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7 Linux web editors that get the job done (TechRadar)
TechRadar briefly reviews seven HTML editors available for Linux. The sub-headline of "Break free from the torment of Emacs and into a visual world" makes it clear that they are looking at visual, GUI tools. "You only have to spend some time with the Internet Archive to see shining examples of the terror that could be wrought with a simple text editor and far too much knowledge."
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7 Linux web editors that get the job done (TechRadar) Posted Jan 13, 2009 0:19 UTC (Tue) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648) [Link] Meh. They forgot Vi[m], Emacs, and (my favorite) KWrite. There's something to be said about the ability to edit HTML and CGI (e.g. Perl or PHP) directly on the Web server via SSH (KWrite can be used with Konqueror and SFTP). Make a change, save your work, and refresh the page in a browser. I'm only being half-facetious—I actually do use this method. Never mind that I'm dorking up production code. ;)
Next time I should actually READ the header Posted Jan 13, 2009 0:31 UTC (Tue) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648) [Link] Of course, I skimmed the article so fast not to notice that the author's disappointment with raw text editors was the point. I did read the through the article to see which WYSIWYG editors the author reviewed. Seriously, though, having taught myself HTML, (some) JavaScript, and CSS, I do prefer the plain editor to a WYSIWYG one. I don't totally agree with the author that hand-coded pages are "shining examples of the terror" found on the Internet. And besides, WYSIWYG editors don't work as well as text editors on CGI/Perl/PHP-intensive Web server code.
7 Linux web editors that get the job done (TechRadar) Posted Jan 13, 2009 5:11 UTC (Tue) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047) [Link]
I do this as well, though I don't edit production code directly (I have a test server). But with the amount of handy support built into the HTML, CSS and Javascript modes of Emacs, I don't feel the need for a WYSIWYG editor.
7 Linux web editors that get the job done (TechRadar) Posted Jan 13, 2009 7:18 UTC (Tue) by leifbk (subscriber, #35665) [Link]
Hey, nice to see another KWrite fan. It's been my favourite editor for years, and I've routinely got 10-20 instances of it on my task bar. The only thing I miss is a decent regexp search/replace functionality, but for any serious regexp stuff I'm usually whipping up a Perl script anyway.
KWrite DOES have regular expression find/replace Posted Jan 13, 2009 14:07 UTC (Tue) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648) [Link] KWrite does have a regular expression find/replace feature. At least all versions with KDE 3.5.x (and I believe earlier versions as well). Hit CTRL-F (for find) or CTRL-R (for replace) and check the box next to "Regular expression". I've used it to remove all leading/trailing whitespace from lines, among other uses.
KWrite DOES have regular expression find/replace Posted Jan 13, 2009 16:05 UTC (Tue) by leifbk (subscriber, #35665) [Link]
Well, I said 'decent' for a reason. I'm aware of the feature that you mention, but I've found it almost useless. It works for a limited subset of regexps, but fails miserably for others. How do I eg. replace a tab char? It doesn't understand \t (backslash+t), and I obviously can't press tab literally.
But this is way off topic.
KWrite impressions Posted Jan 13, 2009 17:56 UTC (Tue) by Per_Bothner (subscriber, #7375) [Link]
KWrite seems nice, at least as a text editor. I like that you can do a lot of things with the keyboard, while using modern key-binding conventions, and I like the search bar (similar to the search-bar I love in NetBeans).
However, the manual (The KWrite Handbook) sucks - a typical example of a manual written by a documentation writer, who focuses on the visible menus and what they do, rather than on tasks or concepts. Compared with the Emacs manual, it's a joke - though the course the Emacs has had decades of improvement, and it's hard to do as well as Stallman in the doc-writing department.
Furthermore, KWrite (4.1.3 on Fedora) seems poor as an HTML or XML editor - it doesn't highlight obvious HTML errors, such as a close tag without a matching open tag.
The emacs manual rocks! Posted Jan 13, 2009 19:14 UTC (Tue) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] The Emacs manual is the best manual I know. It's one of my favourite things about the editor. It's extensive and RMS is very strict about documenting every exception and non-intuitive behaviour (all software has these things, but many packages prefer to pretend they don't exist). That plus all the built-in documentation and the ease of discovering functionality. Documentation is definitely one of the reasons to use GNU Emacs.
7 Linux web editors that get the job done (TechRadar) Posted Jan 13, 2009 7:53 UTC (Tue) by jengelh (subscriber, #33263) [Link]
Logging in via SSH also means you can fix the dorkup error faster because there is no file upload delay involved.
