Dense HTML editors... Failed me again!

One would think that a visual HTML editor, like most other editors, would be able to maintain neat, tidy, efficient code.

It looks like this is untrue for both Dreamweaver and Frontpage... even in their 5500th version.
Are there any HTML editors that do not add redundant Font tags whenever I type a letter?!!

Or, more easily, are there any good cleanup utilities that will remove redundant font tags?

My web page only needs one font tag for the main content, with tags within that for titles. Nothing more.
Neither Dreamweaver nor Frontpage agree - they believe that every paragraph requires a new font that is exactly the same as the last, and that an empty paragraph must be given a space character, even though it can just be left blank. Dreamweaver has even become so insane as to enter a font tag mid-line with every sentence! (This is probably because I transferred from Frontpage to Dreamweaver half-way through in a desperate attempt to at least gain the ability to clean up my code... While that is possible with Frontpage, it feels impossible.)

I'm almost ready to just start writing plain code again... With this messy code, WYS is definietly not WYG.

This is for the documentation for my free web plugin system, by the way; so help would serve us all well.

That was my (seemingly naive) assumption, too. I don't have experience with the apps you mention but have had time with other HTML editors where I've almost been driven to tearing my hair out. They just seem so thick. :/

Currently, I'm working with nVU:
http://www.nvu.com/
It's not perfect but it hasn't done any of the dumb things you mention, and it's free.

Do you still get redundant tags when using CSS?

the FONT tag is deprecated anyway, you really should be using style sheets.

I should use CSS, but if an HTML editor can't do a thing as old as <font>, I would not want to trust it with CSS.
I tend to use the same format for everything though, so I should really think about moving it all to CSS.

Thanks for the link 10p :)

But he's not adding the FONT tag, the editor is. True about style sheets, though - can't understand why anyone wouldn't want to use 'em.

[edit] oops - cross post. Yeah, nVU seems to handle CSS (internal and external) fine. :)

Mr. Picklesworth, unfortunately there is no around it. You have to manually remove them.

There are some 3rd party tools that can de-moronify HMTL output generated by Frontpage & Microsoft Word... Can't think of any names at the moment, but they do exist.

Microsoft Word's HTML is by far the worst.



Really? If a modern WYSIWYG is still using FONT tags, I wouldn't trust it with CSS - or much of anything.

CSS is good for you. Sometimes I still fall back on TABLEs for some things that CSS block elements can't pull off (reliably), but in general CSS saves me work now and later. It's also often very elegant.

TBH, all my (X)HTML and CSS (apart from my website, which is handled by a commercial CMS) has been done by hand with ConTEXT which is the best syntax-highlighting programmers editor available as freeware.

There's just no way on this Earth that a visual editor can beat hand-written code for efficiency. It may take more time, but the results are often worth it.

Even complex layouts can be accomplished. I managed the following kind of layout by hand-coding:

Okay, I just switched to CSS.
I'm happy now :)

I wish CSS would adopt tables, or something like them. The layout example vinylpusher gave above is a million times easier to think about and code with tables than the CSS equivilent presumably involving floating block elements. I think that's the primary thing that scares people away from CSS.

XHTML still seems pretty silly to me. All new tags being paired (or explicitly <single /> tags) is a good idea for forwards-compatibility, but there's no point in demanding that legacy tags follow the same rule since no reasonable browser will ever drop support for them. There will be HTML 1.0 webpages on the web from now until the end of HTML, even if they're only accessible via archive.org.

I'm redoing my site and switching to XHTML in the process... it's just a little bit easier to maintain because it forces you to be clean and disciplined. A page that is a complete mess behind the scenes but works I don't find particularly offensive... as long as I don't have to work on it!

CSS is great, I think, in that it makes writing websites with Notepad viable for mere mortals. You can't beat tables for fluid columns, though - no argument there. I'm not even sure that layout should come under style... columns collapsing into sequential blocks when there's no CSS support available does far more to damage a page's readability than losing a few fancy font choices. You can ensure your layout is preserved far more effectively across a wider range of browsers with tables - I can't get hung up about using them.

EDIT: Removed stubborn edited-out-but-still-here material.

DreamWeaver.

See above.

You can use <DIV> and <SPAN> tags to emulate "table-like" behavior, with sensible CSS classes.

Div is a great tag.

Dreamweaver probably does its job properly if the project is started from scratch with it. So far, typing in the wysiwyg portion makes it add a redundant font tag after the first space character. The plain text editor is good, though. (But I may as well just use Programmer's Notepad...)

Frontpage 2003 + notepad, nothing beats it ;)

Wow... wow... WOW!!
I just started typing in the wysiwyg end of Dreamweaver.
With CSS, it's even more insanely stupid. Maybe it's just me, but even so this is a really bad sign of the future considering that the thing has gone through 7 revisions.
I type a letter, and it decides it a good idea work against the very concept of CSS! It not only does a redundant Font tag, but it actually goes so far as to figure out what Font tag my <t2> tag could be translated to, and puts that in!
GAAAH!!!!!!!

Web design was so much easier back in the good old days, when I wasn't so obsessed with clean code...


Sorry about my ranting :)
Just be happy; I'll never complain about this again.

Yup, it's all about Notepad. Notepad and tables.
I like to make my sites using all tables and external style sheets. You may not be able to a bunch of fancy CSS stuff, but I only really need control over my fonts, borders, links, and repeating images.

Have you ever tried this in practice? It's a nightmare. Not only does the CSS required get ugly and confusing awfully quickly, there are things that you simply cannot do without tables; usually because some browsers don't support CSS features quite properly.

CSS + tables + programmer's file editor = awesome.

CSS is great for a lot of things, but if you've learned tables it is extremely hard to adapt to div and span.

XHTML is a fantastic thing to use if you're hand-coding. You literally cannot make a mistake with it, if you do, you know exactly where you've gone wrong!