Thursday, April 11, 2013

Free HTML Editor Software

When updating my website  I wanted to write code so that it would validate as being properly written in version HTML 5,  at least for the main webpage. In order to do that I needed to include this tag between the head tags of my HTML files:

<meta charset="UTF-8">

I wrote my HTML code in Notepad and by default Notepad encodes files, including HTML files, in ANSI instead of UTF-8. Notepad does have the option to save in UTF-8 encoding, but not the right kind. Don't ask me what all this stuff means because I haven't got a clue, all I know is that I needed to find a word processor which will save HTML files in the kind of UTF-8 encoding  that would make my webpage pass the test.

In my search I came across Notepad 2. It's completely free and is a simple but pretty handy  little HTML editor. By little I mean it's only around 300kb and can be kept and run off  a usb drive without any  installation needed, I just downloaded the zip file from www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html, unzipped it and launched the program by clicking on its icon ( I downloaded the 4.2.25 Program Files (x86) zipped version).

Some of its features:
  • auto inserts closing tags (saves you some finger work)
  • unlimited undo and redo (something that comes in handy for me)
  • syntax highlighting to help you catch coding errors

Sorry Apple fans, Notepad 2 is only for Windows but I'm sure there's something similar for you Macheads too.

Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention, it encodes in the kind of UTF-8 I needed, which was why I was  searching for a new HTML editor in the first place. It's now become my main editor for writing HTML, but I still think plain old Notepad is pretty good, as long as you don't use <meta charset="UTF-8">

Screen Shots