomplete file from the server rather than still from the local drive. DW didn’t work like that and always showed the local version. The images on the page aren’t uploaded to the right folder either but they’re displayed ok, it’s just the background colour that disappears. Sounds like I’ll need to play around with it some more to figure it out.
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pandy
post Oct 12 2021, 02:36 PM
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Yeah, or the background image could be placed in the wrong folder, of course. Do you have any of the misbehaving pages online so I can have a look and see if I can spot what's wrong?
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Decky
post Oct 22 2021, 08:52 AM
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The pages all seem to be behaving ok now. I did a minor update on the site recently and I used Notebook and FileZilla which connects ok (now that I’ve done a master reset on Windows 10) and it uploads the files to the right place. Maybe I’ll try using Kompozer with FileZilla for the next major update.
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