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Visual html editor for ubuntu. The best free HTML editors for Linux

If you ask a similar question on any of the forums, then with a high degree of probability you will come across two diametrically opposed recommendations - “compose” everything in a purely visual (that is, WYSIWYG) editor like DreamWeaver, or run away from any editors like fire and do everything exclusively in Notepad/Vi/Emacs. As is typical for any extremes, it is in them that certain shortcomings of the method are most clearly manifested - weak control over the resulting code in the first case, and an extremely large proportion of “bad” work in the other. So it’s no wonder that the niche between these two poles is by no means empty, and the developers of the HTML editors that occupy it are making every effort to “make friends between the mouse and the keyboard” in the most optimal way. And it is the convenience of manually typing HTML code without losing control over the result that will be key when comparing the three web editors most popular in Linux - Screem, Quanta Plus and Bluefish. Although their functional content will also not be left without attention. To complete the picture, let’s also touch a little on a couple of typical WYSIWYG editors - the “reference” editor Amaya, widely known in narrow circles Nvu.

The test used was Ubuntu 6.06 LTS with Gnome 2.14.1, so GTK-based applications had a bit of a head start. All editors were installed from repositories in “as is” mode, no efforts were made to Russify, expand functionality through plugins, etc. were not included.

Considered:

Bluefish 1.0.5
Quanta Plus 3.5.2
Screem 0.16.1

Out of competition:

Amaya 8.5
Nvu 1.0 (20060508)

Amaya

W3C alignment

Let's start our review with the visual editor - Amaya. Not because it's so great, but because it's being developed by the W3C. To be more precise, this is primarily a browser with very advanced editing functions.

It is quite possible to use it as an editor (it is possible to edit the source code directly, although without any special frills), but there is only one small detail that spoils everything - well, it does not want to enter domestic characters, and that’s all. Display from the finished file - please, delete - with pleasure. But entering - no, no. That is, absolutely no response to the keys when the Russian layout is turned on. Either the outdated interface is to blame, or the developers’ excessive attachment to ASCII. But one way or another, domestic web coders will not be too comfortable in it.

So let’s leave it the role of a “reference browser” and begin to consider the main contenders for victory.

You can see the result in it, but it is clearly weak for editing...

It has every chance of becoming perfect for version 1.0

The first impression of Screem is “just an editor.” The working window is divided into three fields - an input field on the right, errors and warnings displayed at the bottom, and several tabs on the left that make it easier to navigate the document, work with files, etc. I found it especially useful Tree tab, displaying the tree structure of the page - double clicking, say, on the HEAD line will lead to the selection of all the code related to the header in the edit field.

It should obviously be distinguished from a regular text editor by its advanced work with HTML tags. In this case, the “advancement” lies in syntax highlighting, the ability to enter a particular tag by selecting it in the menu (it is very convenient to insert META tags and a DOCTYPE line in just a couple of clicks) and auto-completion/hint of entered tags (including arguments).

Another feature is the semi-automatic closing of “paired” tags. "Semi-" because you have to perform some action before the closing tag appears - namely, type the sequence "".

But, unfortunately, there are no “hot keys” for quickly entering tags. But as compensation - the ability to select on the left in the "Resources" tab and double-click to insert any tag. And the "Attributes" tab will allow you to look at all the attributes that the selected tag has and change any of them.

A rather useful function is checking HTML syntax (menu "Tools > Tidy > Tidy (HTML)"). At the bottom, on the "Errors" tab, you will receive information about all errors found (for example, tags that do not exist in nature) and warnings. Unfortunately, all Cyrillic characters with the diagnosis “invalid character code” fall into the last category, which somewhat clutters the output.

To enter “complex” tags - such as pictures, links, tables, forms - parameter entry dialogs (called “wizards”) are provided. By the way, it turns out that they are quite convenient to use for SSI inserts, especially when sclerosis erases combinations of letters that were once painfully familiar from memory...

The “Wizard” makes it convenient to insert images: select the desired file in the standard dialog, specify an alternative signature (alt attribute) - and you have an IMG tag with automatically filled in height and width values. Other attributes, such as alignment, can be easily changed using the tab of the same name mentioned above. Also pay attention to the "Color Wizard" - a very convenient color selection tool.

Among the service functions are spell checking, grouping several pages into projects (here they are called “sites”), CVS support, publishing a project using FTP. The links found on the page can be viewed on the diagram (by or by selecting “View > Link view” in the menu) and immediately see which of them are internal, which are external, and which lead to nowhere. Similarly, by , the preview mode is activated. If desired, you can also view it in an external browser.

Well, a fairly detailed and well-illustrated reference will allow you to master the editor not only by “scientific poking”.

So we can say that this “just an editor” is actually quite a convenient and functional tool. Although the lack of hotkeys for inserting tags and the strange implementation of auto-input of ending tags force you to either type almost everything manually or resort to using the mouse more often than you would like for “fast” input.

Half Russified, but otherwise very good!

The display of links looks just terrible... But sometimes you can't do without it.

Quanta Plus

KDE "star", honestly trying to work in Gnome...

Perhaps the best HTML editor based on Qt, and indeed one of the best. The main mode of operation is manual code editing, although a visual mode is also provided, as well as a unique “combined” mode, when the working field is divided into two: at the top - how the page will look; Below is the source code. Moreover, you can edit the page both there and there - all changes are automatically synchronized. That is, by inserting the code, you immediately see the result, or vice versa - by inserting a line break, you can immediately see which tag is used to do this.

Hotkeys are not assigned to all tags by default, but, as you would expect from a typical KDE application, they are fully customizable. Autocompletion (like in Screem, responding only to uppercase characters) and parameter hints work great. Unlike Screem, automatic closing of tags is very successfully implemented - the closing tag is inserted immediately after the opening one, and the cursor is placed between the tags. The editor behaves similarly when inserting a tag using a hotkey, which allows you to practically not be distracted by cursor positioning while typing. The only controversial point is that if a tag has mandatory attributes, pressing the hot key opens a dialog box for entering them. This becomes distracting when typing quickly, and you have to completely avoid using hotkeys for such tags.

Although in some cases dialogs are useful - especially the "Quick Start Dialog", which creates a new document and inserts a standard HTML page template into it. For tables, there are two options for creating (besides purely manual input and completely visual compilation) - the “Table Editor”, which allows you to fill out the table directly in the dialog box, and input by tags.

It is very convenient to work with the styles of individual elements (CSS button on the Style tab). But unfortunately, I did not find a function for creating CSS tables similar to those in Screem or Bluefish in the “default” distribution.

In the editing window, I liked the code “collapse” function, when all lines corresponding to, say, a table, php insert or DIV element can be collapsed into one line - this allows you to hide unnecessary things during editing and focus attention exactly on what need to.

To the right and left of the editing field you can find auxiliary toolbars. The right one is responsible for calling help and for the HTML tag attributes field, which performs functions similar to the “Attributes” tab in Screem - i.e. allowing you to see a list of attributes of any tag on which the cursor is placed and change the value of any of them.

On the left there are buttons for calling the directory tree (unlike Screem, dragging a file onto the edit field works more intelligently, inserting not just the file name, but, depending on the situation, the entire tag, etc.), working with the project, templates, document structure (double-clicking also allows you to select the entire code fragment embedded in a given element), auxiliary scripts.

In the "Plugins" menu you will find a number of useful programs related to editing html code: checking the functionality of links, a tool for working with image maps, CVS tools. However, given the focus of Quanta Plus on the KDE environment, little of this will work in Gnome.

