So far, I've been using Macromedia HomeSite 5 for coding web pages with clean HTML. Now I started to work with Visual Studio 2008 and I want to ask: is it a good idea to throw away Homesite and start using VS for coding HTML pages?
I don't use any visual designers, I'm just coding all HTML manually.
EDIT: thanks for all replies. Are there any free simple HTML editors that I should try?
No - use Visual Studio if you'll be building ASPX pages and need the code integration. For straight HTML, though, I wouldn't do it (and, yes, I've used both Homesite and VS extensively).
I think Visual Studio is a bit much if all you want to do is code straight up HTML. There are plenty more lightweight editors out there that would be better unless you plan on going into full-blown ASP.NET development.
Yes :) Visual Studio has great tools to help you write html (intelisense).
I used HomeSite years ago, but I can say that homesite's editing features are better then today's Visual Studio on Classic ASP and HTML.
if you're developing asp.net pages, use Visual Studio to full support ASP.NET controls.
But if you want to edit only HTML pages. I think HomeSite is better.
I use VS all the time for HTML coding - especially the split screen mode where I can see the design panel and the HTML code itself.
Also the HTML isn't bloated as with some WYSIWYG editors.
If you are looking for an IDE to just develop web pages and not web applications, I would suggest something besides VS2008. Vs2008 is much better if you want to build aspx pages and work with code. In your case, you are looking for an app to develop html pages manually and maybe switch to a graphic view to see how it renders. For something like that, stick with HomeSite, Dreamweaver or Aptana.
i remember Homesite very fondly. it was, by far, the best html editor of its day (back in 97 - 99) i still think it is a very good html editor. it is fast, has a much smaller memory footrpint, and is easy to use. However, it will depend on what interface you like better, what tools you'll need, and whether you may think about taking up programming in the future. If you think you may want to learn to program then stick with studio so you become very familiar with its interface.
hth..
I found Visual Studio some of the worst environment for HTML coding, also with the webtools plugin.
There are many better competitors for HTML/PHP etc. coding. Visual Studio has its strength more with languages/frameworks developed from Microsoft (.NET,C#, ASP, VB, MFC) and of course for C/C++ with some very good debugging tools (IMHO the best for C/C++).
It agree, that Homesite, Dreamweaver, Webuilder, Quanta+ (KDE)... are better.
You might check out MS Expression Web. It's html editor is far superior to the one built into VS2008. Incidentally, Expression is the same editor that the Sharepoint team picked for building out their sites.
Expression has support for building regular html, coding php, building .net master pages, etc. I believe they are going to be replacing the editor in a future version of visual studio with the engine from this product.
I would use Visual Studio to develop a .NET application, but I wouldn't use it to hand-craft html.
If you want certain features, like colour-coded html blocks and auto-complete then use a simple html editor. There are some great cheap and free ones available like Netbeans, Aptana and Topstyle.
If your current HomeSite application allows you to add syntax highlighting for other languages (more specifically, HTML 5 when it's finalised) you won't need to stop using it. It would only become a problem if you were stuck with having HTML4 highlighting and auto-complete / intellisense when you want to use HTML5.