Which web authoring tool?

[lightng]

PSPad is the best programmers text editor.

Hey, had a look on the site and its not half bad. Will have a look at it properly later. Nice find Dinker!

[Shimano105]

Not the greatest authority on this stuff but Notepad++ is extremely useful. Auto syntax highlighting for loads of languages etc.

Why anyone would consider hand coding in plain ol Notepad is beyond me

[NickFitz]

Why anyone would consider hand coding in plain ol Notepad is beyond me

To annoy the permies

[FiveTimes]

If you like vi, have a look at Vim. It includes colour syntax highlighting.

Xeno ought to be along shortly to award some geek points for that post

If you want a colour mode then there is no better than emacs in colour mode and change font locks in .emacs to the desired colour

[SP-Man]

HomeSite 4.5

HomeSite 4.5!!!!!!!!!!!

[DiscoStu]

HomeSite 4.5!!!!!!!!!!!

Sure you got enough exclamation marks there?

[NickFitz]

Why anyone would consider hand coding in plain ol Notepad is beyond me

To annoy the permies

Actually, although I was being silly there, there is good reason for being able to do stuff in Notepad if necessary.

The other year I'd popped down to a client site to upgrade some bits'n'bobs on the intranet system I'd written for them.

I was ready to leave and just chatting to the manager responsible for the project about what I'd just done. He mentioned that it would be cool if they had features [a,b,c] and asked how much work would be involved in implementing them.

I immediately turned to the machine next to me (through which I'd been working on the intranet server), logged back in, fired up Notepad, wrote a few scripts, edited a few configuration files, and he had the desired functionality within five minutes of asking for it, before his very eyes.

This led to massive customer satisfaction.

Obviously one would have to be half-mad to actually use Notepad as a development environment on a regular basis. But being able to do so when the need arises is epic win.

[expat]

PSPad is the best programmers text editor.

It's very good. Nearly as good as Textpad.

NickFitz, WHS+1. A very old idea, that I grasped in the days of IBM mainframe Sctipr/VS. Why do people not get it? It is integral to the idea of browser: the writer says what it is, and the user says how they will have such a thing presented to them.

Nick, agree about Notepad too: as a professional, be able if the need arises to use the tools that are sure to be on any environment you meet.

That has got to be your good sense allowance used up for the day.

[realityhack]

Another vote for a lightweight text editor with syntax highlighting (and monospaced fonts) - I use Notepad++, but have been known to use BBedit, NVU & Dreamweaver (but never in design view - bleaugh).

[realityhack]

And another thing...

If you're getting to grips with markup for the first time, then there's no substitute for notepad. I believe there's no better way to learn than to start from first principles. WYSIWYG editors will just confuse/impede you.

+1 on NF's semantic markup comments.