The editor's customizability is simply amazing - just look at the composition of the "Settings" menu. You can customize almost everything: toolbars, external programs, hotkeys, the appearance of the editor itself, preview modes... In general, it’s quite difficult to find anything in Quanta Plus that would be inconvenient by default, and even so that it cannot be changed in accordance with your habits and preferences.

So, Quanta Plus (even taking into account the fact that testing was carried out in the Gnome environment and some functions were not working) made a very good impression. Its power, flexibility, and customizability can meet the needs of the most demanding web coders, regardless of their skill level.

There's almost nothing to complain about. And even the pronounced “K-style” design can be forgiven...

Attributes on the right, code folding on the left... Could you ask for more?

The main contender for leadership in the "for Gnome" category

One of the most mature editors based on GTK. The layout of the window is quite standard - at the top there are toolbars divided into several tabs; on the left there are three tabs (directory tree for working with files, help, bookmarks); on the right is the main editing field. In addition to the main menu with a traditional set of items, there is a user menu (under the toolbar), with which you can quickly insert “template” fragments, such as the DOCTYPE line, META tags, comments, any paired and single tags (you can set any name) etc. In addition to HTML, you can insert some PHP, SQL commands, DocBook tags, a couple of standard fragments for configuring Apache (responsible for Basic authentication and prohibiting opening inc files) and even something in C. That is, in addition to html files, Bluefish also tries to alleviate your suffering when writing a standard .htaccess configuration and when developing simple PHP inserts. By selecting "User Menu" Edit Menu, it is very easy to set any templates you need.

In addition to the fairly extensive “Tags” menu, which allows you to insert almost any tag, a lot of interesting things can be found in the neighboring “Dialogs”, which contain operations that require entering additional parameters and allow you to insert entire groups of elements in one fell swoop. For example, “General “Document Heading” (or ) will immediately insert the frame of the future HTML page - with headings, META tags and a template for the body of the page. Similarly, you can insert a template for a table, frames (referred to here as “frames”), etc. .

The CSS tab deserves special mention - although you will only find three buttons on it. The second and third are for quickly inserting SPAN and DIV tags. But the first one allows you to create complete style sheets. Even if you don’t remember even a tenth of the possible parameters and their values, it won’t be difficult to select the one you need from the drop-down list and simply insert it into the created table. The "Color" button in the dialog box allows you to set the color (where it is required) simply by clicking on the desired one.

There is no autocompletion for tags or their parameters - only syntax highlighting (and then, you first need to set the document type to "html" in the menu item of the same name - by default the editor opens in plain text mode). The only thing that is done automatically is closing paired tags (can be turned off, like the backlight).

For quick typing, most tags have fairly memorable keyboard shortcuts (although not always easy to use). I was unable to find where they can be changed, despite the encouraging item in the “Edit” menu - “Save shortcut keys”.

The function of working with image thumbnails seemed interesting - you select a file, and, based on the preview, use the usual “slider” to set the desired size. The color selection tool will also be useful ("Dialogs" General "Color Selection") - point the mouse at the shade you like, and when the dialog is closed, a hexadecimal representation of it will be inserted into the code.

There is project support, spell checking, interaction with external programs (make, javac compiler, HTML syntax checking, DOS2UNIX line termination character conversion; it’s quite easy to connect your own handler in the settings). Viewing the result is only possible in an external browser.

In general, the impression was that it was somewhat unfinished, although the editor has enormous potential. I especially liked the possibilities for increasing functionality through external programs. The user menu left a good impression, with the help of which you can easily reduce most routine operations to a few mouse clicks. But beginners will really miss auto-completion and parameter suggestions. Verdict is a good editor for professionals who are not accustomed to unnecessary luxury, but who want to automate typical actions.

Neat lighting and customizable panels allow you to work with almost any code you might need when developing a website.

Dialog for creating a style sheet - the result will be added to the edit field.

Nvu

If you choose this WYSIWYG editor, forget about manual editing

This brainchild of Linspire uses the visual mode as normal, as you would expect from a “user-oriented” program. However, the tabs at the bottom of the workspace make it very easy to switch it to source code editing mode. Here there is a preview and a mode called “HTML Tags”, when on the page (as it will look in the browser) a “label” is superimposed on each element, showing which tag is responsible for this element. Quite convenient for quickly analyzing someone else's code - I haven't found any other use for this mode.

Working in visual mode is not much different from that in a regular word processor such as OOo Writer or AbiWord. And we agreed to focus primarily on “manual” editing.

Oddly enough, when switching to manual mode, the toolbar buttons and menu items responsible for certain tags are blocked. No auto-completion, minimal syntax highlighting that does not apply to newly entered text... In general, “if you pick up the tug, don’t say it’s not strong,” and if you don’t like the visual mode, get a regular Notepad. Nvu doesn't shine as a source code editor (and it's not intended for that), so that's where we'll end our review...

Results

Choosing the best HTML editor has proven to be a difficult task. Bluefish feels like a fish in water in the Gnome environment (just don't make jokes about color, okay?), but it still lacks the functionality to be an unconditional winner. However, for those who are used to working in Notepad, this will be a close to ideal choice - it is completely unobtrusive (even almost invisible), but at the same time, it is always ready to come to your aid.

Screem, despite the small version number, is almost in no way behind Bluefish, and in some places it’s even ahead. The slightly strangely implemented auto-closing of paired tags sometimes interferes with work, and the lack of hotkeys for tags will plunge those who were hoping to throw the mouse away, but not enter everything by hand, into deep despondency.

Well, Quanta Plus, even when it found itself in a non-native environment, demonstrated the most harmonious combination of “helping” functions and the convenience of quick work. The ability to customize almost everything will be indispensable for those who like to “go around”, although by default the hotkeys and the composition of the toolbar are chosen quite conveniently. In general, the undisputed leader at the moment is the “newcomer from the planet KDE” as the most mature and thoughtful HTML editor, for which he receives the laurels of the winner.

Can't decide how best to edit your website - manually or visually? With Quanta Plus there is no need to be torn between two operating modes!

Each of us, sooner or later, has a desire to convey our thoughts, feelings, experiences to other people. And in the age of the Internet, the easiest way to do this is, perhaps, your own web page. The only question is what to use to make it?

[Sergey Suprunov (amsand at rambler dot ru)]

As is typical for any extremes, it is in them that certain shortcomings of the method are most clearly manifested - weak control over the resulting code in the first case, and an extremely large proportion of “bad” work in the other. So it’s no wonder that the niche between these two poles is by no means empty, and the developers of the HTML editors that occupy it are making every effort to “make friends between the mouse and the keyboard” in the most optimal way.

And it is the convenience of manually typing HTML code without losing control over the result that will be key when comparing the three web editors most popular in Linux - Screem, Quanta Plus and Bluefish. Although their functional content will also not be left without attention. To complete the picture, let’s also touch a little on a couple of typical WYSIWYG editors - the “reference” editor Amaya, widely known in narrow circles Nvu.

Considered:

Bluefish 1.0.5
Quanta Plus 3.5.2
Screem 0.16.1

Out of competition:

Amaya 8.5
Nvu 1.0 (20060508)

Amaya

W3C alignment

So let’s leave it the role of a “reference browser” and begin to consider the main contenders for victory.

> You can see the result in it, but it is clearly weak for editing...

It has every chance of becoming perfect for version 1.0

Another feature is the semi-automatic closing of “paired” tags. "Semi-" because you have to perform some action before the closing tag appears - namely, type the sequence "" entered on autopilot suddenly turns into " TITLE>".

