I'm looking for an HTML editor that does a better job with WYSIWYG editing of css styled html than Dreamweaver. I like Dreamweaver, but with more complex web pages, it does not accurately display the page while I'm in edit mode. It does show correctly in liveview mode in Dreamweaver, but I can't edit text in liveview.
I have have used CSSEDIT on OSX and it is excellent for helping manage CSS styles, but I'd like something for HTML.
The closest thing to WYSIWYG editing would be nice. Thanks!
If you want a WYSIWYG editor with a much smaller footprint (download of ~20mb instead of ~600mb for Visual Studio Express for Web) then Mozilla Seamonkey's composer might be a good option.
I used it a bit quite a long time ago and found it quite fast and it did usually generate valid CSS/HTML. I have heard a report that it may mess up any PHP that is in the page but I never used it with PHP so I can't speak to the accuracy of that report. I do know it was fine with SeverSideIncludes. It was fairly accurate in it's rendering and it is Open Source if that floats your boat.
There are lots of cons to WYSIWYG* and if you are doing any significant quantity I strongly suggest learning the underlying languages (HTML & CSS for web design). However for minor to moderate usage I definitely understand that it is really handy to just use a WYSIWYG editor and it won't bite you... probably.
With that warning out of the way... I would recommend Microsoft Visual Studio Express for Web. It is more than just a WYSIWYG (ie has ASP.NET building functionality, some automated quality/validity checks, spell check, and lots more) but it is the best WYSIWYG web designer that I know of. It's WYSIWYG editor is very similar to Microsoft Word in terms of UI. It does require a reasonable system - like less than 1gb ram and you will suffer a bit.
It does not support the Mozilla Firefox (-moz) or the Google Chrome/Safari (-webkit) development css rules (for example) but that is quite a minor issue that you'll never run into unless you actually know the css specs/browser development status.
