I would have featured Beerwin’s PlainHTML a few months ago but I decided to wait for the one feature which I felt was lacking then: the word wrap. Now that the feature has been included Beerwin’s PlainHTML has become one of the better freeware HTML editors available on the web today. It is true however that it still lacks one feature that I want to see in an excellent HTML editor: an FTP facility. But that can wait. With the present tools and features of PlainHTML, the absence of an integrated FTP application is more than compensated for.

PlainHTML is not only for HTML; it is also equipped to handle other scripting languages for the web. It comes integrated with Tidy for HTML validation and has a scripting toolbar designed to make common codes with the click of the mouse. It has syntax highlighting for tired coders’ eyes, line numbering, line-edit highlighting, special characters’ tool and a code snippets’ window that is packed with ready made snippets necessary for creating webpages that can pass the validation test at the W3C

For the HTML coder, PlainHTML has wizards for forms, tables and frames; for the newbie it also has help reference materials for HTML 4.0, CGI and PHP. It has two color tools: a palette for inserting codes for particular colors, and a color picker.

PlainHTML has its own preview browser and a mini-browser that one can use for surfing the web. One of the features of PlainHTML that caught my attention is its ability to “see” a file in localhost. This is important when one is working with PHP scripts.

PlainHTML may not have an explorer view. But it does have a File Viewer which can “read” text files (*.txt, *.rtf and *.csv) and JPG images (it cannot read GIF nor PNG).

Beerwin’s PlainHTML also comes with a set of templates that one can readily use for a website. In fact, it was a search for free templates that led me to Beerwin’s World of Stuff some time ago bringing me into contact with PlainHTML and MultiNote, (this is Beerwin’s Notepad replacement which is also bundled with PlainHTML). While there are still features that I miss in this editor — I would give it a rating of 4/5 — I think it is safe to recommend it to both newbies and experienced coders. It is feature-packed and is easy to use. And, for newbies especially, it can “teach” one how to code in HTML 4.0.

• the index page of TipzNTrix which is a customization of a GetTemplate theme-layout for WordPress
• three pages now posted at Biblista.Net (first written in BigEditor and then copied and pasted on Biblista’s Drupal site)
• this page (which I am going to copy and paste have copied and pasted into this blog application)

As a response to my rantings in this blog about the Big Editor, I was told the following:

• that the Big Editor no longer has a splash screen that one cannot turn off
• that the Code template feature is functioning and that one can add to it
• that one can double-click on an image appearing in the File Explorer and inserted as an image tag into the editor
• that there is a save to and open from remote FTP feature. (In fact, they even added an “Open File” icon to make the feature more explicit)

These were the first things I checked and while creating the pages mentioned above, I had a new experience of the capabilities and bugs of the Big Editor.

First, I must say that the Big Editor loads faster now. Although my objection to the splash screen was that there is no option to turn it off, I appreciate what the developers did to simply take it off. I remember the case of HTML Beauty which had a splash screen bearing the picture of Carmen Electra. As long as male teenagers were using the editor, they kept mum about it. But when more people outside the circle of the author’s friends began using the software (the author was still in high school when HTML Beauty became a hit in free download centers way back in 2000), complaints like “I can’t work with it when my wife is around” (from a married adult programmer) or “how do I hide the splashscreen from my boys” (this one from a Mom) began to be posted in the author’s forum. Eventually Mr. Maxx (the author) had to take out the splash screen. Anyhow, I find it useless anyway. It doesn’t add anything to one’s coding, and a splash screen doesn’t guarantee a nice webpage or script.

Second, I did find out why the Code Template didn’t seem to function. I went to Tools –> Options –>Code Template and added some codes and I expected it to appear there! (Or was I wrong to think that?) What I did this time around was to do the same thing and then look at it from a different place, not from the “Code Snippets” toggle, but from the “Short Cuts” button. It was there that I found the code snippet I added.

Code snippets were a feature of xSite, a leading HTML cum WYSIWYG editor back in 1999 until its development stopped. Code snippets were also a feature of HTML Beauty, Mr. Maxx’s editor. In the case of these editors, creating a Code Snippet was easy. One went File –>Create New –>Save As Snippet. The first line automatically became the name/title of the code. One can add a description of the code through a <– Comment –>. It was accessible through a Snippet Pane which was located as one of the toggles of the explorer panel. I miss that feature in a lot of HTML editors nowadays and was hoping that Oraspeed’s Big Editor had one that was functional. I see the Code Snippet panel, but I can’t get my code snippets on a webpage.

