Alright! Finally a forum I can truly relate to. I agree, this is a good forum choice, especially given that so many groups, developers, clans, servers, etc seem to be in demand for their own sites.

Now if I'm understanding your question correctly, you're asking about web development programs. I personally use Macromedia's Dreamweaver for web page building, because I like its abundant features and great interactivity with their other line of web publishing software. I would not recommend that program for the average web designer though, due to its steep cost.

I think Microsoft Frontpage or Visual Studio used to come with some older Win95/98/2000 computers, and both can be used as a fine webpage editor. I think Frontpage is now sold seperately for WinXP though, and costs over $100. Microsoft Visual Studio might still be free, but I'm not sure. I know it came with my WinXP computer 4 years ago. It can handle html and java quite well.

As far as definate free programs go, I used to use a program called Arachnophobia. I've also heard of a free source editor called Crimson Editor that's supposed to be decent, but I've yet to try it out.

The truth of the matter is though, that all you REALLY need is a simple text editor like Windows Notepad once you've got some understanding of how to write a webpage. All the other multi-featured programs just help to speed things up, or supply shortcuts to HTML scripts you may not know off hand. If you're truly loooking to learn HTML/Java/etc, there are plenty of guides and tutorials all over the web for it. You certainly don't need to go to a bookstore to learn HTML (unless you just like having a large reference book for scripts). Infact I taught myself a lot of what I know just from looking at the pictures on this site: http://www.visibone.com/

Bottom line: Web editing software is nice, but not necissary when it comes to making a good and thrifty website.

It should be clarified that the forum software is server-generated by code on the server-side, so the HTML is dynamically generated.

That having been said, FrontPage Express comes with Windows 98, or if you install Windows 95 + Internet Explorer 4, you get FP Express in the IE4 install. After that, upgrade to IE5.5 and you're golden (Although I would use Firefox as a browser and use the IE5.5 update to lock down Outlook Express).

As for free HTML editors, I saw this on Sourceforge, but I have no idea exactly how it integrates with Microsoft Office.

If you use a *nix operating system (unlikely if you're a Freelancer enthusiast, though ), try Peacock for GNOME.

There's also this HTML editor that's done in Javascript (!) and lets you use MSIE as a sort of HTML editor. Go figure, eh? (It doesn't seem to work too reliably. Your best best is to generate HTML, switch modes to the HTML text, copy/paste into Notepad, and then close your browser.

Ekit is surprisingly good. All you have to do is unpack the directory somewhere and open EkitAppletDemo.html, then erase the sample text and start typing your own text. Once you tell it to copy the text, you have HTML-ready code you can paste somewhere else and thereby generate your website.

Finally, if you just want to take text files and generate 'quick and dirty' HTML, txt2html should do it, although from the looks of it you'll need a *nix OS.

Personally I just use Microsoft Frontpage 2003, but I'm lazy.




Edited by - Hahukum Konn on 10/17/2005 12:42:57 AM

{quote}If you use a *nix operating system (unlikely if you're a Freelancer enthusiast, though ){/quote}
Don't foget about Dual Boot systems! The machine I am typing from right now has the abillity to run both Windows ans Linux, all I have to do is click restart wait for the Linux Bootloader GRUB to run and select either Linux or Windows (its easier to make GRUB run windows than the windows loader to run Linux)

As mentioned all you really need is a text editor, like notepad. Personally I hate notepad. It can't handle Linux line endings properly, I don't understand why they don't all use the same but Windows Mac and Linux all like ending a line in a text file differantly. Also notepad does not have ANY conent highlighting at all.

Forums however use dynamicly generated pages. Which means you need to program. PHP is very common on the internet nowardays. I THINK this site uses ASP, however I can't be certian because some servers mis-represent the language to try to increase security. And what do you need to write server side scripts? well for php you need an ordinary text editor, though you can get much nicer apps, I can only assume that ASP has the same.

*nix is very common on webservers, mainly due to stabillity, security and the ease of remote administration (can do virtually everything from a command line).
Apache is proberly the most widely used webserver (runs on linux and windows).
PHP is a reasonably common programming language, not sure of that stats.
HTML and XHTML are what you send to the users web browser normally. If you want to see what HTML looks like, click `view source` to see the HTML page for this site. But whatever you do DO NOT copy it, this would be illegal.