Free web editors that aren't tied to a hosting site? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: IDEngineer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2024, 07:27:51 pm
content: I've been away from webpage design for averylong time. As in, I used to write raw HTML using Notepad.Now I need to create a hyper-simple website. Static home page that links to a few static subpages. Mind-numbingly simple. We already have a hosting company, but their choice of free webpage editors sucks horribly (as in, non-intuitive and the documentation is worse).What's the top free webpage editor these days, that allows you to locally save your created content and move it to your own hosting site? In other words I need to use someone's editor, save the resulting content to my local workstation, and then upload that content to our third-party hosting company.This will be a very simple, static site. No commerce. No online ordering. Basically just a way for our customers to view info and technical data about our products, maybe a few links to downloadable PDF's. So it will have a directory structure of static files that link to each other. No compatibility issues like "you're using the wrong ecommerce platform", etc.Thanks!

author: abeyer
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2024, 10:09:16 pm
content: Create a github repo, open it, type '.' (a single period) You'll end up with your repo open in a free hosted copy of vscode for editing.If you really don't want to use github, there'svscode.dev, too, which is basically the same thing without the connection to a repo.

author: IDEngineer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2024, 12:28:46 am
content: So VS has native webpage authorship support? HTML is one of the "languages" it natively "supports"? I did not know that.

author: chilternview
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2024, 01:24:00 am
content: Another vote for VS Code. There is an extension that visualises the HTML you're written (doesn't allow wsiwig editing, but some might say is a good thing).

author: PlainName
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2024, 12:30:07 pm
content: For a halfway editor I like RJ TextEd:https://www.rj-texted.se/Does the usual HTML help-along, but has a preview window so you can see the changes as you make them. I use it for creating and modifying the HTML/CSS web configurator for a micro.

author: mendip_discovery
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2024, 12:40:53 pm
content: I am a M$ user so I just use Notepad++ which does highlighting. I found it easier to do that and avoid all the complicated workarounds most other editors use. Plus I got fed up of the annoying people hammering my site looking for a wordpress vulnerability.

author: selcuk
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2024, 12:59:37 pm
content: It was okay to use plain HTML while people were using their computers and one of the two browsers to enter your web site in old days. Now the client options are very vast. I recommend you to use a library like Bootstrap for better user experience. HTML editor is not that important.https://getbootstrap.com/docs/5.3/examples/Editor:https://bluefish.openoffice.nl/

author: IDEngineer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2024, 02:07:00 pm
content: Quote from: mendip_discovery on September 03, 2024, 12:40:53 pmHmm... that implies WordPress embeds active code in your pages. If all you're generating is a static site (HTML and perhaps links to PDF's) how can there be a vulnerability related to the tool that generated the output?

author: abeyer
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2024, 03:33:42 pm
content: Quote from: IDEngineer on September 03, 2024, 02:07:00 pmWordpress is a CMS... your "pages" are just blobs of data in a database and the html is generated "on the fly" by active code running on the server instead of being files on disk in the traditional way. It's a valid alternative, butnotwhat you asked about originally. There are some tools that can use a local/private wordpress install as a source of content but produce a set of files for a static site...but that's kind of off the well trod path, and not nearly as common.

author: abeyer
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2024, 03:38:36 pm
content: Quote from: IDEngineer on September 03, 2024, 12:28:46 amTwo things to note; First, almost all modern code editors have at least basic html & css support now. Second is that VS and VSCode are two entirely separate things... theybothwould work, but VSCode is the one that is web based and possible to run (or have run for you) on a server and use remotely, which I think is what you were asking for?

author: mariush
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2024, 03:49:27 pm
content: You could just set up a basic wiki engine/script could be even something that works with plain markdown text files, no database... but a small sqlite or mysql database wouldn't be a big dealSee for examplehttps://www.dokuwiki.org/dokuwiki

author: RoGeorge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2024, 03:49:32 pm
content: At some point I was using KompoZer, but didn't use it since long ago, now I would search for "wysiwyg HTML editor" first.

author: chilternview
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2024, 04:47:39 pm
content: Quote from: RoGeorge on September 03, 2024, 03:49:32 pmThe trouble with most wsiwyg editors is that they churn out terrible html.I recall trying one called 'Coffeecup', it added loads of unnecessary tags that were a nightmare to remove.Dreamweaver was nice until it succumbed to the Evil Empire (Adobe).

