Web site development has come a long way since the early days of vi, where documents of the original ARPANet were mostly done. Today, as Web authoring tools abound, deciding on what to use to suit your needs can be a trying process, literally.

HTML documents are plain text, or ASCII, files that can be created using any text editor, such as Notepad on a Windows machine, SimpleText on a Macintosh, or Emacs or vi on UNIX.

You can also use any word-processing software that allows you to save a document as “text only with line breaks”.

You may also use a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor, with a graphical interface that allows you to design your HTML documents visually, displaying page elements like text, images, bulleted or numbered lists, tables, and forms as they would appear in your Web browser.

It is a definite advantage, though, to learn enough HTML to be able to code markup tags and know what the result will look like, before you can determine the usefulness of a WYSIWYG editor.

This gives you greater flexibility when you want, or need, to add or edit HTML features that a WYSIWYG editor does not support.

There are also advanced HTML editors that combine the functions of both text and visual editors, and provide added features and functionality such as rich text formatting, spelling and grammar checking, find and replace in multiple files, HTML online help, automatic HTML tag correction, and HTML validation.

Some even provide templates that let you easily create and format pre-defined Web pages, such as a corporate or personal home page, a site’s table of contents, a form that lets users search for content within or outside the site, a guest book, a form for readers’ comments, etc.

NOTE: Some features offered by advanced editors may require server-side components in order to work. Please refer to your editor’s help or manual.

I personally use three types of editors in my work, depending on the need, since I have not found one with all the features I want or need at any one time. As I refrain to endorse any particular vendor or product on this site, I’d just refer briefly to each of their pros and cons, that may help you find one with similar features.

I mostly use what is called a RAD editor, for Rapid Application Development, which is geared for profesional database-driven Web sites. It has more than most of the things I need for HTML, with a really useful help and validation feature. Surprisingly, it does not have a Thesaurus, which is not really for HTML, but which I find useful when writing content.

I also use a popular WYSIWYG editor, but mostly for defining tables, interactive forms, and placement of objects, which is easier to do there, and strip the HTML code underneath, and work back in the RAD.

I also use another type when I need to develop client-server intranet or Web-based applications, that provides a visual object-oriented programming interface and generic database and SQL connectivity across almost any platform.

Unless your editor does so, always remember to save the file with a file extension of .html, as in myfile.html; or if you are restricted to 8.3 filenames (Windows 3.x), use .htm, as in myfile.htm. These file extensions indicate that the file contains HTML code information and are the default extensions associated with or recognized by most browsers.