Web authoring system

Draft

Definition

A web authoring system is software to produce webcontents. They range from simple HTML editors to fairly sophisticated integrated development environments.

Today, a lot of web contents are not produced with web authoring systems, but with portalware of various kinds (and that include learning management systems

Popular systems

Tools for web programming are not included here.

Free HTML structure editors

There are dozens of available systems. We don't have time to evaluate these. See also XML editors to edit XHTML, SVG etc.

• NoteTab light
• HTML Kit

Daniel K. Schneider can recommend both these systems, but prefers to use a programming editor, e.g. (X)Emacs.

Programmer's editors

Again, there are lots of editors with HTML support, e.g.

• Notepad++ (Windows)
• PSPad (Windows)
• (X)Emacs (Most systems)
• JEdit (Most systems)

See Free text editors (Wikipedia) for a full list and also the Comparison of text editors.

Free HTML WYSIWYG Web Editors

• NVU. A fairly nice editor. Good for beginners. The more recent Kompozer can also edit XHTML.
• Mozilla SeaMonkey Suite (a followup from the earlier Mozilla browser that includes a navigator, a composer and an email client).
• Amaya, The W3C sponsored test browser and editor.

Wikipedia has a list of some Free HTML editors

Commercial Mid or High End

• Adobe Dreamweaver
• Microsoft FrontPage

Other software

• Some word processors like Framemaker can be configure for single source HTML/XML/PDF production.
• (future?) versions of Office XP.
• Open Office
• Presentation software can export to HTML

See also document standard, since one can produce HTML from any reasonbly well defined document format.

For education

These systems offer additional functionality, e.g. can export to IMS Content Packaging.

Commercial

• Adobe Dreamweaver (with the free CourseBuilder extension)

Free

• eXe

Links

• Free HTML Editors, Web Editors, and WYSIWYG Web Editors and Site Builders
• Sourceforge search for HTML + Editor