Need an HTML editor

[Muse]

I just installed my new MyHD HDTV cards and the software manual is just too frustrating. It's written in pretty fractured English and it's driving me nuts. Since it's written in HTML (about 17 separate HTML files launched by a top level HTML file, all with embedded GIF images) I figure I can certainly edit these files so at least the second time through I won't have to crack my skull on the convoluted English. I'm not conversant in HTML, but I can easily search for a substring and edit it using something like Notepad, and I see that this works OK. Is there a better way to do this, another program that will make this somewhat daunting (but hopefully ultimately rewarding) task more palatable? Thanks!

 

[Navid]

You can use Microsoft Word to create/edit an html document and see what you will get.

Edit:
What is nice about using Word instead of a text editor like notepad, is that you can see what the final document will look like while you are working in Word. You can just copy and paste things. Whereas, in notepad, you will have to work with code and you will have to go back and forth between notepad and an html viewer frequently while you are working.

 

[Cheetah8799]

notepad

Maybe you can dig up an old copy of Dreamweaver or something? That would be a big help. Try searching download.com for freeware alternatives. I'm pretty sure you'll find some decent stuff for free.

 

[dderolph]

Using Notepad might work fine. When you open the HTML file with Notepad, you should be able to find the text fairly easily. You could use Notepad's Find command to help find the text. Just edit the text and save the file; leave the HTML coding alone. I presume you know that < and > characters are part of the HTML coding, so leave them alone.

You could save the original file under a new name, then edit the file and save it under the original name. That way, if you accidentally changed some HTML code, causing the page not to display right, you could go back to the original file and start over.

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: dderolph
Using Notepad might work fine. When you open the HTML file with Notepad, you should be able to find the text fairly easily. You could use Notepad's Find command to help find the text. Just edit the text and save the file; leave the HTML coding alone. I presume you know that < and > characters are part of the HTML coding, so leave them alone.

You could save the original file under a new name, then edit the file and save it under the original name. That way, if you accidentally changed some HTML code, causing the page not to display right, you could go back to the original file and start over.

First thing I did was copy the whole directory of HTML files, calling it something like \Original Files

Then I created a copy called \Altered Files, and that's what I'm working on. I can do it in Notepad, but I figured that with all the HTML editors I've been hearing about, some of them freeware, there is probably a much better way of doing it than using Notepad. I'll try the Word suggestion above, but I suspect I'll not know how to do it using Word. However, I'll give it a try right now. I don't have a copy of Dreamweaver. Thanks for the ideas! I'm an HTML newbie.

Edit: Yeah, you know, using Word looks very very cool indeed. You can edit right there and you don't see all the tagging. The GIF's aren't loaded, but that's no biggie. If I want to see the GIF's I can run the orginal HTML files in IE or something.... Cool!

 

[Navid]

Originally posted by: Muse


First thing I did was copy the whole directory of HTML files, calling it something like \Original Files

Then I created a copy called \Altered Files, and that's what I'm working on. I can do it in Notepad, but I figured that with all the HTML editors I've been hearing about, some of them freeware, there is probably a much better way of doing it than using Notepad. I'll try the Word suggestion above, but I suspect I'll not know how to do it using Word. However, I'll give it a try right now. I don't have a copy of Dreamweaver. Thanks for the ideas! I'm an HTML newbie.

Edit: Yeah, you know, using Word looks very very cool indeed. You can edit right there and you don't see all the tagging. The GIF's aren't loaded, but that's no biggie. If I want to see the GIF's I can run the orginal HTML files in IE or something.... Cool!

All you need to do, in Word, is to use Microsoft Word to open the html file that you want to edit. You will see all the images and hyperlinks as they would show up in a browser. Then, save as a web page when you are done editing.
Unless, you have a very old version of Word.
Also, I am not saying that Word is as good as a utility that is created for html editing like DreamWeaver. But, it is good enough for basic tasks.

 

[Navid]

Word creates a folder in the same folder that contains the html file and puts all the images linked to on that page in that folder. You may want to create a work space and play with it a little bit to get familiar with it.

 

[dderolph]

Word might serve your purposes fine. I have FrontPage, so I've never tried to do any significant html editing with Word. But, I have opened web page files in Word and I can see how it could be used.

One more comment about using Notepad: when you save the html file, save it with a filename extension of .htm. The standard text file extension, .txt, will not be viewable as a web page in your browser.

Here's some freeware options you might be interested in looking at: HTML Editors . The site has some descriptive info on each one, and a little "popularity" bar graph for each one.