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2024, 04:51:44 pm
content: Can still use Notepad, if you don't mind. (Or, maybe that's the catch, it's been so long you've forgotten.) HTML 4.01 isn't leaving browser support any time soon, and HTML5 isn't much different (simpler even, I might say). CSS and JS are the real wild parts, but they're certainly not obligatory; if you only need a simple thing, a couple divs and p's should suffice.Also maybe something to be said for Markdown, write in more-or-less normal text and formatting, and translate to HTML. Happens for free, in several places... Github's default README for example, or Stack Exchange question/answer box. Could type there then view source (F12) and copy-paste the relevant area into a new skeleton.The one quirk/annoyance to raw HTML these days is, you'll be penalized in various ways (desktop default view, weird scaling; probably low pagerank, if this will be public and search results are a concern) without explicit mobile support; this is as simple as puttingCode:<meta name=viewport content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">in the head.Tim

author: IDEngineer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2024, 07:12:43 pm
content: General reply to everyone (thank you!)....Yes, HTML has come a LONG way since I was writing it in NotePad. I have zero experience with HTML 4.x or 5, but honestly what I want to do doesn't need any of the "later" features. Static pages, static images, links to downloadable PDF's, that sort of thing. What concerns me is that "plain old HTML" is so far back that some of its features may be deprecated enough that modern browsers don't support them anymore. I don't know, but am concerned that you're sort of compelled to use CSS and other "modern features" to even be compatible with modern rendering these days. That said, we do want some of the "nice appearance" features that are probably dependent upon the later versions of HTML. Nothing crazy.I definitely don't need dynamic HTML composition, unless it's needed to support mobile devices but even then it should be possible for the webserver to discern the type of device/browser and serve the appropriate static pages if they've been composed, right? Heck, even back in the "old days" the browser sent back info about itself. I have to presume that continues, and that a server can intelligently select between differently rendered sets of static pages based on what is received.I like the suggestion of a WYSIWYG HTML Editor. That's closer to what I'm seeking. WordPress came up in another discussion and I liked the initial impression, but hadn't gotten to the part where it's running live code. That's massive overkill here, and indeed raises the spectre of exploitable bugs. It's hard to exploit static files.MORE: It used to be possible to create an overall image, use that as a static webpage, and define multiple clickable regions on the page which would then be associated with links. Is that still possible? If so, I could freely compose basically anything in Photoshop and then just overlay a click-map on it to point at other Photoshop pages. That would yield absolute content control and the basic functionality I'm seeking. I just don't know how to implement it these days.

author: shabaz
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2024, 07:45:32 pm
content: I'd recommend doing a beginner's web course because some of them will walk you through a site with several pages that could end up being the basis for your actual need. It is killing two birds with one stone; gaining the knowledge, and gaining the skeleton structure. Another option could be to pay a couple of hundred $ for a basic website, but you wouldn't gain the knowledge.The attached example screenshot shows a page created during the course I took, it literally showed how to have a few pages with web links at the top, some images, etc. It was a corporate course so I don't have more info on it, except that the course was just a few hours per day, for a couple of days I think, plus you could ask the instructor with any specifics if they are related to what is in the curriculum I guess.Somewhere like udemy (I have not looked) might have a course to help.Personally I like Jetbrains IDEs, so if they look good to you, then WebStorm might be an option, but it's paid (butlow cost, it is a perpetual license locked to a version, if you don't renew after purchasing the first year).

author: paulca
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2024, 07:48:11 pm
content: I fear a lot of things have changed.We don't do the presentation layer in HTML anymore. I know, I know, don't blame me. We do that in the CSS now.HTML has been reduced to <div> tags basically. The actual functionality and visual designs are in Javascript and CSS.I even got told of for generating a table in a <table> tag. Our UX team where unimpressed and said I should make it nested <div> with attributes like "<div col:type="basic">" or "<div class="row:basic">I would recommend a crash course in something like Bootstrap. If you are going to go "code" ways and not a WYSIWYG web design IDE.

author: PlainName
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2024, 08:03:02 pm
content: Where is it being hosted? If not on your machine then security is largely someone elses problem. AFAIK, Wordpress itself is pretty safe and it's the plugins that can be a problem. If you're using a plain site then you won't need or have plugins to worry about, and you don't really care how the page is dished up so long as the result is what you want and it is quick.Just remembered that thereiswas Microsoft Expression Web, which was a WYSIWYG page creation tool. Pretty good in its day, and if you don't need modern Web2.5 or better it should suffice just fine. Problem is Microsoft pulled it (and its free version) a couple of years ago. However, you can find the last available version onMajorGeeks.