Well, a fairly detailed and well-illustrated reference will allow you to master the editor not only by “scientific poking”.

>Half Russified, but otherwise very good!

>The display of links looks just terrible... But sometimes you can't do without it.

KDE "star", honestly trying to work in Gnome...

On the left are buttons for calling up the directory tree (unlike Screem, dragging a file onto the edit field works more intelligently, inserting not just the file name, but, depending on the situation, the entire tag , etc.), working with a project, templates, document structure (double-clicking also allows you to select the entire code fragment embedded in a given element), auxiliary scripts.

>There's almost nothing to complain about. And even the pronounced “K-style” design can be forgiven...

>Attributes on the right, code folding on the left... Could you ask for more?

The main contender for leadership in the "for Gnome" category

>Neat lighting and customizable panels allow you to work with almost any code you might need when developing a website.

> Dialog for creating a style sheet - the result will be added to the edit field.

Nvu

If you choose this WYSIWYG editor, forget about manual editing

Working in visual mode is not much different from that in a regular word processor such as OOo Writer or AbiWord. And we agreed to focus primarily on “manual” editing.

Results

> Can't decide how best to edit your website - manually or visually? With Quanta Plus there is no need to be torn between two operating modes!

Feature Summary Table

Notes:
* - using an external program, Cervisia
** - uneditable

Sergey Suprunov (amsand at rambler dot ru) - HTML editors

Update (20170929): I've been using the amazing Pinegrow IDE (https://pinegrow.com) for the past year and I wholeheartedly recommend it. BlueGriffon, which I mentioned below in my answer a few years ago, outdated and is far behind Pinegrow in development.

I recommend BlueGriffon. It's FREE, feature rich, works on all major platforms and has a lot of nice add-ons, some of which are commercial. I have a (commercial) CSS plugin and I'm very happy with it. I used KompoZer before I found BlueGriffon. I humbly believe that Amaya cannot compete with these two.

A good alternative is Eclipse with some WYSIWYG plugin like the "JavaServer Faces (JSF) Tools Project" which is part of the "Eclipse Webtools".

Xi'an

Unfortunately, BlueGriffon is not stable: as soon as I click on certain parts of the control panel, it crashes with a segmentation fault.

user1908895

Unfortunately, Blue Griffon is not open source and is not free. Oh, you can download the executable file and the source is available. But this was associated with any useful functionality. You need to buy closed source plugins to make the program work. Also, it looks like it has given up on 32-bit Ubuntu users. I have business reasons for keeping my company on 12.04LTS as long as possible to keep us in the cold. Finally, Mozilla's abandonment of the XUL API means that this program, along with all others that use the XUL API, will die. Not a product to waste your time. John

Fahim Mitha

I needed to do some quick and dirty editing of an html page and the binary I downloaded from the BlueGriffon site worked for me (Debian jessie). However, it is not available on Debian/Ubuntu, although in

There are two ways to create web pages: directly write HTML code and design the page, so to speak, visually. The second method is easier, the first is better (and a lot simpler). Accordingly, all web editors are divided into two categories - WISIWIG editors and HTML editors. There are also intermediate options. And the best representatives of both categories have in their arsenal both visual tools and the ability to directly edit code.

There are a great variety of all kinds of web editors for Windows. And a fair portion of them are free or shareware. What about Linux? One of my first activities in getting acquainted with this system was researching the issue of web tools.

From general considerations (that is, the declared focus of Linux on the Internet), one might think that there should be a countless number of web editors for this platform. However, a careful study of large ftp archives and major sites with collections of Linux programs makes significant adjustments to this speculative view.

First of all, it turns out that a fair portion of the tools listed in the corresponding sections of the software archives are all kinds of html extensions for ordinary text editors, such as vi or emacs. Of course, you can create web pages in a text editor. Some even consider Notepad to be the best web editor of all time. But, in my opinion, they are lying. After all, boards can be planed with a knife. However, it is better to do this with a plane...

And actually web editors for Linux can be found about a dozen. At one time, I carried out a detailed review of their suitability for work in general and for me personally in particular. As a result, most of them were indignantly dismissed.

And for various reasons. Some (CoffeCup, for example) were rejected as commercial (and not free) programs (after all, saving your wallet along with a clear conscience is one of the motivations of a Linux user, isn’t it?). Others (like Amaya and Bulldozer, may their creators forgive me) seemed downright weak to me. Something (Netscape Composer) has caused antipathy since the days of Windows (“Well, I don’t like you...”) Or caused problems when working with Cyrillic (and we live in a country where most people speak Russian). Or not had the right amount of adjustments - due to poor eyesight I am very sensitive to screen fonts (asWedit, Erwin) Some (KDreamsite, Galway, KWebDev, screem) were very early alpha versions and did not have many planned features, or were different. instability in operation, or simply compiled with errors.

As a result, the list of web editors was reduced to three positions - WebMaker, Quanta, Bluefish. All of them belong to the category of HTML code editors. The first two are based on the Qt library and are designed to operate in the KDE graphical environment. Bluefish - Gtk-application oriented for use with the GNOME graphical environment; although, if the appropriate versions of the libraries are available, it can run without it. These are the ones I will talk about in this saga.

Perhaps my choice has a tinge of subjectivity - I won’t argue. However, it seems that these html editors are currently the most complete packages, and almost the only ones suitable for practical use.

After all, who needs HTML code editors and why? The scope of their application, in my opinion, is twofold. First, writing code directly is the easiest way to make a single page or a small series of related pages. Like, say, a scientific article with accompanying graphics, tables, bibliography and other academic attributes. Secondly, only with the help of an html editor can you complete a large project to create a complexly structured and frequently updated content site. Accordingly, html editors are targeted (or should be targeted) at two groups of users - specialists in some subject areas who occasionally use them and content professionals. From these positions, in my opinion, they should be evaluated.

However, in order not to impose my opinion, later I will briefly describe several html editors from the rejected part of their list, firstly, those that are finished products, but for some reason I did not like, secondly, packages that are under development and not fully functional, but seem promising. And in conclusion, I will very briefly (for reasons that will become clear from the description) characterize visually-oriented web editors.

I’ll start with the editor that turned out to be historically the first (for me), and which I actively used until recently. His name is

WebMaker

Until recently, WebMaker was practically the only fully functional and functional HTML editor with normal support for the Cyrillic alphabet. The latter is not surprising, since it was written by our compatriot Alexei Dec (to whom I, taking this opportunity, would like to express my gratitude for comments and additions to one of my first descriptions of this program).

The current version of WebMaker (0.8.5), unfortunately, has not been updated for about a year. Until some time it was available on the author's website in the form of source texts and a series of binary packages in tar.gz and rpm formats. Moreover, rpm packages were available in several versions, compiled for RedHat 5 simply, RedHat 5 and a processor no lower than PentiumPro/II, as well as for RedHat 6.

However, now this site (like its parent site http://www.services.ru/) shows no signs of life. And therefore you will have to look for WebMaker at http://linux.tucows.com or at http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/. In addition, it can also be found as part of some distributions (Suse, original Mandrake).

General overview

As already mentioned, Webmaker is a KDE application based on the Qt library. The presence of these components in the system is, accordingly, necessary for its functioning. However, if they are installed, Webmaker also works in other window environments - GNOME, WindowMaker, IceWM, AfterStep, BlackBox. In short, everything included in the distribution of Linux Mandrake 7.0/RE has been personally tested.

WebMaker is based on the Kedit text editor, which determines many of its functional features. For the same reason, its current version does not work in the KDE 2 environment.

