Do You Love Writing

Vim and Emacs

Vim and Emacs are not dedicated development tools, but still offer a good number of features to HTML editing and, indeed, any language you can use for web development. Both support syntax highlighting (HTML, PHP, Python, Perl, CSS and many others) and provide support for editing files on remote machines. Both programs are very versatile and can be modified, because they support numerous scripts and extensions to enlarge functionality. However, both programs are complex tools and present a steep learning curve.

OOo Writer / Web (web of OpenOffice.org)

You can write a simple web page without knowing any HTML at all using Office Open itself Web authoring tool. This would be a very basic page actually, because it is not compatible with CSS or shapes, for example. I do not recommend using this tool to an entire website, because the code produced is sometimes unnecessarily complicated for what could be a nightmare in the future to modify and transform a large project that was initially created with Open Office website. But for a quick page, why not?

Composer SeaMonkey (former Netscape Composer, Mozilla Composer ex)

The Open Source SeaMonkey Composer is based on the venerable Netscape Composer, so it is now incorporated in the SeaMonkey suite. It's pretty simple WYSIWYG editor that generates clean code – unlike many commercial WYSIWYG editors. Unfortunately, not very powerful and only partially compatible with CSS. SeaMonkey Composer is a complete design tool suitable for beginners who want to create a web site very basic.

Kompozer

Available on Linux, Mac and Windows, Kompozer is based on Mozilla Composer for the actions of a relatively interface similar. However, it is a much more advanced now, trying to maintain a no-fear approach to newcomers in web design. Documentation is good and active community, so if you have questions or problems, help is not far away! While the SeaMonkey composer lacks many features WYSIWYG mode with Kompozer can almost create an entire website in WYSIWYG mode remain pure. However, if you want to add some code manually, you can jump from a second between WYSIWYG Editing Mode and HTML using tabs. The preview mode uses the Gecko engine (Mozilla, Firefox) to make web pages. Although the code is clean, it is still necessary to test your web pages against the less compatible with web browsers like Internet Explorer 6, for example. It has an easy use as part of the FTP client to upload files quickly to your web space. Support for forms, tables and templates is very good but the support of CSS is not perfect, and is not compatible with server-side language like PHP. In conclusion, for the moment, Kompozer lies somewhere between tools like Frontpage (Kompozer produces better code) and Dreamweaver (yes, this is huge difference!): A good web development tool aimed at beginners or intermediate users, but more refinement and support server-side language if you want to approach the very best web editors available on Windows, for example.

Quanta Plus

Quanta Plus is a friendly HTML editor and web development tool designed primarily for the K Desktop Environment (although it can work in almost any environment). Unlike Bluefish, Quanta is capable of both designing and handcoding WYSIWYG. Supports a wide range of languages and their syntax checking and highlighting are excellent. It has code folding and highlight the current line. Features also included are templates, document management structure, project management, plug-in support, DTD support, etc, FTP client and integrated preview function so you can see the results of their work while working. There is also a commercial variant, called Quanta Gold, available on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows, with more features. For users of GNOME, KDE interface Quanta Plus will look a little out of place, but in general, it's pretty minor (note: this is not the case with Quanta Gold, because it is based on QT).

Quanta Plus is free, Quanta Gold costs U.S. $ 39.95 (download) and $ 49.95 (CD set).

Screem

Screem is an open source environment for writing web development for use with GNOME desktop environment (can also be used in other window managers, however). Screem supports Dreamweaver templates and offers a number of assistants to help with the addition of multimedia content. It offers a WYSIWYG display of pages and is more oriented towards advanced users.

Bluefish

Bluefish is a powerful open source editor and light-oriented programmers and Web designers, with many options to write websites, scripts and code programming. Browser integration is good and it has very good support for HTML, CSS, XML, PHP, Perl, C, JavaScript, and even … Pascal or Octave / Matlab! As developers say on their website, is "what you see is what you need" interface, so it is not an appropriate tool for design beginners web (and was never going to be!) and there are no graphics (but you can quickly access / launch external browser by clicking the appropriate icon). An important feature missing is the integration of FTP. Otherwise, it is by far my favorite editor!

Amaya is the W3C, the international consortium that helps develop standards for the World Wide Web – web browser and editor. Although in theory is a WYSIWYG package, the interface is quite confusing and not well designed. Finally, this program may be relatively unstable.

There a native version of Dreamweaver in Linux, which is not officially supported. However, Dreamweaver MX and Dreamweaver 8 run well using Wine or crossover office. Dreamweaver is now ultra-dominant web design package available on Windows and Mac OS: it is often excellent and very expensive.

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Our web site design agency provides web design services in Bristol (UK).

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – A Review of Linux Web Development Tools