Tools to Build Web Pages
Standalone Editors: Choices Galore

Tools to Build Web Pages 

• Office Suites:

• Browser Editors:

• Standalone Editors:
  • AOL Press
  • Amaya
  • Arachnophilia
  • EditPlus

• Other Tools

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Benefits:

• Lots of editors to pick from.
• All have some pluses.

Deficiencies:

• Too many editors to pick from.
• Need external image editor if you want to create images.
• All have some minuses.
• Probably will need more than one to meet your HTML needs.
• Still need to learn HTML (basic HTML if it's WYSIWYG editor)

How you use them:

• Some are WYSIWYG editors, other are code-based, but MOST are both!  

AOL Press

• Comes in a Solaris/Win9x/WinNT/Mac flavors!
• Good for text but poor table support.
• Very good with frames.
• Creates and manages image maps!
• One of the best 'free products' that does site management really well.
• Complete HTML 3.2 with some HTML 4 (e.g., some support for CSS)
• WYSIWYG as well as color-coded code editor
• Spell checker, link checker
• Really good documentation
• Also an adequate browser
• FREE!!! From www.aolpress.com

Amaya

• FULL HTML 4, not IE4's or Netscape's water-downed DHTML
• Also a browser, a FULL HTML 4 browser.
• Spell Checker.
• Can make a 'book' out of a series of web pages.
• Includes an equation editor (Yipee!) but only a true HTML 4 browser can view the results (i.e., IE4 and Netscape can't render the equations produced by Amaya).
• Not an easy learning curve. Although it's a WYSIWYG editor, you'll need to learn HTML4, CSS, etc.
• FREE!!! And available for Solaris as well. From www.w3.org

Arachnophilia

• Code-based editor with some auto-formatting features
• HTML 3.2 plus some HTML 4, and good at it as well.
• Some site management tools
• Best code-based editor I've found for the price (FREE!!!).
• From www.arachnoid.com

EditPlus

• Code-based editor but with some auto-formatting features.
• HTML 3.2, 4, and CSS
• Integrates better with IE4 than Netscape.
• Also an editor for C++, Java, JavaScript, VBScript, Dos Batch, Tcl/Tk, and Perl; can be configured by a user for any additional languages. And, it shows in that it's not as easy to learn/use as Arachnophilia.
• $20 Australian from www.editplus.com

My Choice/suggestions:

AOL Press is my workhorse, especially for its web-site management tool. But I'll be using Amaya for learning HTML 4. EditPlus for code-based editing since I use it for most of my Tcl/Tk programming. Arachnophilia great if you won't use the other features of EditPlus.