I need a good recommendation for the best html editor on the Mac, but for a novice who is not really html-savy at all.
Any recommendations? I need to be able to edit existing html stuff for upload on a panel for websites
As with many other text-editor requests, I’d suggest VSCode:
As flexible as you need it to be but not overwhelmingly complicated.
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BBEdit. + 20 characters.
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As an old time web guy who used to code sites by hand all through the 1990s and 2000s, I would suggest you consider not coding, unless you want the HTML experience.
Use Squarespace or Wix.
Sounds like you have a very focused need to edit HTML so my advice might be off base. If you really need to write HTML, BBEdit is the OG but some visual HTML apps might be easier. My experience in those is pretty out of date so I’ll leave that to others.
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If you want built-in SFTP and the like, it’s hard to go wrong with Nova.
Agree with this - skip the HTML and move the site to a modern platform. Hosted WordPress is also a very flexible option at many providers.
Honestly, I’d use BBEdit. It’s a text editor. It has HTML and CSS palettes, and decent documentation. It’s what I used to teach students and faculty HTML.
It has a preview mode, and will work to preview html with any browser.
If you’re just making small tweaks to an extant site, I think BBEdit is less likely to break something by adding additional (often bloated) HTML and CSS.
Work on a copy of the site, and have a backup of the extant site, always.
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+1 for Visual Studio Code. That’s probably overkill for now, but it will scale with you as you start exploring other languages.
If you want a simpler experience, atom is really very enjoyable to use.
+1 for VS Code, beautiful and free !!!
Another hat in the ring for VS Code. As a newcomer, it’s -real easy- to get bogged down with extensions or overwhelmed with choices, particularly within settings. Just use the built-in HTML/CSS features. Just keep your browser open with the .html file loaded & you can refresh as you write which is a great way for someone just learning HTML/CSS to see how different elements & attributes change the layout/look of a webpage.
EDIT: Relative to a lot of other editors, it’s also pretty lightweight. You could also take it for a spin here: https://vscode.dev/ (or even just bookmark it & use the web version).
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I use WebStorm, which I really like. It has a nice live update where the webpage in a browser updates as you type, the best code completion I’ve seen and the debugger is awesome (especially if you go on to work with JavaScript)
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I need to for the old site to maintain that until the new site is up. It will be built on Wordpress though. But thanks!
Do you know if It’s possible to either take an existing site (written in html) and move that to a modern platform like Wordpress one-to-one, like just move it over?
Thanks all for your comments and suggestions. Turns out out I do have spend several hours in an html-editor.
I need to create pages on a site in html by copying a similar html-page site and then tweaking the places with the new info if that makes sense. So I do need to spend a long time in there and probably would benefit from having an editor that allows me to preview the site
Definitely give Nova a try for that use case.
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You can copy-and-paste the html, but will likely need to do some formatting/removal of kruft, CSS etc. It will depend a lot on the site used for the html source. You would only copy the parts between the BODY tags. You may have to edit out CSS etc.
I have done this, many many times. I open a copy of the site source in BBEdit. I look at the html to get an idea of the structure and things, like in-line css, that might be a problem. Then I start removing what I don’t need, previewing it in BBEdit and in browser(s) via BBEdit’s Preview options.
If you do this in WordPress, pay attention to the kind of WordPress “block” you use, since the block will make WordPress assume things about your code. There is one for generic html; I don’t remember what WordPress calls it.
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Dreamweaver would let you do that. I know it’s not everyone’s flavour and is not cheap, but it’s a very good editor and can even handle bootstrap components.
As a onestop shop for editing html sites giving you the ability to preview and then upload your changes, it’s pretty good.
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Does anyone know of an online forum where one can ask specific questions about html? Like if something is not working with some html
ChatGPT is actually perfect for this type of query!
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Maybe here? Post a description of the problem (what you expect vs what you see) and where ib the html you think the probklem is, and a link to the page?
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