HTML Editors

Submitted by Kevin Kleinfelter on Sat, 04/07/2012 - 13:24

I want to edit HTML code and see character-by-character live preview.

I want really good code completion.  When I "<tag>" I definitely want "</tag>"

I want to be able to WYSIWYG edit and see HTML code change.

I want to do this on the Mac.

I don't want to spend a fortune.

Espresso 2.0.1 does decent char-by-char live preview. I'm pleased with its code completion (use the TAB key).  I suspect that HTMLBundle.sugar might improve code completion (for HTML only).  It does live-preview, but not WYSIWYG editing.  I can't find any doc on how to use it. Launches in 1 second.

Coda 1.7.5 does decent auto-complete, but only click-another-tab preview.  It has no WYSIWYG editing. It looks like maybe the "Lively" plug-in gets you live-preview in another window. Starts in 3.5 seconds.

Flux 3 has nice WYSIWYG editing, tolerable live-preview, and worthless (not context-aware) auto-completion.  Best used for WYSIWYG editing with a few tweaks in HTML.

Chocolat 0.8 has good char-by-char live preview​, but you can't control the relative size of the code/preview.  It does Markdown live-preview too.  It reportedly can import TextMate bundles and themes.  It starts in 2 seconds.  No doc.

http://htmledit.squarefree.com/ does char-by-char live preview, but nothing else.

http://fundisom.com/live_preview.html does char-by-char live preview, but little else.

I like the code completion in Aptana (Eclipse), but you have to save the file to get the preview.  It takes 7 seconds to launch.  First launch of the day is 20 seconds.  Code auto-complete is inadequate.

http://livereload.com/ gets browser auto-reload on file saved for any editor for $10.  Sublime has a plug-in that mostly does the same thing for free; I could only get it working with Chrome and only with http:// URLs.

Ordinary text editors:

* SublimeText 2 launches in 3 seconds for the first launch after boot, and launches in 1 second otherwise. Choosing options is via editing text files.  :-(  Sublime's unofficial doc is at http://readthedocs.org/docs/sublime-text-unofficial-documentation .  "Snippets" are good. Sublime works on Mac, Windows, Ubuntu.

* TextMate launches in 1 second.

* Cocoa Emacs  (http://emacsformacosx.com/about) launches in 1 second.

* macvim (http://code.google.com/p/macvim/) launches in 1 second.

* Komodo Edit launches in 4 seconds.  Preview on file-save only. It runs on Linux, Mac, Windows.

Emacs and Vim are great editors, and if I coded all day, every day, I could stay proficient enough in one to make it worthwhile.  "Stale" in either one is frustrating.  Emacs pinky is a problem too.  For new languages/concepts, they always happen first in Emacs.

At this point it looks like the following contenders:

* An ordinary text editor (Sublime Text 2 or TextMate or BBEdit or Komodo Edit) $60/$55/$50/$0 and LiveReload @ $10.

   - Note: A single Sublime license can be used by one user in both Windows and OS X.

* Chocolat @ $35/50 (beta/final).  If it were finished, it *might* be really good.

* Espresso @ $80

* Emacs @ $0

* If I really want to do WYSIWYG editing, I could use Kompozer @ $0

For now, I think I'll use Sublime Text 2, and keep an eye on Chocolat and Expresso.

from http://www.kleinfelter.com/content/html-editors