Essential Freeware for Web Page Authoring and HTML Editing
Web Page Authoring Freeware
This is a list of software that made my life easier and freeware that I wish I had in the beginning.
Freeware Download Aids
%IMAGE_2% Freeware tools to help in unzipping and downloading software. Read this page first if you have never downloaded a program from the Internet or are downloading many files for the first time and using an older PC operating Windows XP or lower.
Freeware to Get You Started in HTML
Freeware for Writing HTML
If you are just starting out, you need two HTML editors: a converter so you have something concrete in front of you to work with, and one HTML editor so you can add and correct things that are beyond the ability of your first editor.
MAX’s HTML Beauty ++ boasts 28 Tag Designers or wizards, which are forms where you fill in the info and the HTML editor generates the code for almost every HTML tag. It features a Power Toolbar that contains almost all HTML tags, a Built-In Image Browser/Viewer with GIF optimization function, and the ability to convert images to WBMP image format, which is used by WAP-compatible mobile phones. My first HTML editor was similar to this one, but it could not save my files under Win 7 64 bit.
HTML Kit 292 is a free version that works on Win 7 and Win 10, 64-bit computers. HTML Kit 292 nicely organizes HTML code into categories. To make a link to another website, the anchor is listed under the Action Tab, then click on Options. It installs dictionary and thesaurus plugins without unzipping them, but you need to download them from HTML Kit 292 Plugins.
WYSIWYG HTML Freeware Editors
What You See Is What You Get editors, once you find a good one, are invaluable tools. Most of the editors out there give faulty code, while others lack the ability to re-edit and update your web document. SeaMonkey passed both tests most of the time. (I can crash anything.)
SeaMonkey, a browser based on Firefox, has a WYSIWYG editor included in its arsenal of tools called Composer, which supports dynamic image and table resizing, quick insert and delete of table cells, improved CSS support, and support for positioned layers. In the summer of 2009, I started to test it, and by 2014, I found myself downloading it again on my next computer when I needed to troubleshoot an errant table where I wrote the HTML code wrong.
If after trying all this you still feel flabbergasted, go one step simpler:
HTML Converters
Ten years later, I continued to use HTML converters to quickly publish short stories and poems for the Northside Writers Over Coffee onto the Internet. Occasionally, I find a market looking for material that I’ve covered somewhere on my website and want to rework the content, slanting it towards a publisher. HTML converters work well for that too.
Text 2 Web might be the program to get you started. You can convert your text document to HTML code. One button link back to Text 2 Web is generated, so you have an example to start from. You still may have to use HTML help sites to figure out how to do what you want with graphics and links, but at least you have something in front of you that you can call your own that can be opened in an HTML editor and is valid HTML code.
txt2tags is a text converter that allows you to change a .txt file into an HTML or XHTML file. It also converts other files not used on the web, like LaTeX.
HTML Freeware Editors Once You Get the Hang of Some HTML Basics
RJ Text Editor is an editor that can be used for everything from HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, XSLT, and User Scripts. I just use it for HTML. For years, this has been my favorite HTML editor.
Spell Checkers for HTML Editors
Although some HTML editors include a spell checker, many do not.
Global Spell Checker is a little program that allows you to use MS Word’s spell check on any program if you already use MS Word.
Uploading Webpages
Filezilla is an FTP uploader for beginners and advanced users.
Checking Your Links
Xenulink checks all the links on your site in one gulp. However, about 800 links in the comment section on my blog were too much for Xenulink, and it ignored my request not to look at WordPress links.
Broken Link Checker is a WordPress plugin that lets you edit links from people who made comments years ago and now their links are broken. To install this plugin, I went to Add Plugins in WordPress and did a search for broken links, installing it from within WordPress. A link for Broken Link Checker appeared under Tools.
Online Broken Link Checker finds the broken links and what line the link is on in your code. It did not crash when I had the 800 bad link problem at my WordPress blog.
Graphics, Backgrounds, Button Making, and Cool Text for Websites
%IMAGE_3% Buttons, backgrounds, cool text effects, and photos all use different freeware tools. When using graphics for websites, the smaller the graphic, the quicker it loads.
Freeware Privacy App
The more I use the Internet, the more junk mail from companies I delete from my inbox. Here is a tool to help slow down your e-mail address on your website from being the cause of even more junk mail.
E-Cloaker converts the characters of e-mail addresses and text into browser-readable Unicode.
It took a day and a half to cloak all the e-mail addresses on all three of my websites. Hopefully, I cut off the source of the problem, and now all I must do is stop the spammers who already have my e-mail address and are using it without mercy.
Blogging Platforms
Blogging is different from a website in that you don’t need to fool around with a service provider to post your articles. It’s a combination of a guestbook and a website without learning HTML. Though learning HTML is still a plus sometimes when working in WordPress. Blogs use a combination of HTML, CSS, and PHP language, so they are hard to fix when something goes wrong but easier to use graphics and spacing than a straight HTML site.
WordPress works well if your website provider carries it as part of their package. SmatteringsBook’s Blog exists because, like many other web servers, Bluehost provides WordPress as a tool. Reports across the web complain that the free standalone version drives most people off the wall because the learning curve is too steep and what you can do is limited.
Blogger by Google is the choice of many. Blogger is free, easy to set up and use. Wolfmanted’s Blog was created with Blogger. One can also associate their website with Blogger.
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