HTML editor
What is HTML editor?
An HTML editor is a software program which allow user to create or to edit HTML page. Since HTML scripts are written in plain text format so any text editor such as Windows Notepad, Windows WordPad, etc. may be used as HTML editor. But when an editor is said as HTML editor it should have few special features to easier the editing of HTML script. Those features may be suggestions while editing, auto complete tags, use color scheme to discriminate tag elements, comments, etc. Few of them even offer visual wizards to add style, JavaScript, form, table, etc.
Types of HTML editor
Basically HTML editor may be of two types; text based editor and WYSIWYG editor.
A text base editor only offers user to edit HTML source code. Notepad++ a GNU program is very popular in this category.
WYSIWYG is an abbreviated term of What You See Is What You Get. As the name implied a WYSIWYG editor offers a visual display of resulting output along with source code editing facility. Modern WYSIWYG editors are so advanced that they allow users to edit web pages over a visual interface. User can create a professional web page even without knowing the HTML language. Microsoft Visual Web Developer, Coffee cup html editor, Microsoft FrontPage, etc. are very popular WYSIWYG HTML editor.
Online HTML editor
An online HTML editor is one which loaded online when user type its URL. They are often known as web based HTML editor. You often see such editors when posting a message in blog or bulletin board. Popular forms of online HTML editors are BBCode editor and iframe HTML editor. Those editors use JavaScript or any other client side scripting language to manage their job.
An online HTML editor defers from conventional editor installed on a local computer in many respect. As they loaded online so they are smaller in size and hence limited in features and functionalities. As the generated codes are usually submitted to the web server so the server security is the prime consideration here.
BBCode editor vs. iframe editor
A BBCode editor accepts only BBCode to restrict users from inserting any unwanted HTML tags. Here HTML tags are encoded and hence can produce no effect in building HTML page. So a BBCode editor is much safer for online use. To build a WYSIWYG BBCode editor special arrangement must be made to display resulting output.
An iframe editor provides the user visual interface of editing of HTML page. Users see the final output what they are doing on the editor screen. So it is more user friendly compared to BBCode editors. But as it accept direct HTML elements so special care must be taken to filter out any unwanted element which may cause danger to the server.
