Servage Magazine

The internet is full of web design and development software, for all levels of skills and knowledge. For startup designers, it can be a bit challenging to find highly useful, yet free or low cost, software. I have written this post to introduce various design and programming software, which are well established and meet modern needs.

CoffeeCup Editor

In most web programming projects, HTML is at the core. Therefore, we all need HTML editors, likely with different capabilities. Dreamweaver (made by Adobe), is an often used tool among the diverse community of web developers. However, its ever increasing prices prohibits many who wish to purchase this tool. Therefore, I have found some free HTML editors tools. or free versions of commercial products, to assist with small to mid level projects. Among them, CoffeeCup Free HTML Editor is my first choice since it misses only a few useful features, like CSS menu design, FTP upload, etc. Yet, it does provide the most features with intact capacities. You can also use their S-Drive platform to upload your page, with free hosting for a single site.

Notepad++ Editor

Another amazingly powerful tool is Notepad++ for source editing. It is loaded with a number of features. I like syntax highlighting the most because this feature allows you to understand your code immediately, plus scanning code is far easier, especially in more complicated projects. Additionally, with code folding capacity, you can focus on particular areas of your code, as some otherwise distracting portions can be hidden, by collapsing them from view. Today most code editors come with auto-completion and this editor includes this powerful aid to do coding quickly and easily, with fewer errors. Easy document navigation, macro support and bookmarking capabilities are additional features worth mentioning here. All these components come with an easy to use interface.

PageBreeze

While the previous two examples are able to fascinate some experienced web designers along with newbies, the PageBreeze editor basically belongs to old school editors. As such, it is devoid of many impressive features. Because of this, it is not my preference. But for those who desire easy coding, you can use this WYSIWYG based editor. You start with some simple templates and can add intricacy at later stages. With this editor, you can add links, tables, images, forms, etc. without much effort. Here you can see all your pages as well as edit them, per your needs. Once you complete your coding, you can use its built-in FTP client to upload your work online. Thus, this is a good choice for novice web developers.

Bluefish Editor

This is another useful editor equipped with powerful features and editing options like syntax highlighting, code folding, find and replace tools, auto-completion and so on. You can use this editor for many web programming languages besides HTML, such as ASP.NET, PHP, JavaScript and more.

Firebug

Although this editor doesn’t have many features, it provides opportunities to learn coding patterns and tricks by examining them and tweaking them a bit. This is not an independent editor but an extension of Firefox browser instead. With Firebug you can immediately understand the code of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc. as well as page layout. It has good debugging facilities, hence the name, Firebug. You can see logs, manage cookies, analyze various performance related parameters, like page load time, etc.

References & More Reading

Best free web design software: 10 programs to get the job done

The 10 most exciting open source projects on the web