Arachnophilia - One of the Best Freebie HTML Editors July 06, 2001 Introduction I have been using Arachnophilia to do all my web pages for about 5 years and can attest to its suitablity for both newbies and experienced webmasters. Arachnophilia creates Web pages in one of two general ways. The easy way is to drop a Rich Text Format (RTF) document onto the Arachnophilia program window and watch Arachnophilia turn it into a web page for you. The not so easy way is to write the HTML code yourself, which, although more work, produces the most professional-looking results. The program's author, Paul Lutus describes some of his programs features: New internal browser "Instant View" mode shows your HTML changes as you make them -- on each keystroke! Interactive spell checker with 120,000-word dictionary. Accepts fully formatted text, tables, outlines from any Windows 95-compliant application, automatically creates HTML pages. Supports up to 6 Web browsers, switches between them in a flash. Supports development of HTML, frames, CGI, Perl, C++, Java and Javascript with many intelligent tools and functions. Built-in intelligent FTP client automatically uploads changed files, for complete Internet access in one program. Powerful keyboard macros can include system commands, even other macros, for maximum flexibility. User-defined toolbars provide any tags or content you need for any of the supported languages and support system commands as well. User-defined file templates -- allows you to specify default document format and contents. Global search & replace across all open documents, no limit to number of open documents except system resources. Built-in step-by-step tutorials on HTML development, JavaScript, frames, the Internet. Program Description The program has a clean modern looking interface with the most common options available on the main toolbar. Along with most modern text editors, Arachnophilia has a tabs system allowing a number of pages to be accessible at the same time. But unlike most editors there is virtually no limit to the number of pages or the size. This is assuming available system memory of course. Arachnophilia also has a set of context sensitive menus. For example at the moment I have the styles menu selected. This allows me to change basic font attributes with the click of a mouse. You can see a screenshot of these menus in action below. You can select from 9 Context sensitive toolbars. In this example the Styles toolbar is selected. The Styles toolbar gives quick access to most of the available text styles. I don't know why the Comment tag is included here either There are wizards for table and list creation. There's an extensive help system that includes guides to html, tips for effective web pages, and even a short guide to JavaScript. Arachnophilia includes advanced HTML validation and site management that are not usually available in mid-price software, let alone freeware. Ease of use Arachnophilia is one of the easiest text editors to use. It doesn't clutter up the screen with toolbars you don't need, a big advantage. Clearly seeing what you're doing is the easiest way to produce error free, efficient code. Arachnophilia also provides sensible keyboard shortcuts and provides an extensive help system and the Arachnophilia home page has a really excellent set of HTML resources. Another great tool is the instant preview mode. Here you can select the preview button from the toolbar and the page quickly loads up into IE4 or above. If you use a different browser you can still set up a preview mode from the preview menu. You can select up to 6 browsers this way. as you progress with the program you'll learn to use ALT P S and the browser No in succession to flick through different browser views It might seem hard to move from a WYSIWYG to a text editor at first but Arachnophilia makes this transition very easy Conclusion Even if you never get into web authoring it might be worth getting Arachnophilia anyway. Arachnophilia is a superb general text editor. It can open a range of different file types you wouldn't believe. Below is a list of just some of the files Arachnophilia can read. HTML files Text files C and C++ Source files Java and JavaScript Source files Active Server Pages Perl files CGI files Batch files INI files INF files Registry text files Command files Channel files Give it a try; you have nothing to lose and a great freebie to add to your collection of software.