This post is dedicated to quality html editors for Linux and Ubuntu operating system in particular. You may think that nowadays nobody uses offline editors as there are so many content management systems (CMS) like Drupal (my favourite one), WordPress, Joomla etc. which contain embedded visual html editors. But today I made sure myself that sometimes it’s real pain to draw a 10×20 table using WordPress’s editor…
Text editors like gedit, emacs, nano or vi will certainly live forever but thankfully there are numerous visual html editors for my Ubuntu 
They are sometimes called WYSIWYG editors, it mean “What You See Is What You Get”.
1. Quanta Plus
This is KDE/Qt visual html editor available as binary package for numerous Linux distributions
including Debian and Ubuntu. From developers’ site:
Quanta Plus is a highly stable and feature rich web development environment.
The vision with Quanta has always been to start with the best architectural
foundations, design for efficient and natural use and enable maximal user
extensibility.
In order to install it in Debian/Ubuntu run the following CLI command:
sudo apt-get install quanta
Fedora, Centos, Redhat users type this:
sudo yum install kdewebdev
I found Quanta html editor extremely useful, this is just an outstanding application of this
field.
2. Bluefish
Bluefish is a powerful editor targeted towards programmers and webdesigners,
with many options to write websites, scripts and programming code. Bluefish
supports many programming and markup languages, and it focuses on editing
dynamic and interactive websites.
I found this really versatile html editor. Besides HTML/CSS it handles C,
Java, Perl, Python, XML and others.
Ubuntu and Debian users type:
sudo apt-get install bluefish
Fedora/Redhat/Centos:
sudo yum install bluefish
Gentoo:
emerge bluefish
3. Screem
SCREEM is a web development environment. It’s purpose is to increase
productivity when constructing a site, by providing quick access to commonly
used features. While it is written for use with the GNOME desktop environment
in mind it does not specifically require you to be running it, just have the
libraries installed.
This is one of the most user-friendly Gnome HTML editor. Its simple interface
brings extremely powerfull HTML editor so if like minimalistic design Screem
is your choice.
Update: below is the bottom line from Linux.com‘s review of three Linux HTML editors (Quanta Plus, Blowfish,
Screem). I found that review after I wrote this post.
- If you use GNOME, use Screem. It’s a fast, simple, and powerful tool for web editing. However, it does not have the large feature sets that Bluefish and Quanta Plus have, especially for languages other than those directly related to Web page editing.
- If you use GNOME and need the more powerful features of Quanta Plus, load the required libraries and run it.
- If you use KDE and want a code editor, choose Quanta Plus. Ignore the WYSIWYG capabilities and take advantage of the tremendous editing capabilities, especially for CSS style sheets.
- If you use Xfce, Quanta Plus should run fine. Screem would still require loading additional libraries.
- Finally, if you use GNOME, find that Screem does not meet all your needs, and you don’t want to bother with loading the KDE-native Quanta Plus, then load Bluefish. It is nearly as capable as Quanta Plus, but will run well without a lot of fussing with libraries.
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I have found that Screem is pretty unstable in Ubuntu 9.04 amd64. It crashes on me frequently.
I find that in KDE environments, Kate is wonderful. Bluefish is not bad and Screem seems a bit unstable. Geany also is nice, though not quite as full-featured as Kate, I think.
You missed the best 2 WYSIWYG editors for linux.
Nvu:-
http://www.net2.com/nvu/ - Is an opensource dreamweaver replacement.
nvu - was forked a few years ago - this resulted in....
Konpozer:-
http://sourceforge.net/projects/kompozer/
- At present the main home page is down (you can get everything from the sourceforge link)
- It has many bug fixes from nvu...
- It has a site map (i.e dreamweaver) that yo9u can easily do global changes.
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I wasn't that excited about any of these and began using Arachnophilia. It's a java app so technically not Linux but does a good job.
besides linux you all have mentioned others.which is best?cannot decide on myself which one to go for
WOW, I am totally new to linux ... I started with linuxmint 7 & your command lines helped me a lot to install some apps ...
THANX,
Wow,good idea
how to uninstall kdewebdev in centos5.3
//how to uninstall kdewebdev in centos5.3
sudo yum remove kdewebdev
Some notes from the trenches :
Quanta + - Nice, pretty, but can be a memory hog.
Bluefish - My favorite, lean, efficient, can be quirky (some replaces don't highlight ahead of time), "Quick bar" a great place to stash your hottest elements.
*WARNING* - Long line lengths (100+ chars.) can trigger a slow-down due to memory hogging. If you have to edit a generated HTML file with super-long lines (all it takes is ONE !) bust up those lines down to one tag per line.
Other HTML editors -
Netscape / Mozilla's Composer is still around in some distro's (e.g. SUSE 10 Book). Also, there is a version in the SeaMonkey bundle. Another variant of this venerable beast is nVu which came from the people behind Lindows / Linspire.
If you like behemoths then take a look at Komodo Edit ( http://www.activestate.com/ ) or Eclipse ( http://www.eclipse.org/ ). Komodo is a monster with a great set of teeth for chewing on a variety of programming projects. Komodo Edit is the free version of Komodo IDE.
If you love standards then take a look at Amaya ( http://www.w3.org/Amaya/User/BinDist.html ). This is the house editor of w3c - the people who wrote the rulebook for the web.
If you are something of a masochist then use the HTML editor in OpenOffice's Writer.
NB - I've had all of the above installed on my main rigs (SUSE 9.1 Box / 10 Book) at various times. My current mix is Amaya / Bluefish (#1 in usage) / Composer / Komodo Edit / nVu / Quanta + / SeaMonkey. I haven't tried Screem but then again I usually use KDE3.x instead of Gnome.
Update on Composer :
--------------------
nVu was end-of-lifed several years ago. Another branch on the Composer code base is Kompozer ( http://www.kompozer.net/ ) with versions for the usual OS's.
Having used all three, I strongly recommend Bluefish. It's wonderful, versatile, powerful, everything I'm looking for. :-).
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I tried to create a comment before, however it has not shown up. Is there something wrong with your spam filter?
I love Bluefish...and thanks for the post!!
An Inflexible system
Superb post however , I was wondering if you could write a litte more on this subject? I'd be very grateful if you could elaborate a little bit further. Many thanks!
Debi Thomas~ I tell people Im too stupid to know whats impossible. I have ridiculously large dreams and half the time they come true.