Bluefish is a free software advanced text editor with a variety of tools for programming in general and the development of dynamic websites. Bluefish supports development in HTML, XHTML, CSS, XML, PHP, C, C++, JavaScript, Java, Google Go, Vala, Ada, D, SQL, Perl, ColdFusion, JSP, Python, Ruby and shell. Bluefish is available for many platforms, including Linux, Solaris, macOS, and Windows. Bluefish can be used via integration with GNOME or run as a standalone application. Bluefish fills the niche market between the plain text editors and the full IDE: Bluefish is relatively lightweight and easy to learn, while still providing many features of an integrated development environment to support both programming and the development of websites. Bluefish has been translated into 17 languages.
Syntax highlighting is a feature of text editors that are used for programming, scripting, or markup languages, such as HTML. The feature displays text, especially source code, in different colors and fonts according to the category of terms. This feature facilitates writing in a structured language such as a programming language or a markup language as both structures and syntax errors are visually distinct. Highlighting does not affect the meaning of the text itself; it is intended only for human readers.
In web development, "tag soup" is a pejorative term that refers to syntactically or structurally incorrect HTML written for a web page. Because web browsers have historically treated HTML syntax or structural errors leniently, there has been little pressure for web developers to follow published standards, and therefore there is a need for all browser implementations to provide mechanisms to cope with the appearance of "tag soup", accepting and correcting for invalid syntax and structure where possible.
HomeSite was an HTML editor originally developed by Nick Bradbury. Unlike WYSIWYG HTML editors such as FrontPage and Dreamweaver, HomeSite was designed for direct editing, or "hand coding," of HTML and other website languages.
jEdit is a free software text editor available under the GNU General Public License version 2.0. It is written in Java and runs on any operating system with Java support, including BSD, Linux, macOS and Windows.
PHPEdit is a commercial IDE developed by the French company WaterProof SARL. It is written in Delphi and runs on the Microsoft Windows operating system, and is designed mainly for the PHP language, but supports many other languages such as CSS, HTML, JavaScript, INI, PHPEditScript, PlainText, SQL, XML, and XSLT. PHPEdit currently costs €89.00 despite the most recent version being released in 2012. A free license is available, but only for non commercial use.
A source code editor is a text editor program designed specifically for editing source code of computer programs. It may be a standalone application or it may be built into an integrated development environment (IDE) or web browser. Source code editors are a fundamental programming tool, as the fundamental job of programmers is to write and edit source code.
Textile is a lightweight markup language that uses a text formatting syntax to convert plain text into structured HTML markup. Textile is used for writing articles, forum posts, readme documentation, and any other type of written content published online.
Markdown is a lightweight markup language with plain text formatting syntax. Its design allows it to be converted to many output formats, but the original tool by the same name only supports HTML. Markdown is often used to format readme files, for writing messages in online discussion forums, and to create rich text using a plain text editor.
TopStyle is a CSS/XHTML/HTML editor for Microsoft Windows developed by Nick Bradbury and now maintained by Stefan van As. The editor is code-centric rather than WYSIWYG, with integrated support for previews using either the Mozilla Gecko, Internet Explorer Trident, or Apple Inc. Webkit layout engines. The software is available as a commercial version with a trial period.
Aptana, Inc. is a company that makes web application development tools for Web 2.0 and Ajax for use with a variety of programming languages. Aptana's main products include Aptana Studio, Aptana Cloud and Aptana Jaxer.
EditPlus is a text editor for the Microsoft Windows operating system, developed by Sangil Kim of ES-Computing. The editor contains tools for programmers, including syntax highlighting, file type conversions, line ending conversion, regular expressions for search-and-replace, keystroke, spell check, full support for Unicode editing, customizable keyboard shortcuts, auto-completion, code folding, and more. Files can be browsed and edited in tabs, and an internal file browser is implemented in the software.
CodeLite is a free and open-source IDE for the C, C++, PHP, and JavaScript (Node.js) programming languages.
FirstPage is a family of HTML editor products by EVRSOFT, running on Microsoft Windows. The features include HTML editing, formatting and validation with syntax highlighting, templates and partial WYSIWYG support, JavaScript code snippets, DOM tree browser and various wizards. There are rather function-rich free versions and commercial extensions, which mostly bring bigger libraries of templates and code snippets.
CSE HTML Validator, now renamed to CSS HTML Validator, is an HTML editor for Windows that assists web developers in creating syntactically correct and accessible HTML, XHTML, and CSS documents by locating errors, potential problems, and common mistakes. It is also able to check links, suggest improvements, alert developers to deprecated, obsolete, or proprietary tags, attributes, and CSS properties, and find issues that can affect search engine optimization.
JetBrains PhpStorm is a commercial, cross-platform IDE for PHP built on JetBrains' IntelliJ IDEA platform.
Emmet is a set of plug-ins for text editors that allow for high-speed coding and editing in HTML, XML, XSL, and other structured code formats via content assist. The project was started by Vadim Makeev in 2008 and continues to be actively developed by Sergey Chikuyonok and Emmet users. Since 2015 Mikael Geletsyan is responsible for UX at Emmet. The tools have been incorporated into several popular text editors, as well as some plug-ins developed by the Emmet team and others implemented independently. However, Emmet is primarily independent from any text editor, as the engine works directly with text rather than with any particular software.
RJ TextEd is a freeware Unicode text and source code editor for Windows, that can also be used as a simple web development tool.
Brackets is a source code editor with a primary focus on web development. Created by Adobe Systems, it is free and open-source software licensed under the MIT License, and is currently maintained on GitHub by Adobe and other open-sourced developers. It is written in JavaScript, HTML and CSS. Brackets is cross-platform, available for macOS, Windows, and most Linux distributions. The main purpose of brackets is its live HTML, CSS and JavaScript editing functionality.
