Ask HN: Which design tool (open source) do you use for webpage design?
Which open source HTML editor do you use for webpage designs? I have basic knowledge of HTML+CSS and have been using notepad and more recently Aptana to create web pages.
7 comments
IDE's are handy if you do not know how to setup your local testing environment, however, it is not hard to setup that local testing environment, there are several options online to have an installer do all the work of installing a webserver and a dynamic webserver language like PHP.
The pro's of that are that you develop directly into a setup that is comparable with the real deal and issues that come floating to the surface will also do in the production environment.
Second, a finished product just needs to be copied to the production server to simply work.
Third pro is that when you use a development environment you simply do not need an IDE, a relative simple editor with syntax highlighting and snippet management will suffice.
The downside of IDE's are that they tend to make the development road overly complex and most have their own quirks so you have a relative steep learning curve for that and it's hard to switch so you are more or less jailed to a particular IDE.
All this time on learning your IDE and learning to deal with it's quirks are better spend on your web project.
The pro's of that are that you develop directly into a setup that is comparable with the real deal and issues that come floating to the surface will also do in the production environment.
Second, a finished product just needs to be copied to the production server to simply work.
Third pro is that when you use a development environment you simply do not need an IDE, a relative simple editor with syntax highlighting and snippet management will suffice.
The downside of IDE's are that they tend to make the development road overly complex and most have their own quirks so you have a relative steep learning curve for that and it's hard to switch so you are more or less jailed to a particular IDE.
All this time on learning your IDE and learning to deal with it's quirks are better spend on your web project.
Aptana is pretty good. Personally I prefer something a bit more minimalistic (yet still powerful), so I use emacs. Here's some footage of emacs in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2r8JfJJgy8
It has a bit of a learning curve, but it feels pretty productive once you get used to it, especially when taking advantage of it's many plugins. It's not for everybody, but be sure to check it out, along with some of its tutorials on the web.
It has a bit of a learning curve, but it feels pretty productive once you get used to it, especially when taking advantage of it's many plugins. It's not for everybody, but be sure to check it out, along with some of its tutorials on the web.
This probably isn't what you are looking for, but I do a LOT of design in Chrome and Firefox/Firebug. I experiment with CSS rules inside the browser and tweak them with a live preview.
Notepad is a basic text editor and Aptana is an IDE (IDEs are normally massive, no personal use of this one).
Normally people go for a fully featured text editor, with at least syntax highlighting. Macs have a ton of options (Textmate, Kod, Dashcode, etc).
On Windows I use Notepad2 or Opera's edit source. I find Notepad++ awful. This may be of interest to you http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_code_editor .
Normally people go for a fully featured text editor, with at least syntax highlighting. Macs have a ton of options (Textmate, Kod, Dashcode, etc).
On Windows I use Notepad2 or Opera's edit source. I find Notepad++ awful. This may be of interest to you http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_code_editor .
Just as a side note, what don't you like about Notepad++?
I'll pipe up here. I've found it gets buggy once you move beyond basic editing. E.g. regular expression search or search/replace. I've run into several other things.
Overall, I'm left with the impression that it's "a mile wide and a foot deep".
Overall, I'm left with the impression that it's "a mile wide and a foot deep".
I second it getting buggy, particularly for search/replace.
Choose the one you are most comfortable with.
I prefer Komodo Edit when I am doing HTML and CSS because I have saved snippets on it and it also support auto-completion. I also use VIM by using zen-coding plugin with it.
HTML editor? VIM or Eclipse, depending on how involved the task is.