I have used a few web editors in the past. Since I am a mac user I have primarily used iWeb and Nvu. iWeb web page creator by Apple comes with the iLife suite and allows users to create great looking web pages with no knowledge of HTML. It also does not allow you to directly edit the HTML either, thus giving less power and flexibility to the user. Nvu is a great HTML editor for the Mac because it gives the ease of using it WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editing and the power to edit and write pure HTML.
For this assignment I thought I would try an HTML editor that I have never used before. Taco HTML Edit "is a full-featured HTML editor and PHP editor distributed as freeware". It was best free editor (other than Nvu) I could find that was targeted just towards HTML editing.
-Live Preview, which allows you to see a preview of your edits while you make them
-Syntax Coloring, which makes the HTML easier to read
-Batch Find, which allows you to search multiple documents at a time
-Image Map Wizard, which allows you to manipulate the view of images on your web page
-Spell Check, which allows you to spell check your HTML
-Format Tags Menu, auto inserts formating tags (ex: Bold, Center, Paragraph) around text you highlight
-Color Wizard, which allows you to select the color you want to use from a color wheel and automatically inserts the color code
-Toolbar (yes, this is listed as a feature), allows access to the many functions of this editor
While making this page, using the Taco HTML definitely helped complete the task, however the advanced features in it were not very intuitive or easy to use. Syntax Coloring definitely helped make reading the code easier. The Find and Replace options work well and are useful. Spell checking is also useful, especially when creating pages with a lot of text. The formating tags were useful because if I wanted to go back and change something, I could highlight that part and quickly add in the tags.
Although there is a toolbar available, it is very unorganized and not easy to navigate. The Live Preview is a nice feature, but when used, a new edit/preview window comes up over the original editing windows, thus making the desktop messy. Also, there isn't a way to edit multiple files in different directories with a single window (such as with tabbed editing).
Taco HTML Edit is a free barebones HTML editor that has some helpful features. It is not as user friendly or well layed out as other free editors such as Nvu, but it does assist the user in writing HTML more than a basic text writer. My experience using Taco hasn't been extremely great, but since it is free, the cost to benefit is about equal.
Pros: Free, Syntax Coloring, Spell Check, Able to insert Format Tags
Cons: Unorganized User Inferface, Too many windows, No tabbed editing