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IDE - Integrated Development Environment An IDE is normally associated with a computer language such as C++ or Visual Basic. The IDE is an application which provides tools to help the programmer create a program. It usually includes a text editor, a compiler, some type of project control tools and a wide variety of other functions specific to creating/editing/managing a program written in the language. HTML has no official IDE, but there are three categories of applications which HTML page authors use to generate HTML pages and which provide the equivalent capabilities of an IDE. There are literally hundred of applications in each category and the selection of one of these applications is usually a matter of personal preference.
Text EditorsMy recommendation is that you use Notepad for simple web sites with only a few web pages and NoteTAB for web sites with more web pages. These are the tools I use to manage the approximately 1500 web pages at all my sites. In a week's time I may edit 20-50 pages.One thing most text editors won't do is to make changes to several files at one time, such as text replacement or the replacements of an image map file (more on image maps later), or meta tags. To cover that specific need I've written a freeware program called gbReplace which can make batch changes of this type to HTML (text) files. I use it regularly to work on my HTML files. Programmer's EditorsNot everyone would agree with my choice of using simple text editors for creating web pages. There are a number of applications know as Programmer's Editors which provide some very useful tools for creating a web page and which do not have the complexity of some of the specialty HTML Editors on the market.Programmer's Editors are text editors which have been written to help programmers write programs in a variety of languages such as C++, Perl, Java and more. Most of these pre-date the web but have been modified in recent years to cover HTML coding. These applications incorporate special features such as:
Some of the most popular programmer's editors in use today include:
HTML EditorsWhile most HTML tags are pretty simple to remember, many folks simply don't want the hassle. Specialty HTML Editors have been developed to lift the burden of working with HTML codes. Some provide for simple HTML code insertion (similar to the programmer's editors described above) but most provide some from of WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get).Some of the most popular HTML editors in use today include:
Web Site ManagementManaging a web site consists of much more than simply editing a file, or batch editing of several files at one time. A good web site management tool offers features such as:
While there are a number of minor players in the web development application industry there are two which are considered the standards - Microsoft FrontPage and Macromedia Dream Weaver. Here's a list of those two, along with some other popular web development applications.
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