Visually, Webmaker includes a fairly standard-looking menu, three toolbars (this is the default, in fact - up to eight), and two windows - a directory tree on the left (by default - from /) and an html code window on the right.

The top, main panel includes buttons for operations with files (creating, opening, saving) and texts (cut, copy, paste, search), viewing in an external browser (Netscape Navigator), as well as control buttons for the third, switchable panel.

The second, general, panel contains buttons corresponding to the most commonly used HTML tags:

paragraph, non-breaking space, line break, horizontal line, first;
hyperlinks and drawings, secondly;
alignment (left- and right-handed, centered and justified, thirdly;
bold, italic and underlined style, fourth;
and, finally, the headings of the top three levels - in the fifth.

The third panel is switchable and can contain buttons of several groups of tags, partially duplicating those of the second panel:

font (bold, italic, underlined and strikethrough, monospaced font, increasing and decreasing size, Strong and Emphasis, Quote, H1-H3 level headings;
HTML form tags (input form, text field and password entry field, lists and drop-down menus, RadioButton and Checkbox, standard button, Image Button, Submitt and Reset;
list tags, numbered and unnumbered;
table tags - creation, insertion of rows, cells, headers
tags for working with frames;
JavaScript panel.

In addition, two buttons on the main panel - Frames and JavaScript - bring up alternative empty panels. Since they do not seem to be editable by users, we can assume that they will be filled in in future (I really hope so) versions.

All panels, with the exception of the main one, are fully customizable, as will be shown below. In addition, instead of alternatively switching the third panel, you can enable the display of additional ones.

The menu does not duplicate panels with buttons: many actions can only be performed through it. Therefore, let's look at the menu in more detail.

In the File item, as you might guess, this is exactly what is present (that is, operations with files): here you can create an empty file or a file from a template, open a file (including a recent one), save a file (including under a different name) or all open files, close - also one or all files (very convenient if two dozen documents are open). Here you can insert a file (text), import text files in KOI-8 and Win1251 encodings, as well as Word 97 documents and export to a document with Win1251 encoding. And, of course, the printing and release of their program.

True, neither recoding nor export/import works just like that. To support transcoding, you must have the recode program installed (not the standard GNU recode, but a Russian one), and to export/import Word documents, the mswordview program.

In the Editing item there are the standard options Cut, Copy, Paste, etc., as well as search and replace and go to line. It should be said that it is possible to replace several lines of code at once, which is not common.

The Tools item is very interesting. There are sub-items Tag Chooser and Edit Tag. The first allows you to select a tag from lists classified into groups. After which any tag can be edited (in relation to attributes and other things) through the second sub-item; However, to edit a tag, just right-click on it (in the html code window) and select Edit Tag from the menu that appears. Here you can also create a table template (indicating the header, headers for rows and columns and the number of both), as well as converting to Win1251 and, conversely, to KOI-8 (also, as mentioned, requiring recode).

The Tags menu item completely duplicates the second toolbar: tags for font styles, headings, paragraphs, and other most commonly used ones are entered here. And the View item is viewing in an external browser, that is, the same Netscape Navigator (also called by F11).

The Settings item is also very representative, about which in more detail below.

The Windows menu item is simply a switch between open files; it can also be done using the tabs at the top of the html code window.

Finally, there is Help - a brief (but almost exhaustive) guide (in html format) for installing and configuring the program, as well as some information about working with it: given the complete transparency of the interface, perhaps more is not needed.

Perhaps the reader was annoyed by the mishmash of Russian and English names of menu items: I’m not doing this to show off, this is the case in the version that works for me in combination with the Russified KDE; for the latter, such a Russian-English dialect is generally characteristic - I hope that it is temporary, until the system messages are completely translated. So, in order not to engage in either direct or reverse translation, I give the names “As is”.

Customization options

WebMaker is distinguished by a wealth of settings. Most of which are done through the Settings main menu item. Here you can:

enable/disable all three panels with buttons, or, by disabling the Alternate Toolbar Switching option, be able to display at least all eight available panels;
configure the program as a whole: specify the path to an external browser (although only Netscape, you cannot connect anything else), a directory with templates and working files; define extensions for files with html documents and images (in addition to standard GIF, JPEG, PNG, you can provide filters for any exotic like DjVu or Shockwave); define colors for different groups of tags; determine the number in the list of recently called files (default - 5, maximum - 99, that is, more than enough);
determine the typeface, size and style of the editor screen font, the latter separately for the pairs normal - bold (Width) and novel - italic (Style), and, if possible, the encoding;
enable/disable display of tags in upper/lower case;
allow you to do without closing tags if they are optional - very convenient when arranging paragraphs in a long text document, saving a lot of effort;
allow/prohibit viewing temporary files in an external browser; when you enable this option, you do not need to first remember the HTML document, but hyperlinks inside it may not work correctly (or not work at all), so sometimes the first is more important (given the absence of the Undo option), sometimes the second is more important.

In the settings there is an inactive External Browsers option: Sherlock Holmes would probably assume that the author intends to make it possible to connect several of them in the future.

It's easy to see that you can't customize toolbars through the menu, which was promised above. This can only be done manually by editing the webmaker-toolbarrc configuration file. This procedure is described in detail in the manual (although it is called Brief). You should also manually set the parameters for transcoding Cyrillic texts and exporting to MS Word format.

Functionality

Now let's take a closer look at what gives WebMaker its uniqueness, at least for the Linux platform - the directory tree. It is also, to a certain extent, a means of project management. It can be collapsed or expanded to any available nesting level. Double-clicking the left mouse button on the name of the html file opens it in the code editing window; the same on the file name with an image (GIF, JPEG or PNG) - inserts a picture (that is, the tag img src = "file_name" into the file opened on the right (at the cursor position). Right-clicking on the file or directory name opens a menu with Open items (only for files), Rename, Delete, New Directory. True, renaming a file does not update links to it in other files, as is implemented in Dreamweaver for Windows. But compared to the lackluster project management tools in many other web editors. for Linux - and this is already good. And the site structure looks very clear.

And now - about the html code editing window itself. When you start WebMaker, it opens an empty, unnamed file, and when you open an existing file, it replaces it. You can open as many files as you like - several dozen - for sure. True, in this case, the corresponding bookmarks go beyond the right edge of the window, but you can get to open files through the Windows menu item.

A new file can be created empty or from a template. Templates in WebMaker are just the same html files, so creating your own is not difficult. However, let's say, it is impossible to change the template for the project as a whole so that this is reflected in all its constituent documents.

Working with the newly created (empty, to be specific) file is extremely simple. All necessary tags, starting with!doctype (for HTML 4.0 - Transitional, Frameset, Strict) and meta tags, are added using buttons from the panel, the Tags menu item, or, if they are not presented either there or there, through the Tag Chooser (of course, you can - and manually, entering from the keyboard). If a tag is entered using a button or from a menu, if it has attributes, the corresponding options panel is called up, where attributes and their values can be defined in automatic or semi-automatic mode. If you click the cancel button instead, the document will end up with a tag without attributes. It can be easily edited: as already mentioned, to do this, just click on it with the right mouse button - the same tag editing panel is called up.

Using the tag editing panel, you can simplify the input of rather complex events that add dynamics to an HTML document, such as events based on mouse action or keyboard input (OnBlur, OnFocus, OnMouseUp, OnClick, etc.), if they make sense for a given tag.

All tags are not just colored, but their different groups (comments, links and anchors, scripts, style and font, table tags and image tags) are each highlighted in their own color. Which, like the font in the code window, can be customized to your own taste and vision. Which makes the work much easier and more enlivening.