Third, I was told that double-clicking on an image in the File Explorer would insert it as an image tag into my webpage. I did that but BigEditor opened the graphic as a file inside the editor!

Fourth, about BigEditor’s FTP facility. I must say that between the time I made my first review of BigEditor and the day I downloaded build 6.9.1, I rediscovered the Crimson Editor (now on its version 3.7) and saw how it could open from and save a file to a remote server. So when I tried BigEditor, I wanted to see the same feature functioning at least. It doesn’t. It can log into an FTP server, but not long enough for me to do something with it. 110MB.Com’s FTP service is nasty. It only gives one 60 seconds to log in and show one means business. Once one logs into the server, the message “After 60 seconds of inactivity, your session will be terminated.” I use FileZilla as my FTP client and it gets its job done. With BigEditor, I tried creating an extra folder for images and to upload graphic files into it. I only got as far as the images folder. Everytime I try to upload an image, I get two alerts…

BigEditor is an ambitious project. One must appreciate the developer(s) for undergoing such an endeavor. It is a three-in-one software: a-not-only-HTML-editor (it works great with MySQL data, at least, as far as editing it goes), it is an FTP client (or promises to be so), and it is a comparison tool (make way ExamDiff!). But with the bugs it still has I would rate these features separately in the following way:

A few more words about the Editor component of BigEditor.

It still has no word-wrap. I can understand that MySQL data can require a no-wrap feature (I learned this while editing a large *.SQL file that I was to transfer to another server. Long unbroken lines make it easy to search for data), but when one is working on HTML, and even with Javascript or another scripting code, it helps when an editor can wrap its lines. It is for this reason that editors like AceHTML (even the free version!) or GVIm has that feature.

Second, I like the clipboard feature of BigEditor. The problem with it however is that when one copies anything to the clipboard and then opens a new file in BigEditor, the clipboard data is erased.

Third, while the Search function of BigEditor works fine, it can only search for data from the cursor-point onwards. There is no option for it to continue searching from the beginning of the page when it reaches end of file. Related to this is the fact that there is no Edit –> Select All option from the menu. A Windows user like me would immediately go to the Edit button for “Select” in a copy and paste operation (which I do a lot). In addition, I find that I cannot copy anything to the clipboard from a page in BigEditor when the highlighted selection is the whole page.

Fourth, while I was writing this article for Biblista, BigEditor crashed three times. It gave me the following error

Again I would like to reiterate my admiration for the one responsible for this project. It is however obvious that the BigEditor is still far from achieving its goals. This three-in-one application is needed by hardcore coders and it will be greatly appreciated if it begins to fulfill its promises.

This program will convert BBCode (Bulletin Board Code) to HTML. It’s useful if you work on forums which support either BBCode or HTML and need to convert your “canned speeches” or if you have written something in bbcode that you would like to put on your website. You could also use it to preview your posts on boards that don’t have that feature built in.

For me, its use to convert my bloggable forum postings into articles for this weblog.

The author also mentions that he made the program for PHPBB users. I created this post originally in AHK BBCodeWriter and pasted it onto our SMF forum and it worked well. My only frustration is that the HTML to BBCode Converter here works only one way. That however is a minor setback since there is a BBCode to HTML converter online tool

1. It has a helpful-looking interface
2. The file-comparison tool is really something I’ve always wanted in an editor
3. The promise of an integrated FTP is something that one cannot ignore.

Big Editor’s Plus

Great-Looking Interface

Big Editor has a great-looking interface. It looks like an MSOffice application and the syntax-highlighting is just beautiful, truly a treat for tired eyes. There is also a clipboard viewer which is just one click away and a file explorer. It also has a web preview toggle that makes it easy for me to see how my webpage is looking. All these makes Big Editor a big help for people like me who always make use of ALT-Tab for “picking” the tools from the Desktop. With Big Editor’s interface, my Alt-Tabbing is minimized.

File Comparison

What can I say about this feature? That it is sorely lacking in the html editors I’ve worked with. The file comparison utility makes it easy for me to see differences in the revisions I make on the same webpage. The index page of the Collectanea is an example of a webpage that I update each time I add a new page to my site. And I don’t mean just the links. If you would notice, the page now has a sticky note which I use to announce my updates. The file comparison tool allows me to easily see what I’ve added or deleted and where. I am currently using a small application to see the revisions I make. With Big Editor’s integrated tool, my work is further lightened.

