If you’re into programming then you’ll know how much easier it is to use a text editor that has syntax highlighting so that you can see if you left a bracket open, curly bracket open or mistyped something. In this article I will review 3 lightweight free text editors for programmers on Windows.
If you’re prepared to pay for a text editor with a free trial option, there is Dreamweaver and Aptana, Aptana has three software packages Aptana Studio, Aptana Cloud and Aptana Jaxer.
If you don’t want to pay for a text editor and would prefer a free option, read on…
I have been working on the web for a while now, and I have actually found it easier to write every document in HTML format instead of DOC or TXT. If you use Google Docs, you are actually doing the same, since Google Docs has (thankfully) essentially become a WYSIWYG HTML editor. Creating some document templates using HTML and CSS is very easy, can be done by everyone, and if you do it right, it will look the same to everyone.
In my first days of web development it used to be “modify a file - upload using ftp client - refresh browser - repeat from start”. Then I changed this because I used Notepad++ and other tools to skip the ftp part, or at least build it into saving. Nowadays though there are more powerful tools that you can use as a browser addon to modify, check out and analyze pages, like the Web Developer Toolbar Addon for Firefox.
So far I have been using one of the simpler tools for writing code, Notepad++. Due to some recent FTP problems however, I set out on a search for an alternative tool. I eventually came up with Aptana, a free code editing tool which is so bustling with features, it’s amazing.
When I first fired it up it was a bit slow, but after that I was quite impressed. Presentation-wise it looks more like Dreamweaver than Notepad++ or HTML-kit, and this is true features-wise as well.
Bloggers, there are lots of things you’ve to keep an eye on, and most of the time, you’ll need the help of different programs for different needs. Sure, there are more web tools for the job, but nothing can get to give you the convenience and speed that desktop applications offer. So, here goes a list of over 30 handpicked application, that can possibly increase a blogger’s productivity.
Desktop Blogging Clients
Post to your blog straigth from the desktop.
Whenever I have had to write HTML for a webpage I’m working on, I have always used this online real-time HTML editor. But therein lies the problem - it’s online and if your internet connection blinks out for a while, you are obviously unable to use it. So I wanted an offline standalone application that could help me to write my HTML if I didn’t have an internet connection. I wanted it to be free and easy to use, as well as having a WYSIWYG interface (What You See Is What You Get) You couldn’t begin to imagine how difficult that made it finding something to fit all those conditions.
I have just recently discovered a useful all-in-one tool for testing your website, blog or webpage (or someone else’s) for just about anything you can imagine!
‘Test Everything’ incorporates over 100 (128 to be exact) of the useful website checkers and validators, throughout 8 different categories, all in one spot!
You will find CSS & HTML validators, SEO Tools, Web Proxies, Network Tools, Image Tools, Text tools, a host of really cool Miscellaneous Tools, and you can easily check your site’s popularity on Social Bookmarking sites as well.
I am currently in the process of learning CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) based web design since it is now the standard foundation of layout for almost all web sites. I have read several books now and I still believe that I am slightly lost when it comes time to applying what I know from scratch. Over the past several months, I’ve been keeping a list for myself of potentially amazing tools and applications (most web based - all of them free) to make my CSS web design experience a snap. I purposely cut out over 30 options from this list, because these are the most user friendly and simplest to use.
