A bit of background

Find out the basics of text editors

Text editors come in all many different forms, but at their hearts they all do the same thing - allow you to edit files that are composed of straight forward, everyday text. HTML & CSS files are like this, their contents are simply plain text.

Your computer may already have a text editor on it. If you're using a Windows based computer then you'll likely have Notepad (Programs > Accessories > Notepad). If you're using an Apple computer then you'll have VIM already installed (Applications > Utilities > Terminal and then type in VIM and press return). Finally, if you're running Linux (bonus points if you are) then you'll certainly have one of either VI/VIM, emacs, Kate or gedit.

Not all text editors are created equally and whilst VIM is a truly splendid text editor, it has a steep learning curve. Unless you can already use it, then we'd recommend something else for now. You can always come back to VIM later on.

If you're running windows then Notepad has the opposite problem to VIM - it's too simple. You'll be fighting with it all the way to use it to do serious webcraft work.

Task Discussion

Esteban Calderón said:

I'm using Linux Mint and Windows 7. The text editor I use for making Webcraft is NotePad ++ and some times DreamWeaver

on Oct. 12, 2012, 12:55 p.m.
Anonym said:

For Windows users, Notepad-plus-plus is a great choice! Cheers :)

on Oct. 1, 2012, 1:17 a.m.
Anonym said:

Currently i'm using Kate and Geany depending on how many i'm planing to write and vim only if i need something short hackish code.

on Sept. 22, 2012, 1:56 p.m.
Rajesh.M said:

I've been using Notepad++ as it is free and also has a nice colour coding that goes with the code.

on Sept. 20, 2012, 7:48 a.m.
GeorgeKarametas said:

Notepad++

on Sept. 16, 2012, 12:34 p.m.
danjonesma said:

Absolutely NP++

on Sept. 14, 2012, 10:59 a.m.
Duaa said:

notepad++ =]

on Sept. 14, 2012, 6:11 a.m.
Grim said:

I also use notepad++ as well

on Sept. 7, 2012, 9:33 p.m.
Cheffheid said:

I've used Notepad++ for years for HTML/CSS/Javascript work.

Been looking into Vim because I've heard many good things about it, not an easy editor to just "pick up" and use though.

on Sept. 6, 2012, 12:36 p.m.
zoro said:

my weapon is notepad

on Sept. 2, 2012, 1:56 a.m.
Seraphina79 said:

I recommend the following:

http://www.jedit.org/

This is excellent- it free, and it recognises lots and lots of programming languages! But I don't think you can 'debug' on this one!

http://www.yaldex.com/Free_JavaScript_Editor.htm

You can edit Javascript, HTML and CSS here, and there's a facility for debugging and more! Plus it's free, of course...

on Aug. 31, 2012, 1:14 p.m.
webcore said:

My weapon is Notepade++.

on Aug. 27, 2012, 6:03 a.m.
Kat said:

I love, love, love Notepad++! It does everything I need it to do.

on Aug. 23, 2012, 10:55 p.m.
Jim said:

My text editor of choice these days is Sublime Text. I've used many over the years and while I'm still learning all of the shortcuts and power it has to offer, I choose it because it has an active development community behind it and I enjoy being able to use it on Windows and OSX.

I still occassionally use Notepad++ and have continue to have Dreamweaver CS5 & 6 installed on my machines but I believe I'll be sticking with Sublime for quite some time. I find it interesting to see so many people on here are also using it.

on Aug. 23, 2012, 4:12 p.m.
JDubbs said:

I actually use pspad. It's pretty lightweight and has a variety of built in functionality. Ex: FTP, Formatters, etc.

I also recommend looking up zencoding. It doesn't work with every editor, but can make page creation fairly quick, even some of the more tedious tasks like large tables/etc.

I will say I have been looking for new ones out there that could be better. Sublime Text 2 looks interesting, though I doubt it has everything I use.

on Aug. 8, 2012, 2:44 p.m.

Jim said:

I'm looking forward to tryiing out Zen coding. I have the plugin installed on Sublime and DW but I have not taken the time to explore it.

on Aug. 23, 2012, 4:14 p.m. in reply to JDubbs
Anonym said:

The best free editors I've tried so far in terms of features are Bluefish and Komodo Edit. I chose Bluefish as my main editor because of its size (40mb vs 300mb)

on July 19, 2012, 1:43 a.m.

G Powell said:

Hi EraqEEm,

Thanks for this, I had never heard of Bluefish and have just taken a look - it looks really good. I will download and have play around.

Thanks,

on July 19, 2012, 4:10 a.m. in reply to Anonym
Tora said:

Let's try notepad++ i think it is awesome!

on July 4, 2012, 9:52 a.m.

davanelou said:

Great editor, I agree!

on July 22, 2012, 5:34 p.m. in reply to Tora
Anonym said:

i suggest to everyone to use SUBLIME

it is a great text editor with a lot of plugins and beautiful colors

SUBLIME support almost all languge

and also it is an open-source project it github

on June 24, 2012, 7:12 p.m.

nikema said:

Is this the same as Sublime Text? I'm using Sublime Text 2 and I love it. If it's different, can you link to a web page about it?

on July 17, 2012, 7:44 p.m. in reply to Anonym

G Powell said:

Interesting, I am going to take a look.

Thanks!

on July 18, 2012, 3:54 p.m. in reply to nikema