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2024, 08:39:00 pm
content: Quote from: IDEngineer on September 03, 2024, 07:12:43 pmOh hmmmm... long ago indeed thenWhat even was... HTML 4.01 released 1999, ah. Then it would've been 3, or maybe 1 or 2 on the *very* early internet in the 90s, but most people my age would've grown up with 4. So, long indeed...Well, the basic structure, the syntax -- tags, opening and closing (usually), and what they are and do, and usually properties within them (img href, width/height, alt, etc.), are foundational. Most deprecated tags, I think, are about redundancy with CSS features, like, you never use <center> anymore, it's style="text-align: center" and such. And c'mon, no one needs <marquee> anymore... /sRoughly speaking, XML is the formal generalization, where tags don't need to be document objects, they're objects making up a structured database; and XHTML is the formalized flavor of HTML where, several differences, but maybe the most visible is all tags must close (singleton tags have a shorthand e.g.< br / >). Honestly I never much used XHTML so don't know/care much about the differences, but it seems to have always been common for generated / dynamic content anyway, if it's not being delivered via JS of course.Some examples might be illustrative, like... here's a page I wrote some years ago with, hmm no it's not *zero* formatting, but it's mildly formatted, really just to get an okay layout.Source:https://github.com/T3sl4co1l/st7735_gfx/blob/master/compr.htmlLive:https://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/T3sl4co1l/st7735_gfx/blob/master/compr.htmlYou can ignore the script content of course, and the CSS is inlined in the heading.If you just want a couple lines or paragraphs, links, maybe a few images, very little formatting indeed might be used.QuoteYeah, HTTP has hardly changed, more headers and more data (and data patterns, and questionable tracking thereof..), but servers are free to respond in whatever way they see fit based upon it (or internal state or anything else; ultimately the server is just a plaintext exchange protocol).Dynamic pages are more work, of course, but simply tossing a couple files in a folder and serving that is almost trivial. It's a couple lines of PHP or Python for example, or you can run a proper application (or service). Apache is still as awesome as ever, or there are lighter-weight servers out there too (or like I said, instances started via scripting language, hah).For my part, I handle "responsive" design on my website, mostly through...not handling it at all, and with some convenient layout/formatting rules that make text and images reasonably presentable on most any size display.But again, a super basic text and images page can just use HTML defaults, and it'll look... I mean, very basic, of course, it's the... not even vanilla flavor, it's the corn-starch goop of the internet, but, readable, you bet; well rendered fonts, no problem; images, have at it.QuoteYep, static files in a folder on a read-only server, is your basic starting point. Can even serve from your PC, if it's always on, and you have a domain you can point to your IP (and assuming your ISP isn't policing outgoing connections..). HTTPS may be desirable, plain HTTP is kind of deprecated these days (even for static pages where it makes little difference), but that too isn't awful to set up (usually via Let's Encrypt, who provide free certificates and an auto-update API), or you can get free (actually free, or nearly so) hosting from various places and point your domain at that. (Or go without a domain entirely, but raw IPs don't look as nice.)Your ISP might also provide free webspace. Although, maybe that was more of a 2000s quirk? No idea how common it is today.QuoteHah yup, that's still around:https://www.w3schools.com/html/html_images_imagemap.aspYou may find these resources quite valuable, even with a WYSIWYG editor -- help make sense of the gibberish they're outputting, or, how you're accidentally creating trash (redundant tags, overlap, empty, etc...) as you edit. An editor with unobtrusive formatting view (I remember HoTMetaL did this nicely, though that's abigblast from the past..) may help with keeping things clean and flexible.Or on the more technical side, MDN is excellent:https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/ElementTim

author: shabaz
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2024, 08:57:01 pm
content: At one org, we needed to share extra or ancillary information (e.g. further explanatory notes, example configs/code etc) and in that case we felt it was a good idea to make use of GitHub, i.e. we created a folder in the corporate GitHub site, and placed the information there (i.e. it was accessible to anyone who navigated to it, with no username/password).This had the benefit that slower-changing content could be placed on the normal corporate site (using their WYSIWYG web-editor, i.e. content management system), and it could link to locations and files in GitHub.Also, their customers happened to prefer web-based content, so we didn't actually create any PDFs; all content was hyperlinked, lots of diagrams as images in the CMS or in GitHub, and as mentioned, spanned the website, plus GitHub as required. There are other cloud services that could be handy, but GitHub worked well for our needs.EDIT: Also, we created video snippets if that helped explain things, and put them on YouTube. Then that can be hyperlinked as usual. A picture/video can say a thousand words. Just mentioning this because sometimes there are better ways than a PDF (not always applicable of course).

