Web Design and HTML Coding with Integrated Development Environment
A decade ago, there were few choices of Web design tools and integrated development environments and most of the tools available then had a relatively high price tag and were far from being free. Today's Web development environment tells a different story, a story of powerful integrated development environments of which many are offered completely free of charge and even as open source.
One such integrated development environment is Eclipse. Eclipse is very popular among developers that write Java and C++ desktop and Web applications. Eclipse has very good support for Web designers and Html coders as well and Eclipse is free to use.
As an HTML editor Eclipse might be an overkill of an application for many since the Eclipse IDE for Java EE is currently at 189MB. On the other hand, in addition to having responsive integrated environment ready to develop enterprise applications written in some of the world's most popular programming languages Eclipse users can have an environment extended to develop Web sites with HTML, CSS, XML, Java Script, Python and PHP and to develop applications for mobile phones as well. This is what makes Eclipse such a powerful IDE.
The version we currently use is Eclipse 3.5 IDE for Java EE that includes HTML text and visual editor suitable for general stand-alone Web projects including multiple or single Web pages. Some important features for Web designers available in this package of Eclipse are for example:
- Excellent HTML, CSS and Java Script code editor
- Adjustable and configurable shortcut command keys
- Code completion and spell check
- Comparison or replacement of code and files using local history of files
- Templates and template management
- User generated snippets and snippet management
- Code formatting and HTML validation
- Document outline which makes it easy to traverse documents including HTML
- Visual Web editor
- Split windows for code and visual view
- Built-in Web browser
You can download Eclipse packages from the Eclipse.org Web site.
You can download Eclipse packages from the Eclipse.org Web site.