Open Source Dreamweaver alternative needed

SomethingGood

Can anyone recommend a free open source alternative to Dreamweaver for HTML/CSS editing?

bod1467

No personal experience of any ...

https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=best%20open%20source%20version%20of%20dreamweaver&safe=off

I prefer to create and edit in code view, so any text editor with syntax highlighting suits me. (I presently use Notepad++, and previously used TextPad).

SomethingGood

So does Notepad++ show you your wysiwyg progress as you edit the code? That would be perfect really, I don't need anything fancier than that.

Sooler

Nvu and KompoZer are the defacto alternates to Dreamweaver.

hop3y

I use WordPress for all my web design needs, there's a sandbox plugin where you can code yourself and apply it to the theme of your site.

bod1467

SomethingGood wrote: »

So does Notepad++ show you your wysiwyg progress as you edit the code?

No. At least not unless you're running a local server (localhost) and have the site/page open in a browser and refresh the page after each change.

It is certainly not a WYSIWYG editor in the classic sense.

SomethingGood

Ah I see, well it might still be good enough, I'll give it a try and see how it goes. I'll also have a look at Nvu and KompoZer.

hop3y - I've used Wordpress many times but only for blog-style sites. This time I'm looking to create a pretty standard 5-ish page information site. Is Wordpress good for that too?

rash161

Vim or Emacs

Don't use WYSIWYG, it will just look like WYSIWYG and you spend more time messing around with the editor than getting stuff done how you want it. Also, something like Dreamweaver is limited to only a few development languages, should you ever get into anything else in the future, you'll need to obtain and get used to a new editor, get used to Vim and you can use it for pretty much anything.

If you don't know how to code, learn on Code Academy.

Are you actually looking for Open Source or just Freeware? The two are not the same thing, the English language is limited when it comes to the word "Free", there's free as in freedom or free as in free stuff.

SomethingGood

Erm, good questions.

I can code, just HTML/CSS. I'm not looking to take it further (gave up doing it for clients years ago). This is just a simple project for my dad who is doing an exhibition and needs a website to back up his pitch. Maybe I don't mean wysiwyg, I just mean some kind of preview of the work.

My method was going to be: Find a free html/css template and adapt the template in an html editor where I can track the progress as I go along.

rash161

There's scripts for Vim to open the current file in a browser, if it's just HTML then that's easy, open it from anywhere, if it's something server-side then install a web server and interpreter on your machine.

As far as I know, if you wanted PHP previewing with Dreamweaver, you'd still have to install PHP and Apache/IIS or upload it to a server before previewing?

There's Aptana studio, available standalone or as an Eclipse plugin but it's really bloaty in my opinion and isn't WYSIWYG, it does have built in preview though I think.

For what you want I don't think the editor is really the issue, I think what you really need to look at is a grid-based framework, there's lots of them, Bootstrap, Skeleton, 960gs. It will allow you to create pages and lay them out easily without coding but it won't look as unique as coding from scratch would.

[Deleted User]

FYI - there's a 'preview HTML' plugin for Notepad++ that will show the HTML 'live' as you code it in a side window, without needing to save it

http://fossil.2of4.net/npp_preview/