author: IDEngineer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2024, 09:26:56 pm
content: To answer a question several have raised: We have hosting space on InMotionHosting. Yeah, I know there are lots of other hosting vendors out there. This is the one we picked, years ago. Not gonna change just for this.They offer SiteJet and WordPress. The former appears to be riddled with bugs that prevent me from even starting using it, and the latter has all this active overhead that we don' t need.We used to have a static website that they hosted for us and it worked just fine, but we sold the related IP and the buyer asked us to turn off the website to avoid confusing the market about who owned the IP. We did that, and it's sat idle ever since. Time to bring it back to life.I presume that IMH will handle the https:// overhead and the related certificates. Seemed to work last time, and all we did was literally drop static HTML files generated by CoffeeCup into the directories.As for CoffeeCup... apparently it's still around but I recall it being a PITA to use. However, I might revisit it. Maybe it's gotten better.Photoshop:I've also reconfirmed that Photoshop uses what it calls "slices" to enable the creation of HTML with clickable links. It works by taking a static graphic image (such as a JPG), slicing it into author-defined smaller pieces each of which is clickable, and then generates HTML to reassemble those subimages into the original but tied to the links. That's not the worst approach, since it would give usliterally unlimited controlover content and appearance. The downside there (true for all static content) is it doesn't resize/reformat for mobile devices... but that means active code (like WordPress) so we can't have it both ways.

author: shabaz
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 03, 2024, 10:03:25 pm
content: Regarding:QuoteThere is a technique, but I've never applied it to slices of a jpeg, only to a whole jpeg and to basic text.I had a requirement to have a basic webpage (HTML and CSS only), but for it to resize for desktop and browser. It is done using a thing called 'media queries'. There's a fair bit of erroneous information on the Internet about how to best use it. Not that I probably did better (I'm not a web developer), but the result is fairly acceptable. Mywebpage that uses media queries is here(to see how it was done, see thepage source). You can see the images resize as the browser window is resized. But as mentioned, I have no idea what would happen if there were slices of JPEG images.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 04, 2024, 01:50:14 pm
content: You can size images and other visual elements in HTML+CSS using several different measurement units, including percentage (%of available region width/height), current font metrics (emwidth andexheight), millimeters (approximated on display devices as the settings are not always correct; but tend to be very precise on printers and such), points (pt, approximately 1/72" or 0.3528mm, mostly used for font sizes), and image pixels ("logical pixels" on HiDPI devices).CSS can define different visual layout and rules for different presentation devices and even for differently sized media devices. (That is what is called "media queries", but it is a passive client-side mechanism, simply selecting between your predefined alternatives depending on the display device.)Raster image formats like GIF, PNG, JPEG, AV1F (AVIF), WEBP et cetera don't always scale nicely, as the quality of the end result depends on the display device image scaling routines. At best, they tend to blur; at worst, look horribly blocky. In comparison, vector formats like SVG (and PDF) stay crisp (except for embedded pixmap/bitmap image parts), but are not suitable for photographic images.I did a few of these back in the Internet Exploder era. One time, as a research assistant, I simply got fed up seeing professors display their course introduction pages on overhead projectors (with then-huge resolutions) in the lecture halls, with the page itself being about a third or a quarter of the display wide, "because this page is best viewed inxbyy" and similar nonsense in the expensive, professionally produced official web page layouts. As MS refused to support SVG, I had to provide alternatives using VML for IE 5-9 users. I recall that the header part I reimplemented ended up having an SVG primary background image, a VML backup one for IE 5-9, and a JPEG for everyone else, so it would degrade as nicely as possible without taking too long to load. Funny thing was, on typical desktop machines you couldn't tell the difference between the official one that cost millions for the university and mine; but on any other device, mine scaled perfectly, including font size... except for strange bugs that got introduced every new IE version for some strange reason.I was never officially acknowledged for any of that work, though. I'm horrible at self-promotion.

author: ebastler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 04, 2024, 07:25:29 pm
content: Quote from: IDEngineer on September 02, 2024, 07:27:51 pmMy vote goes to Hugo,https://gohugo.io/.It runs locally (offline) on your computer and generates static HTML websites which you upload to your hosting provider.You enter your content via Markdown files, i.e. simple, human-readable text with some markups for headlines, emphasis, tables etc. The page structure is defined in "template" files, and the cosmetics in standard CSS -- but you can simply use one of many ready-made "themes" which provide the templates and CSS for you.No active components running on the server side, i.e. no security issues, patches etc. to worry about. So for websites which only get sporadic updates, it's "fire and forget". I have used Hugo for my hobby site (www.e-basteln.de) for six years now and am happy with it.EDIT: Oh, and Hugo can launch a web server locally where it provides a realtime view (via your browser) of what your final site looks like. The effect of any changes you make -- whether to your Markdown content or to the templates or CSS -- is shown near-instantaneous. So while you do your editing in the plaintext Markdown files, you also get WYSIWYG feedback right away.