All of the above allows us to say that WebMaker is a full-featured and easy-to-use html editor, in no way inferior to its free Windows counterparts (for example, Arachnophilia or SiteAid). And it gives rise to the suspicion that he has no shortcomings.

Of course this is not true. I won’t talk about the weakness of project management tools (lack of checking the integrity of links, at least only local ones, and their control when renaming/moving files within the project): only commercial web editors such as Dreamweaver or HomeSite have more powerful tools of this kind. But the absence of its own ftp client is surprising: this function, in my opinion, has already become standard for more or less developed web editors. True, this doesn’t depress me personally: I work with WebMaker at home, where there is no Internet, and I do uploading at work, where (I hope) there is no Linux yet. However, this is an omission.

In addition, there are some oddities in the behavior of the program. So, when saving a file under a different name, not only does it strive to do this not at the location of the original file, but at the location of the last entry (and sometimes in an arbitrary directory inside /$home): many packages are guilty of this, and not only under Linux; but the name of the source file is also reset (although not always). In addition, an extension is not automatically assigned to an html file - you need to take care of this yourself.

Another oddity is that the selection of a code fragment sometimes spontaneously moves to another place, although not far; therefore, when you paste a selected fragment using the middle mouse button (and WebMaker fully supports this nice Unix feature; I can’t imagine how I lived without it before), something that is not exactly what was intended may appear at the target point. This requires attention.

In addition, I would also include the lack of Undo and Redo functions, at least one level, as disadvantages; however, this is due to their absence in the original text editor, Kedit.

However, all this is nothing more than minor quibbles. So that they don’t think that I, like Brutus, sold myself to public (that is, program writers) workers. Moreover, most of them have already been corrected by the author (though only in the source texts, which are now, hopefully temporarily, unavailable).

But what else I would like to see (in addition to link checking tools, which I have already talked so much about) is (as a wish):

windows for visualizing changes in html code, similar to those found in HomeSite;
the ability to directly work with Java code, as in Arachnophilia;
support, at least limited, for VRML, as in Hypertext Builder.

Then WebMaker will simply be the height of perfection. However, it is good in its current form. What I tried to prove in practice: until recently, I supported my website (http://linuxsaga.newmail.ru) exclusively with its resources.

Quanta

The Quanta html editor (the current version at the time of writing is 1.04) was created by Kiev residents Dmitry Poplavsky and Alexander Yakovlev together with Eric Laffoon. It is available on the authors’ website (), where it is presented in binary archives (tar.gz, tar.bz2, rpm) ranging in size from 350 to 500 KB. Of course, there are also source texts.

Installing the program, at least in the rpm version, does not cause any problems. The only thing is, since Quanta is a KDE application, the appropriate ingredients are required - KDE itself and the Qt library version no lower than 1.44. If these conditions are met, Quanta can be launched in any graphical environment. At least in the environments that I tried (WindowMaker, XFce, FLWM, FailSafe. IceWM) there were no problems.

It should be noted that Quanta is based on the native KDE text editor Kwrite, and therefore does not work in the KDE 2 environment.

General overview

Quanta fits neatly into the KDE start menu, but, of course, can also be launched from a terminal window. After starting the program, a fairly standard window appears, containing a menu bar and a main toolbar with buttons for general-purpose operations: creating, opening and saving a file, cutting, copying and pasting, Undo and Redo, search, switching viewing modes, navigation.

As you can see, the space below is divided into three frames by default. The left one contains three tabs: Files, Projects, Struct, Docs. Enabling the first one brings up a directory tree. The second provides management of created projects, which I will talk about a little later. The third tab shows the structure of the current HTML document, including heading tags, categories, internal links (anchors), etc. Switching to the Docs tab brings up the program documentation.

On the right is the actual working field. If the first three bookmarks are enabled in the directory tree, it displays the html code of the open file (which can be opened by double-clicking on the name in the directory tree). And the bookmarks above allow you to switch between the main groups of tags.

When you switch to the Doc tab, the tagged bookmarks in the right frame disappear, and the contents of the frame are the program's documentation system, displayed in a browser-like form.

Finally, the bottom frame is a display of the current html file in the built-in browser (similar in characteristics to the kfm browser). All frames can be resized manually. In addition, the directory tree and preview frames can be disabled using the corresponding buttons on the main toolbar. Which, by the way, are equipped with pop-up tips.

Features Overview

All actions available in Quanta can be performed from the menu, using buttons on the main and additional toolbars, by clicking the right mouse button. And, of course, manually. How? I'll try to describe it in order.

In the File menu you can

create a new window (with the default directory tree and for some reason only one, the first open file loaded)
create a new (absolutely empty, without any automatic gag) file
open an existing file (including Open Recent) and close it
save the file (or all open files), including under a different name
check the HTML syntax (Weblint option), but this requires additional installation of the corresponding module (available on the authors’ website)
print the file and also exit the program.

The Edit item includes standard operations - cutting, copying and pasting, Undo and Redo, searching and replacing, going to line by number.

In the View item - enable/disable the toolbar, status bar, directory tree, message window (when checking HTML syntax), preview window. Here is an update of the latter; If you don't do this, no matter how many files you open, it will show the file that was opened first.

The main menu item is Tags. Which is completely duplicated by the buttons of additional toolbars, which is why I’ll talk about them together.

And so, in the Tags item there are the following sub-items corresponding to bookmarks for additional panels:

Standard - buttons for quick start (that is, entering regular tags like doctype, title, defining body tag attributes - all in bulk), visual font tags (bold etc.), paragraph, line break, non-breaking space, defining hyperlinks and inserting pictures, and other;
Fonts - tags for defining the font typeface, increase and decrease, upper and lower indices, preformatted text, as well as headings of five levels;
Tables, as is easy to understand, is designed for inserting tables (including those with a specified number of rows and columns), headers and headers, individual rows and cells;
Forms - a full set of standard forms and buttons (radio, check, submitt, reset and others);
Lists - naturally, numbered and unnumbered lists;
Other - everything that did not fall into the previous paragraphs, namely: inserting a color in hexadecimal notation by selecting from the color field (an extremely good option, which is often missing, I note by the way), inserting a date, sending mail; here, in addition to the built-in browser, you can view it in external browsers, Netscape Navigator and the browser from kfm;
User - empty panel for user-defined buttons; These buttons can have both an html tag and JavaScript scripts attached to them.

It is possible to automatically edit entered tags and their attributes. This can be done through the main or contextual (right-click) menu, as well as using hotkeys. In this case, editing is carried out in two ways: actually editing the tag (Edit cuttern tag), including attributing some events to it, or adding and changing the attributes of the tag (Attributes of tag).

Returning to the menu, I will say that in the Bookmarks item you can set or destroy bookmarks in the text (those called bookmarks, not anchors), and in the Options item you can configure the editor parameters (more on that below).

All that remains to be said is about the Help item. It contains detailed built-in documentation (though only in English), similar in content to the aforementioned Doc tab in the directory tree frame. There is also contextual help, called by the right mouse button (which I will discuss in more detail below).

And so, the actions through the menu and through the experimental panels are almost identical, not only in functionality, but also in organization. As for the manipulations by right-clicking the mouse, they are different in the directory tree field and in the work field. In the first case, clicking on the directory name gives you a choice of options - Add folder to top (that is, placing the directory on the same level as $home; where it can be deleted - from the directory tree, not physically), opening the directory and updating the list. Clicking on the name of an html file (or supported graphic) allows you to open or delete the file, insert a hyperlink to it in the current (right) file, and view properties, including access rights.

