I have evaluated over 130 HTML editors for Windows against over 40 different criteria relevant to professional web designers and developers. The following editors are the 10 best free HTML editors for Windows, both WYSIWYG and text editors, in order from best to worst.
Each editor below will have a score, percentage, and a link to a more detailed review. All reviews were completed between September and November 2010. And this list was compiled on November 7, 2009.
If you’re still not sure which editor to choose, then fill in my questionnaire: Web Design Software: Which One is Right for You?
Each editor below will have a score, percentage, and a link to a more detailed review. All reviews were completed between September and November 2010. And this list was compiled on November 7, 2009.
If you’re still not sure which editor to choose, then fill in my questionnaire: Web Design Software: Which One is Right for You?
1. Komodo Edit
Screen shot by J Kyrnin
Komodo Edit is hands down the best free XML editor available. It
includes a lot of great features for HTML and CSS development. Plus, if
that isn't enough, you can get extensions for it to add on languages or
other helpful features (like special characters). It's not the best HTML
editor, but it's great for for the price, especially if you build in
XML. I use Komodo Edit every day for my work in XML and I use it a lot
for basic HTML editing as well. This is one editor I'd be lost without.
2. Aptana Studio
Screen shot by J Kyrnin
Aptana Studio is an interesting take on web page development. Instead
of focusing on the HTML, Aptana focuses on the JavaScript and other
elements that allow you to create Rich Internet Applications. One of the
things I really like is the outline view that makes it really easy to
visualize the DOM. This makes for easier CSS and JavaScript development.
If you are a developer creating web applications, Aptana Studio is a
3. NetBeans
Screen shot by J Kyrnin
NetBeans IDE is a Java IDE that can help you build robust web
applications. Like most IDEs it has a steep learning curve because they
don’t often work in the same way that web editors do. But once you get
used to it you’ll be hooked. One nice feature is the version control
included in the IDE which is really useful for people working in large
development environments. If you write Java and web pages this is a
great tool.
4. Bluefish
Screen shot by J Kyrnin
Bluefish is a full featured web editor for Linux. And the 2.0 release
adds a lot of great new features. There are also native executables for
Windows and Macintosh. There is code-sensitive spell check, auto
complete of many different languages (HTML, PHP, CSS, etc.), snippets,
project management, and auto-save. It is primarily a code editor, not
specifically a web editor. This means that it has a lot of flexibility
for web developers writing in more than just HTML, but if you’re a
designer by nature you might not like it as much.
5. CoffeeCup Free HTML Editor
Screen shot by J Kyrnin
The CoffeeCup Free HTML editor is a text editor with a lot of
potential. A lot of the features it has in the menus require that you
buy the full version.
The free version is a good HTML editor, but I would recommend you
purchase the full version of the editor to get the real juice from this
product. One important thing to note: many sites list this editor as a
free WYSIWYG editor, but when I tested, you had to buy the full version
to get WYSIWYG support. The free version is a very nice text editor
only.
6. HTML-Kit
Screen shot by J Kyrnin
HTML-Kit is a free text editor with a lot of features. It’s one of the
more popular text editors available for Windows. It has tag completion
and HTML and CSS validation and a lot of features you wouldn’t expect in
free software. The only issue I have with it is that it doesn’t default
to HTML, you have to convert your documents to that. Many of the
About.com Guides use HTML-Kit because it is so easy to extend and make
macros for. It is also one of the only free editors I’ve found with
support for accessibility validating.
7. Eclipse
Screen shot by J Kyrnin
Eclipse is a complex development environment that is perfect for people
who do a lot of coding on various different platforms and with
different languages. It is structured as plug-ins so if you need to edit
something, you just find the appropriate plug-in and go. If you are
creating complex web applications, Eclipse has a lot of features to help
make your application easier to build. There are Java, JavaScript, and
PHP plugins, as
8. SeaMonkey
Screen shot by J Kyrnin
SeaMonkey is the Mozilla project all-in-one Internet application suite.
It includes a web browser, email and newsgroup client, IRC chat client,
and composer — the web page editor. One of the nice things about using
SeaMonkey is that you have the browser built-in already so testing is a
breeze. Plus it's a free WYSIWYG editor with an embedded FTP to publish
your web pages.
9. Alleycode
Screen shot by J Kyrnin
Alleycode is a free web editor that focuses on search engine
optimization. There are a lot of built-in features and links to the
Alleycode website so that you can check your site ranking, optimize your
meta data, and otherwise improve your search rankings. While I don't
recommend sites that “guarantee” top-level ranking like Alleycode does,
that doesn't mean that their web editor isn't any good. One feature I
really like is the conversion tool to convert HTML tags and text from
upper to lowercase and back. Very handy.
According to their website: Alleycode will no longer be supported or upgraded after January 1, 2010.
According to their website: Alleycode will no longer be supported or upgraded after January 1, 2010.
10. Amaya
Screen shot by J Kyrnin
Amaya is the W3C web editor. It also acts as a web browser. It
validates the HTML as you build your page, and since you can see the
tree structure of your web documents, it can be very useful for learning
to understand the DOM and how your documents look in the document tree.
It has a lot of features that most web designers won’t ever use, but if
you’re worried about standards and you want to be 100% sure that your
pages work with the W3C standards, this is a great editor to use.
