Even if you use a WYSIWYG html editor, you need a good text editor.
Notepad++ is a free text editor that will make your life easier. It has syntax highlighting, auto completion and much more.
Using a text editor is much more efficient when coding. It’s a tool that you need to have. There is also a portable version that runs from a flash drive.
We’ve used NotePad++ for a lot of web coding. The option to use a portable app is nice, especially when you’re working on school computers.
If you’re on a mac, both XCode (part of the mac developer kit) and Komodo Edit have worked out as free solutions, even though they are a little more complicated than NP++.
People might also check out vi/vim/gvim…the learning curve is quite steep, but I find them very efficient to use.
Not nearly as free, but TextMate and BBEdit are good text editors on Mac.
For a free Mac text editor, TextWrangler(also made by Bare Bones) is a good editor. All of these have functionality such as syntax highlighting for multiple languages.
I have been a huge fan of Textmate for a while now. Spend my entire working days in it, and a large part of my school days as well.
Although I have been getting into Vim lately and really liking the ‘two modes’ type interface. As said before — has a bit of a learning curve, but when you can get past the basics its super powerful.
I rarely use Windows, but when I do I usually download Notepad++.
Side note. I hate IDEs. Whenever I use one I am reminded why I love things like Textmate and Vim. They are so bloated, and have so many features that I don’t need. Its just preference and need based decisions though.
Notepad++ has never really been my favorite… I use Notepad2. It’s a lot simpler and barebones, but there’s just something about Notepad2 that bugs me.
But, I’m on OSX most of the time. I use TextMate for almost everything. I’ve written shell scripts that automate my work flow and TextMate’s ability to be called from the command line
mate someFile.txt
cat someFile.txt | mate
echo "Some Text" | mate
has been really helpful.