The two ssh ways, for anyone interested Posted Jan 13, 2009 19:21 UTC (Tue) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] As well as ssh'ing to the box and opening an emacs session there, you can also do remote editing with a local emacs session, with GNU Emacs propagating the changes via ssh. Example C-x C-f: Find file: /ssh:ciaran@moo.compsoc.com:public_html/index.html And then you're prompted for your password, and once the authentication is done you have filename completion and many or all the other features you'd have as if the file was local.
7 Linux web editors that get the job done (TechRadar) Posted Jan 13, 2009 0:38 UTC (Tue) by kirkengaard (subscriber, #15022) [Link]
It's nice to see that Bluefish still holds its own. I, too, have hand-hacked my web pages (in emacs). The nice thing about Bluefish is that you can use it just like a powerful text editor with syntax highlighting, and when you need other tools, they're present or accessible from the program menus. It's a hand-hacker's best friend for writing and validating and multiple-browser-testing page design.
7 Linux web editors that get the job done (TechRadar) Posted Jan 13, 2009 4:47 UTC (Tue) by njs (guest, #40338) [Link]
I thought it was all the *good* web designer folk who gave up and switched to text editors of various sorts a few years ago, once CSS and JS effects made it necessary to have some knowledge and control over your DOM tree...? (But this is honestly a question, I have no idea how web design works.)
7 Linux web editors that get the job done (TechRadar) Posted Jan 13, 2009 15:37 UTC (Tue) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link]
You are essentially correct.
One thing that happened is most sites became application-driven, even if that just meant a document container system. Chunks of content are authored in WYSIWYG tools sometimes, but the page is assembled by software.
At least on all but the most basic sites. Though there are a lot of those.
7 Linux web editors that get the job done (TechRadar) Posted Jan 15, 2009 13:19 UTC (Thu) by kirkengaard (subscriber, #15022) [Link]
App-driven code really makes it a pain to report bugs in the page, too. We have a local high school whose site didn't support Firefox for several months because the new webmaster couldn't find the bug. It took a few rounds of hand-hacking through output code to find where the bug was.
The server produced great IE code, though.
7 Linux web editors that get the job done (TechRadar) Posted Jan 13, 2009 15:45 UTC (Tue) by petegn (guest, #847) [Link]
Our club web site is produced by someone using Dreamweaver and talk about bloat .
You still to my mind cant beat Quanta Plus (althou it has been borked by this darn KDE4 infestation).
I maintain a few sites for people and slowly but surley i am getting the bloat out of them also getting the W3C compliance right
Bluefish was ok but never seemed to be just right for the job
But each to there own
7 Linux web editors that get the job done (TechRadar) Posted Jan 13, 2009 17:57 UTC (Tue) by ronin_engineer (guest, #52737) [Link]
As bloaty as DW can be, I still find it extremely useful for total site management product. The integrated ftp, online O'Reily reference, Macromedia studio integration (fireworks, etc.) really are helpful. Now if Bluefish could have direct hooks to the GIMP and html reference material, that would be much better. Integrated W3C compliancy checking would be good.
Now mind you, I still write all the code and only let DW manage the CSS and other things, but from the aspect of a 'total package' they are spot on. I would much prefer a linux tool though.... And there, I'm using slickedit.
7 Linux web editors that get the job done (TechRadar) Posted Jan 15, 2009 13:21 UTC (Thu) by kirkengaard (subscriber, #15022) [Link]
> Integrated W3C compliancy checking would be good.
Last I checked, as long as you have the tools, Bluefish does tidy and weblint from menus.
Seamonkey! (Composer) for mostly-ordinary-text HTML Posted Jan 13, 2009 22:51 UTC (Tue) by dwheeler (guest, #1216) [Link] If you're editing an HTML file that is MOSTLY ordinary text, I *HIGHLY* recommend Seamonkey (Composer). It's WYSIWYG (great for ordinary text), and it doesn't insert lots of unnecessary HTML junk. (In contrast, OpenOffice.org has a nice GUI interface, but it produces really ugly HTML with uppercase tags and lots of extra junk.) It does insert a few things, but they're justifiable (e.g., it inserts closing /p tags to match opening p tags). It often leaves lines alone, which is nice when "diff"ing HTML files. It "just works"; I like it!! Its cursor occasionally disappears from view, which is annoying, but it returns to view after a moment (or a restart). To tell it to edit a local file, the first character must be "/" (it unfortunately doesn't realize that a leading "." is also a local file). So, you can invoke it from the command line in Unix/Linux like this:seamonkey -edit `pwd`/MYFILE.html
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