Many people still ask me what I use for website design on the coding side with a thought that “Dreamweaver is better than Frontpage” on the tip of their tongue. Since they are usually quite new to the world of Web from the developers’ perspective they end up baffled, because I argue that they invested unwisely: into tools, rather than skills.

I’m not going to waste time laying down the pros and cons of using this or that. I will rather just put down my recommendation. First, use a simple text editor, rather than the all-knowing tools. It may appear slower and harder at the beginning, but will pay off in the end. Secondly, the best such editor is, in my opinion, Slava Pestov’s open source jEdit. You can download it on their page and once installed head on to selecting the plugins you’ll need. Here is a screenshot of the ones I recommend for PHP and HTML.

If you do give jEdit a try, then read the jEdit 4.3 User’s Guide first. It’s in PDF and can be printed out for handy reference.