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Editors come in all forms, from the simplest text editor to the most sophisticated GUI tool

As we have said repeatedly, one can use any text editor to write HTML. The HTML code produced with simpler programs is not different from the HTML produced by more complex editors.

More complex editors offer a number of advantages over simple text editors (especially in terms of being able to work in a GUI or WYSIWYG environment), but such advantages are not without costs (difficult to learn, add lots of extra code, may add proprietary information to your HTML).

GUI HTML editors

All GUI HTML editors work the same way in principle - they provide a form of a graphical user interface (GUI) overlaid on an HTML base. Each of them has different strengths and weaknesses and the one you choose is the one that works best for you. Many of them are proprietary and expensive, but many are also open source and free.

You can find a lot of choices on the relevant Wikipedia pages and can compare them.

We have been working with basic HTML code using a simple text editor

like Notepad or Notepad ++ for Windows

and Brackets for Mac.

Some free editors offer the opportunity ...

... to work in a WYSIWYG (Normal) view, plus allow you to see the underlying HTML code for tweaking purposes

like Sea Monkey

or Kompozer

or (the now-discontinued) Amaya from W3C

word processors offer the advantage of an interface you may already be familiar with

like MS Word

or OpenOffice

sophisticated artistic and image manipulation tools are best for visual elegance

like Dreamweaver

We will consider these

You will discover the one that works best for you,
and it may be the text editor you have been using.

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