If you right-click in the workspace, the standard operations of cut, copy and paste, Undo and Redo, view mail, and context-sensitive help are available. That is, the corresponding item from the documentation corresponding to the Doc tab in the directory tree.

I would like to say especially about the organization of documentation. This is by no means a standard Help type: to perform such and such an action, go to menu item such and such and select such and such an option. But rather a brief (but quite sufficient!) presentation of the HTML language specification with instructions on practical techniques for working with it. The decision, from the point of view of a Windows user, may seem controversial. But I really liked it. One can only regret that the documentation is only in English. Although, I think, in Ukraine English is not only the state language, but even the language of interethnic communication...

Particularly noteworthy is the support of projects. Using the corresponding tab in the left frame or through the main menu, you can create a new or open an existing project, add files to it, define properties, etc. True, adding a file occurs rather strangely, only working if its name is entered manually in the appropriate line.

In addition, there are no file management functions in the directory tree field: you cannot create a subdirectory here, nor can you rename, move or copy a file. What is clearly missing from the point of view of full support for projects.

But there is the possibility of uploading files and the entire project as a whole. For a remote server, you can specify its name and ftp address, login and remote directory, but, woe to your enemies, not a password.

Customizability

Initially, Quanta could not boast of a wealth of settings. That was redeemed, however, by the exceptional ease of use. However, its development did not stand still, and now almost everything in it can be customized - indents, word hyphens, selection parameters, typeface, style and size of the screen font, a code table for it, as well as colors - for normal text and selected text, background . You can enable or disable the automatic placement of closing tags, if they are optional (mandatory closing tags, of course, are always included), switch the case of presentation of tags and their attributes.

There is also a Configure User toolbar item for customizing the User panel. This is done simply: enter the name of the button (for the tooltip), define its icon, enter the opening and, if necessary, closing tags (or script). The icon for the button can be taken from a ready-made xpm file or you can call the KDE icon editor to create it.

I will also note that Quanta supports tag highlighting (which a priori is by no means implied for many html editors for Linux). In this case, the backlight colors are also adjusted (via the Highliting sub-item of the same Options item.

In a word, Quanta in its modern form is a fully functional and efficient html editor, suitable for creating single pages and websites of medium complexity. It is not free from some bugs, and in some respects I find it less usable than WebMaker (perhaps just out of habit). However, it is developing quite intensively: for example, a beta version of Quanta 2 is already available for testing, oriented, as you might guess, for use in the KDE 2nd version environment.

Bluefish

This html editor has recently developed at a very fast pace: a year ago it was more of a working prototype, but now it is quite (despite some shortcomings) a fully functional finished product. Its current version (0.3.4) is available at http://bluefish.openoffice.nl, at http://www.linux.tucows.com/, and is also included in some distributions (for example, Linux Mandrake).

Bluefish is designed for use with the GNOME window environment and is accordingly based on the Gtk library. However, if it is installed, Bluefish runs without problems both under KDE and under any of the window managers I have tried (regardless of its presence or absence on the GNOME system).

Externally, Bluefish looks similar to Windows editors such as SiteAid. Below the menu bar there is a main toolbar, which includes basic operations with files (creating, opening, closing and saving, including under a different file name) and texts (copying, cutting, pasting, search and replace, Undo and Redo), and also configuration, printing and spell checking (the latter, however, does not work in the current version, even in English).

Below is a line of bookmarks that controls an additional toolbar with HTML tags. Tags are grouped in the following tabs: Quick bar, Fonts, Tables, Frames, Forms, Lists, CSS, Other. The buttons of the additional toolbar are also grouped.

So, in the Quick bar tab, groups of buttons correspond to document structure tags (DTD, Head, Body), font visual tags (Bold, Italic, etc.), internal document tags (Paragraph, Break, etc.), link and picture tags , alignment, inserting comments; Here you can send mail. The action of some buttons has its own specifics, which I will dwell on in more detail.

For example, inserting a DTD tag allows you to assign a document compliance with HTML versions 2.0, 3.0 (in Basic and Strict versions), 3.2 (Basic, Final, Draft), 4.0 (Basic and Transitional). The Head button allows for the simultaneous creation of a Title tag and meta tags. Through the Body button you can set the attributes of this tag - background color and image, text and link colors. And all this can be done together using the QuickStart button, which creates a complete set of global structure tags; only the DOCTYPE tag somehow ends up inside the HTML tag...

Interestingly, in addition to the image insertion button, there is a Thumbnail button, which automatically simultaneously creates a thumbnail image in any scale, in JPEG (default), GIF, PNG format. However, if necessary, the target attribute must be entered manually.

In the Fonts tab, the font and basefont tags, preformatted text, superscripts and subscripts, bold and italics, as well as categories from level 1 to 6 are presented in the form of buttons. Using the buttons on the Table tab, you can create a table with a specified number of columns and rows, insert a row or cell, and a table title and header. The Frames tab allows for automatic creation of a frame set; a frame can be inserted, and a frameless representation of the frameset and base window can be defined.

The Forms tab contains all the standard HTML forms - Submitt, Reset, Text, and so on; Lists tab - numbered and unnumbered lists; in the CSS tab - buttons for using cascading style sheets. The Other tab combines buttons that create navigation maps, meta tags, JavaScript elements, and also allow you to insert a date and time (including Unix system time), and view the document in an external browser - that is, Netscape Navigator, if available on the system.

In addition, there is another, custom dashboard. However, it is empty, although it is available for manual editing. This is probably where the user is expected to place their own elements, say JavaScripts.

The menu allows you to perform all the actions available through the toolbars. Allowing, additionally, access to a remote server. And plus it contains an item for project management tools. True, it’s still quite poor: you can add files to the project (current or all open ones) and save it under some name. Opening a project file results in the simultaneous opening of all html documents included in it. True, the project can also be edited: you can define local and remote directories, a directory for templates. End-to-end editing of colors, fonts, styles, and meta tags is also provided; however, for now all these actions (except for color selection) can only be done manually.

Bluefish settings are very limited: it is possible to change the typeface and font size, but by entering the font name manually, the size of the window to open, and the format of image thumbnails. True, changing the font is apparently not implemented in the current version: for me, at least, neither entering a new font name nor changing its size had any visual effect. There is no possibility (and, apparently, not expected) to change the color of the background and text, as well as tags; besides, tags are not highlighted at all; since the latter is typical for absolutely all html editors based on Gtk (regardless of their degree of development), this is apparently caused by some fundamental reasons.

Overall, Bluefish makes a mixed impression. On the one hand, the basic tools for working with basic HTML tags are very convenient; There are some unique options, such as inserting thumbnail images or, in the project - forgive the tautology - project modification tools. However, there is no automatic editing of entered tags - attributes missing when creating a tag can only be set manually. And the lack of the ability to change the font (hopefully temporary) and highlight tags (I'm afraid chronic) devalues for me personally any other advantages of the html editor. Although someone with eagle vision might enjoy the functional richness of the Bluefish.

Other html editors

The three html editors discussed above now seem to be the most complete and efficient programs. However, the list of wb-tools for Linux is not exhausted by them. Below I will more briefly discuss several more such editors, although some of them are still only prototypes (but promising) of finished products. The first in this series I would call

KDreamSite

This program is positioned by its author, Thomas Schröter, as an easy-to-use html editor. The version I saw was number one, but the README identified it as early alpha. Which, as will be seen later, is more than true.

