HTML editor

An HTML editor assists the user in writing HTML code for web pages. Although HTML code can be written and edited with any text editor, a special HTML editor is designed to be more convenient. Additionally HTML editors generally provide some assistance for creating Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).

There are two flavors of HTML editors: text and WYSIWYG.

Text editors

The text editors usually provide syntax highlighting, toolbars and keyboard shortcuts for quick inserting of HTML tags, assistants for some jobs or easy preview in the browser. Assistants are usually provided for more cumbersome tasks like adding the basic page construct or creating tables.

Text editors require at least a basic understanding of HTML and CSS for creating Web sites.

WYSIWYG editors

WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors provide an editing interface which looks the same way as the output displayed in the Web browser. A WYSIWYG editor does not require the user to have any HTML knowledge, which makes it a lot easier for the average computer user to create a Web site. But these editors are also heavily criticized by Web specialists mainly for two reasons:

They usually don't write valid HTML code
WYSIWYG does not make sense for the structural concept of HTML.

Valid HTML code

HTML is a heavily structured markup language. There are certain rules on how HTML must be written as defined by the W3C standards. Following these rules allows for sites that are accessible to handicapped people, and also to wireless devices like mobile phones or PDAs.

WYSIWYG editors usually fail to adhere to these rules. This has been the main point of criticism since the first introduction of this editors. Then again, text editors do not provide complete validation for all of these rules either, so valid code still relies on knowledge and accuracy of the coder.

While the "valid HTML" arguement still stands, the larger WYSIWYG editors have greatly improved their automated code writing in each version (even Microsoft Frontpage which in previous versions was notorious for its destruction of valid HTML code).

HTML is not WYSIWYG

It is very difficult even for advanced HTML coders to write a visual appealing Web site that looks the same on every Web browser, for two reasons:

HTML was not intended for designing, but for transporting information.
Every Web browser has bugs and does not display HTML fully like the standard intended. So the target "what you see is what you get" is very difficult to impossible to reach.

List of products

Text

WYSIWYG

Macromedia's Dreamweaver
Microsoft FrontPage
Microsoft Word has an export function for HTML
Mozilla Composer, Netscape Composer
Namo's WebEditor
Nvu, based on Mozilla Composer
Online Website content Builder [1]
OpenOffice.org Write has an export function for HTML