If you’ve heard about web development, the term HTML should sound familiar. HTML stands for hypertext markup language – one of the most important elements that define the website structure and content.
World’s most user-friendly and free HTML editor. Our HTML editor is free for both personal and commercial use and enables users to create and edit HTML files online. It comes with a range of advanced features: WYSIWYG editor, live preview, CSS support, undo/redo functions, auto-save option, and much more.
Want to learn about the best free HTML editor? Or about the best HTML editor with live preview? I’ve been asked a lot about the best HTML editor out there. So here are my favorite 5 HTML editors. I’ve tried a lot of online tools to see if they offer anything better than what is available in Windows 10 for both text and code editors, but the other ones either had no good features, were limited in some way or another, or were just too awkward to use.
This post is mainly for bloggers and web designers who want to create unique content and add it to their website. For those folks who want to learn about HTML and other site design-related subjects, this post should also provide answers to all your questions.
Brackets.io
Brackets is an open-source HTML editor. It’s free and well-supported by Adobe and an open-source community.
It works well with HTML, CSS, LESS, SCSS, and JavaScript, which makes it perfect for front-end development.
It also includes a live preview feature to save you time. Instead of having to save the file, upload it to your server, then view your site to see the changes you made.
There’s also W3C code validation included as well as Git integration, and free extensions available with lots of other useful features.
Brackets provide a professional experience and are an easy-to-use text editor for HTML. It’s definitely one of the best HTML editors you can get.
TrellianWebPage
It is one of the favorite web editors that provides you with exceptional WYSIWYG functionality. It also offers you an image editing functionality within the tool.
Some of the features worthy of mentioning can be
- Compatibility with Photoshop plugins.
- Free, yet powerful editor – it supports drag and drops functionality
- The tool is easy to use with a simple interface
- You also have access to a built-in spell checker
It also comes with an SEO Toolkit that helps you improve the ranking of search engines.
NetBeans
This is a Java IDE that is excellent in the creation of great web applications. Since it is an IDE, its learning curve is steep. This is because it does not always work the same way as other web editors. You only need to get used to it and you will love working with it in the creation of the most robust web applications. It has a version control feature, which is great to use if you are working on large web development platforms.
JSFiddle
JSFiddle is an online HTML editor. It supports HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Code snippets in JS Fiddle are called fiddles.
Features:
- It allows you to select different versions or types of language. For Example, in HTML panel you can select the doc-type from several options like HTML 5, XHTML 1.0 Strict, and HTML 4.01 Transitional etc.
- JavaScript allows you to load the library.
Pros:
- Easy to use.
- In addition to HTML, CSS, and JavaScript it provides support to JavaScript frameworks.
Cons:
- It doesn’t have advanced features like Codepen.
- It has interfering ads.
Tool cost/Plan details: Free
Atom
Atom is another free, open-source HTML text editor. It’s also well-supported by the GitHub community and is one of the best HTML editors.
It supports the use of multiple panes, which means you can edit multiple files at one time. This is especially useful if you’re working on interrelated files.
There is also an autocomplete feature, syntax highlighting, search, and replace. Its user interface is customizable, and it has both Git and GitHub integrations.
It offers a professional experience and is intuitive to use.
Seamonkey
Coming from Mozilla, it can be your best friend for all your application suites. It offers you several functions including a web browser, email client, composer, and an HTML webpage editor.
A few features that are offered by Seamonkey include
- It includes a web browser making it easy to test your work
- You have access to FTP capability to make it easy to upload your web pages.
- The service keeps receiving regular maintenance updates.
- It supports the latest technology like HTML5
- The service supports over 26 languages.
The free HTML editor is available for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. You can consider it as your one-stop solution for all your internet needs.
Notepad++
This is one of the best free HTML web editors you will find out there for Windows. It is basically a stronger version of Notepad program, which is available in Windows by default. It is therefore only meant for Windows. With it, you get line numbers, hints, color coding, and all the other helpful tools that you will need, which the standard software does not have. All these additions are what make Notepad++ a great choice for front-end developers and web designers as well.
JS Bin
JS Bin is an online HTML code editor. It supports HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. It works fast and provides many features like auto-ending brackets, highlighting brackets, etc.
Features:
- You can export your HTML code to a text file.
- It will show you real-time output for your code.
- It supports testing on mobile.
- It provides two more features like code casting and custom starting code.
- All the above features are for the free version. For the pro version, it provides more additional features like Dropbox Sync, Private bins, Vanity URLs, and Email support, etc.
Pros:
- It supports keyboard shortcuts.
- You can hide the panel.
Cons:
- It offers limited features with the free edition.
- It shows warnings in real-time only for JavaScript.
Tool cost/Plan details: Free version is available. And pro version starts from $130 yearly or $17 monthly.
Visual Studio Code
Visual Studio Code is a free open-source HTML editor. It’s also well-maintained by Microsoft and the open-source community.
It includes basic features like syntax highlighting, but there’s also an autocomplete option that provides smart completions based on variable types, function definitions, and imported modules.
There are also advanced features like debugging and Git commands built-in, and tons of other extensions available.
Visual Studio Code supports HTML, CSS, Sass, Less, JavaScript, PHP, C#, C++, Ruby, Perl, SQL, XML, JSON, Python, and many more languages.
It’s certainly one of the best HTML editors because it’s so advanced, and yet, quite intuitive to use. Even though it has a lot of features, the user interface (UI) is clean and well-organized.
Google Web Designer
Coming from Google, this is an excellent option for your free HTML editor. The service is still in Beta and has been receiving constant updates on a regular basis.
Some of the excellent options that the tool offer you can be summed up as
- It provides you with everything that you expect from a WYSIWYG HTML editor.
- It offers you an SEO benefit, thanks to the fact being it is from Google.
- You can also create Google ads with the tool.
- It supports editing CSS< JavaScript and XML files.
- The tool is supported on Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer.
We would treat it as one of the excellent options because of the Google connection. It offers you multiple functionalities than being just an HTML editor alone.
Komodo Edit
This is open-source software that comes absolutely free for web developers. It is great because it comes with so many great features that you can use for HTML as well as CSS development. You also get extensions that can help you add language support and other great features plus special characters to your projects. It may not be the best available HTML web editor but it does extremely well whenever it is used.
BlueGriffon
This is a great web editor to use as it shows how your work will be rendered in all the standard browsers. The software is available not just for Windows but for Macintosh and Linux as well, and it comes in a variety of languages to suit different developers. It is in fact a WYSIWYG editor, therefore a great choice particularly for beginners and small business owners, who are interested in a more visual way of working.
Conclusion:
You have an idea for a website but are not sure how to get started. Maybe you want to work on one of your older sites or start on a new site merely for testing purposes. And HTML Editor has many free, powerful options that won’t cost you a dime. You can start with WYSIWYG editors that look just like the final product will. Or, go ahead and work with raw code while you’re editing. It’s up to you!
If you don’t want your customers to see your product in the process of development, or its flaws, you should know about various kinds of HTML editors, commonly referred to as WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get). Live preview is indeed one of their functions; this allows seeing how your website would look even before publication. You can also see Live HTML Editing in action on this site!