Integrated FTP

An editor with a built-in FTP is always a plus. For years I’ve been working with an FTP client that works separately from my preferred HTML editor (HotDog). The promise of an integrated FTP tool in an editor is always welcome. And Big Editor has that promise.

The Minuses

I must say however that Oraspeed’s Big Editor loads slow. It has a splash screen that one cannot turn off. And then it has no word wrap option. This is a deficiency that I find cumbersome. More, I couldn’t add anything to the code snippets. I found the utility under “Tools –> Code Templates”. But when I started to add, the editor simply froze and then crashed.

The File Comparison tool didn’t seem to have problems. But the FTP facility couldn’t work well with the 110MB one-minute limitation. It is so slow. And then the editor has no capacity to open from and save to a remote folder. Not only that: one has to manually specify whether the FTP connection is for the transfer of binary or ascii files, which is — for me –very inconvenient. I logged on for the first time with Big Editor unaware of this feature and I started to transfer image files to the server only to find out later that the pre-selected mode of transfer was ASCII! That first transfer destroyed my graphic files.

I haven’t tested the other features of Big Editor but the ones I’ve seen makes me think twice before I actually use it as extensively as I intended at first. I am not a programmer; I create content. Big Editor is not yet mature enough, I think, for the kind of work I do. While I appreciate its file comparison tool, the utilities that really mattered to me — like FTP and word-wrapping, not to mention the automated creation of image tags from graphic files double-clicked on the file manager and creating one’s code snippets, is sorely deficient. Perhaps the reason for the limited time offer for a single user license was meant for testing the Big Editor. Perhaps future builds will make it a better and really functional editor.

The “decent CSS editor” is, of course, Blumentals’ commercial CSS software, RapidCSS. It is a fully-featured editor and as far as editing goes, it can be classified as made for hardcore designers.

The CSS tool box is a welcome addition to any aspiring web designer’s desktop. If you are online, you can ask it to validate a stylesheet using the W3C validator. And then, of course, it is free.

Screen Capture utilities are good for presentations. People like pictures. And when something that can be technical — like webpage designing — is illustrated with graphics, interest can be awakened. A screen capturing tool is like a camera: one takes a snapshot of something on the screen, edit it a bit (adding effects and so on) and then save it as a graphical image that one can use whether on a webpage or in a Microsoft Powerpoint presentation. How do you think did I create the graphics for the NewsRoom Publication Manual?

There have been really good screen capture tools that have gone commercial. Faststone Capture until version 5.2 (I think) was freeware. Now it is in version 5.6 and one will have to pay for a license to keep it. Not that there is anything unfair about this: FastStone Capture v. 5.4 + has a lot of features that one would expect in a commercial software. But here, I think, ScreenCaptor has an edge: it also has those features and more. Below is an image of ScreenCaptor’s SpecialFX tab; here, one can see how image editing is possible with this utility.

The nice thing about it is that it loads fast and connects quickly. I like the Console; it gives you that old computer feeling.

What I don’t like is that it doesn’t have syntax highlighting and it doesn’t store one’s FTP accounts. It is functional though. The thing about syntax highlighting is something minor. But the fact that I have to type in my username and password each time I try to log into my account is something that irritates me.

There are other FTP clients available now, of course, that don’t have the latter deficiency. But how many have the capability of working like a NotePad too?

Iconico’s Screen Caliper didn’t work well with my Crusoe computer. It simply refused to start. It required a graphic card that my computer didn’t have. You see, with all the features that the Iconico Screen Caliper packs, it needs to run in a computer that has the proper facilities. Well, web design doesn’t have to be dependent on computer hardware.

So I went googling looking for “Freeware Screen Measuring Tool”. There were two that came out JR Screen Ruler and Mirek’s MWSnap!. Both of these tools are small applications (they can be placed in a floppy disk) and don’t require special hardware to run. The funny thing is that I’ve had MWSnap in my computer(s) since 2002 and had been my Screen Capture utility until the advent of Donation Coder’s “ScreenCaptor”. I even wrote an article about Mirek’s MWSnap just a few years ago. Thing is, although it had a ruler as part of its suite of applications, I never used it before and thought I’ll never have use for it ever.

So now, goodbye, Screen Caliper. Hello MWSnap Ruler! It is not as jazzy as Iconico’s tool, but it doesn’t crash in my computer.