And so, KDreamSite. Available only in source text, it can be downloaded from the author’s page (http://mitglied.tripod.de/KDreamSite), as well as, for example, from http://linux.tucows.com/ or http://www.unixware .ru/ . It is a packaged tar archive about half a megabyte in size. Requirements for installation are the presence of a C++ compiler, Perl, make, autoconf and automake programs, the QT1.44 library and, of course, KDE (all this is listed in detail in the README file.

In addition, the INSTALL file contains sufficient instructions for compiling and installing the program. Which, if you have all the necessary libraries and tools located in the right places (defined by the Makefile), do not cause any difficulties. If all the necessary equipment is not located at the right address, you need to run installation scripts with all sorts of parameters (or edit the Makefile - I don’t know what’s easier).

Once the installation is complete, the executable binary file (kdeamsite), according to the documentation, should be located at /usr/local/bin. For me it was found directly in /usr/bin. From where it was successfully launched. Via the command line, since KDE is not built into the menu.

Externally, KDreamsite is very similar to the previously described WebMaker. After starting the program, you can see a window consisting of two panels. On the left is a directory tree (by default - starting from the root), on the right is an html file. immediately after launch, it is nameless and empty, there is not even an IDOCTYPE tag - one of the mandatory ones, according to the html 4 specification.

From this position you can open any existing html or text file or create a new one (there are not even minimal templates for this). All open or created files are displayed as tabs below the toolbar. Of course, you can also close the file. It's interesting (though not really) that closing an empty file created at startup automatically closes the entire program. Regardless of how many non-empty files are open at that moment. And if these files have been changed, there should be neither a warning about this nor a suggestion to save them. And all changes are lost.

An attempt to open an HTML file with Russian content results in the appearance of abracadabra, since the default font is set without Cyrillic. True, the font and all its attributes (size, style, color, for Cyrillic - encoding) can be changed through the menu item Options - Editor Defaults. However, these settings cannot be saved - when you restart the program, everything returns to normal.

The toolbar contains several buttons for performing minimal actions (creating, opening and saving a document, Undo and Redo, cutting, copying and pasting). The panel is not editable, there is no possibility of connecting additional panels.

What else can you do with KDreamsite? A standard set of manipulations, such as:

changing text attributes (highlighting, italics, underlining) and paragraph (alignment left and right, centering, justification);
inserting a limited set of basic tags (hyperlink, anchor, picture, email address, horizontal line, date/time); in this case, only the tags themselves are automatically inserted, and their attributes must be entered manually;
There is also an option for inserting meta tags, but in the current version it is blocked;
There is also the ability to edit tags (for some reason in the Edit menu item), but it has not yet been implemented;
Judging by the presence of the View (locked) menu item, we can guess that viewing is supposed to be done in an external browser.

That's probably all we have today. True, there is still an unrealized menu item called Project, which is not very typical for free web editors. But one can only guess about its content.

Conclusion: in its modern form, KDreamsite is not suitable for real work (especially with Russian-language material). However, please do not take this as a reproach. After all, we are dealing with a very early alpha version (it would probably be more correct to number it not 1.0, but something like 0.xx). And the built-in (albeit unrealized) options suggest that over time KDreamsite will become a functional analogue of free, middle-class web editors. If the project management functions include something other than creating and maintaining one, it is possible that he will be among the best.

asWedit

This is one of the first full-featured HTML editors for Linux in history. The review of him as the editor of the HomeSite class seems to me somewhat exaggerated. Although quite usable.

asWedit exists in both source and binary packages, and can be obtained from http://www.advasoft.com/asWedit/. Installing it is not difficult; it integrates perfectly into the KDE start menu, although it can be launched in any other way (for example, from the terminal command line).

asWedit (current version 4.1) really looks like HomeSite, but the versions are too shaggy. And immediately after the page loads, it begins to correct its code, issuing all sorts of vile suggestions; True, it is possible to ignore them, but then asWedit will not calm down the next time the document is loaded. The problem of Russian letters can be solved by running from the command line with the -fn parameter. However, in this case, the ability to customize screen fonts in the code editing window is lost: when switching to a medium or large font, the letters cease to be Russian, and I distinguish the resulting default font only by scratching the monitor with glasses.

Of course, you should do manual editing of configuration files, but it is unclear whether it is worth it. I didn’t find any special advantages in asWedit: well, the editor is like an editor, their name is legion on any site of free Windows programs.

Erwin

This editor, available as an RPM package, is extremely simple: three menu items (not counting help), duplicated by one of two toolbars. The second is intended for entering three groups of tags - main html tags, formatting tags and tables and lists. It doesn’t highlight tags, there are no settings even in the beginning.

Entering Russian letters is only possible with a keyboard layout called “hacker”. However, due to the inability to customize the screen fonts, these letters are still not Russian. This determines the impossibility (and unnecessaryness) of using this editor.

Screem

This is a very promising html editor, which can be found at http://www.screem.org/, exclusively in source text form. It is based on the Gtk library and is designed for the GNOME graphical environment. Each version of it, as a rule (and the latest in my memory is 0.2.6) requires the latest versions of the Gtk and GNOME libraries. Therefore, compiling Screem is often difficult and does not always complete successfully. And it itself cannot be called fully operational: for me, for example, not a single version of it worked continuously for more than 10-15 minutes.

Nevertheless, I would pay some attention to it. Because the impression is powerful: there is and

very advanced html code editor;
well-implemented project support, it is possible to automatically build a site map;
the ability to not only insert Java applets, JavaScript scripts, PHP directives, but also directly edit their source texts.

The visualization window is very impressive, very reminiscent of that in HomeSite for Windows. In this window, it seems, there is even the possibility of visually designing a page. In addition, you can connect as many external browsers as you like to view the page (or rather, as many as are in the system).

The Screem html code editor with developed visualization tools serves as a link with the next group of web tools, which include

Visual web editors

Visual web editors also have two target audiences. The first are purely amateurs who create personal pages and do not want to spend excessive effort on it. The second, on the contrary, are professionals, but not content specialists, but rather designers. For whom web design is just one of the types of design in general.

It cannot be said that the tools for visually designing web pages for Linux are numerous, but they are still available. Until recently - number two. These include, for example,

Amaya

This is an editor developed by the W3C consortium (http://www.w3c.org/), where you can find its current version (3.1), in the form of source code or rpm package. Installing it does not cause problems in either case.

At first glance, Amaya makes a very pleasant impression: a modern-looking toolbar, a built-in browser like AOLPress, switching from editor mode to browser mode, etc.

However, the very first experiments cause complete disappointment. Firstly, Amaya immediately begins to find erroneous tags (to the best of its ability, which corresponds to almost the second version of the html specification). And until the errors are corrected, it categorically refuses to switch to editor mode.

True, if you follow wise advice on correcting the code (not very significant, it must be said), you can still get access to the editor. Here, however, comes the second disappointment: I did not find any way to edit the html code. Without which I will not accept a web editor, be it at least three times wisiwig: we know how smart they are...

The third disappointment is that my struggle for Russian letters was unsuccessful. Amaya does not want to respond to launching with the parameter, say, -fn, and searching for some other method of Russification (if it exists) required what seemed to me an unjustified expenditure of effort and time. And I happily said goodbye to Amaya, moving on to the second visual editor -

Bulldozer

WebSphere Homepage Builder

produced by IBM, on whose website (http://www.ibm.com/software/hpbuilder) it can be found. True, this is a commercial product (although not expensive, $69); A 15-day trial version is available for free download.

The WebSphere Homepage Builder package only exists as a binary rpm package of approximately 20 MB. In addition, its operation requires its own version of wine (available there) with a capacity of 1.7 MB. And about 10 MB more is the documentation for the package.

The WebSphere Homepage Builder package is installed by default in the /opt/hpbuilder4/ directory, where the executables are located in the /bin subdirectory. And it includes three components - Web Animator, WebArt Designer and WebSphere Homepage Builder itself

Well, Web Animator, as you would expect, turns out to be an animated GIF maker. WebArt Designer is a fairly convenient tool for creating logos, buttons, and frames. Including all sorts of, sometimes not quite standard, special effects.

Well, WebSphere Homepage Builder - in accordance with the name, is a visual web page editor. At first glance (which also turned out to be the last) it looks very rich in possibilities. But, again, as a first approximation, he categorically refuses to perceive the great and powerful. Attempts to somehow teach him this were unsuccessful: the program did not want to understand a single Cyrillic typeface. Therefore, I did not study it in detail.

I will only say that it has tools for both visual design and direct editing of html code, rich capabilities for automated insertion of tags, divided into physical, that is, visual (such as bold, italic tags, etc.) and logical, that is, structural ( strong. emphasis, etc.). The insertion of tables, illustrations, hyperlinks, Java applets and JavaScript scripts is quite conveniently implemented. Work with cascading style sheets (CSS) and other modern bells and whistles is effectively implemented. There are very advanced project management tools, including link integrity checking and automatic sitemap generation. There is also a built-in ftp client with quite rich settings. But, I repeat, in our conditions it is difficult to use all this due to the support of the Cyrillic alphabet.

So the visual design tools for web pages under Linux leave much to be desired. Of course, word processors can be used as such. For example, the previously described StarWrite from the integrated StarOffice suite. However, the html code generated by the latter leaves much to be desired in terms of cleanliness and understandability: anyone who has seen pages made in MS Word in the source texts will understand what I mean.

However, if it is absolutely unbearable to live without a visual web editor, there is a last resort: Netscape Composer from the Netscape Communicator suite, which works normally with Cyrillic texts. Its disadvantages are the same as those of its Windows counterpart: the lack of its own html code editor, the difficulty of switching to an external editor, the persistent desire to “improve” the manually entered code in terms of readability and aesthetics, and sometimes syntax (and to some extent own understanding, which does not always coincide with, say, mine). But, in principle, Netscape Composer is suitable for quickly creating simple pages.

Since we are talking about Netscape products, we should say a few words about those programs with the help of which works of web-art are viewed, and called, as you know,

Browsers

Unlike Windows, there are a great variety of browsers for Linux. But only two are of practical importance - the text browser Lynx and the graphical mode browser (guess which one three times) Netscape Navigator. I'll start with the first one.

Why is it worth mentioning text-based Lynx in an era of dominance of graphic and, so to speak, “technological” web pages? Because it is traditionally common among long-time Linux (and Unix) users. And, it should be noted, not without reason.

Firstly, it is extremely fast: if you are used to Netscape or, especially, Internet Explorer, you will be amazed at the speed of interpretation of html code. Of course, you won’t be able to see any beauties of graphic or technological design. But the text part of the web page will be quite understandable. If, of course, its creator designed it correctly.

Because, secondly, Lynx is very strict in its interpretation of html code, requiring at least relative compliance with the specification. In case of serious violation of the latter, he may simply refuse to read the page. And therefore Lynx is indispensable as one of the means of checking the validity of your own web creations.

Finally, thirdly, for the perception of essentially textual web materials, Lynx creates the same feeling of visual comfort as console text editors do for typing them. And over time, perhaps you will see a unique aesthetic in its simplicity and severity...

There's not much to say about Netscape Navigator: it's a very close analogue of its Windows counterpart. If the version numbers are equal, of course. And all the skills in working with this will also come in handy when using the Linux implementation. The only significant difference is that the latter comes with significantly fewer additional plug-ins; for example, there are no tools designed to perceive RealAudio and RealVideo; they must be downloaded separately and installed independently.

In addition, under Linux there are numerous browsers of a local, so to speak, scale: built into the file managers kfm and konqueror, for example. Moreover, the latter is already a fully-fledged web page viewer, characterized by convenience and speed. Mozilla and Netscape browsers version 6 are on the way (and available as beta versions).

Finally, there is a Linux implementation of the third pillar of Windows browsing - Opera. However, it has problems with the perception of the Cyrillic alphabet. And from the point of view of compactness and performance, the choice for Linux is already extensive.

Anyone who has their own website, blog, forum or other Internet resource, as a rule, sooner or later begins to master languages HTML And PHP. Anyone who has recently switched to Ubuntu would like to know what programs and editors this OS can offer for working with the site.

I'll start with a lightweight editor Gedit .
Gedit is the default text editor for Ubuntu. Although Gedit is not as powerful as many editors, it has excellent features that can be extended with plugins: http://live.gnome.org/Gedit/Plugins. The editor is written by the Gnome Software Foundation, so it fully supports gio/gvfs and works with any files that Nautilus works with. These are files that are available via FTP, SMB, SSH/SFTP, as well as DAV. This is very useful when working with a remote server.

Features of Gedit:

Print support
Customizable syntax highlighting (C, C++, Java, HTML, XML, Python, Perl, etc.)
Lots of plugins
File Browser
Spellchecking
Ability to create backup copies of documents
etc.

Gedit is simple, but very nice and useful. Recently I have been using it to work with websites.

Install Gedit:

sudo apt-get install gedit

Geany is a mix that consists of a text editor and an IDE. It not only has tools for web development, but also software development capabilities. Geany supports code folding, a menu of variables and functions for quickly finding the functions you need, the ability to set color schemes, a compiler, an internal terminal and much more that a modern editor should contain. Geany is being actively developed and improved.

Install Geany:

sudo aptitude install geany

is a text editor with syntax highlighting.

Inserting code for Apache, C, CSS, Javascript, PHP, HTML (and others) configuration files
Creating tables
Flexible syntax highlighting
Autocompletion of HTML tags
File Browser
Working with remote files via ftp
and much more

Install Bluefish:

sudo aptitude install bluefish

Compozer is a WYSIWYG (visual) HTML editor based on Nvu. In the spring of 2007, Download.com declared KompoZer the best free alternative to Adobe CS3.

Main features of the editor:

Work in WYSIWYG mode, ability to edit source code directly
Built-in FTP client
Ability to check the source code of a page using the HTML validator from W3C
Working with multiple documents using tabs
Ability to publish created pages on the Internet

Read how to install Kompozer on Ubuntu 14.04.

The SeaMonkey linker is included in the software package from the SeaMonkey Council. This set contains: a web browser, an email client, an address book, an IRC client ChatZilla, a builder, and tools for web developers. Externally, it is very similar to Kompozer, but unlike it, it is updated very often. You don't have to know HTML to use the Composer; it is as easy to use as a text editor.
You can add lists, tables, images, links to other pages or resources, change the color and font style. When you create a document, you can see what your document looks like when published on the Internet and share it with other users, no matter what browser or email program they use. Just like Kompozer, it has a WYSIWYG mode, which is very useful for beginners in HTML.

Read how to install SeaMonkey on Ubuntu.

There are other editors that can be installed through the Ubuntu repositories, or through third-party sources, but the programs listed above should suffice. And if you don’t want to delve into the languages PHP, HTML, or dive into the study of CSS style sheets, then a Web studio in Kharkov, or another city, or country can come to your aid. Professionals in their field will create a website, forum, and online store for you according to your wishes.