Free Mac App Html Wysiwyg Editor Rating: 10,0/10 1324 reviews

Oct 22, 2019  It is not a pure HTML editor, but a combined WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) and text editor. You can work with both interfaces, the graphical interface, and the code-view. Google Web Designer is supposed to generate correct HTML5 and CSS3 code from the graphical interface. Some of the best HTML editors for Mac OS X are free.

Do you use a Mac to create your HTML content? Do you like seeing your code preview in real time? Do you upload your code manually or do you need it automatically posted to your hosting server?

Web developers use several tools to design and edit their websites and are often working within a tight budget. Choosing the right free HTML editor can be a challenge, and it’s important to keep in mind that a free editor doesn’t mean a low-quality editor.

Here are some tips to help you decide which one will work best for you, and our take on ten free HTML editors popular with Mac users.

Key Functions

There are some baseline features that you’re going to want when choosing your free editor. These include:

WYSIWYG or Text Only

Do you want to see your code or would you like to be able to tweak it later with a text editor? Depending on your style, sometimes the best HTML editor is the best text editor. You may want to code all at once and preview when you’re done.

Split Screen View

This will allow you to see both WYSIWYG preview and code at the same time.

Spell Checking

Your editor should have integrated spell checking.

Keystroke Support

You’re using a Mac, so the keystrokes should be native to your operating system.

Find and Replace Functionality

This can be very handy for web developers, and some editors can make changes to an entire HTML project.

CSS and HTML Autocomplete

This feature can help you code faster and more accurately.

Where to Start

First, decide whether you’d like a text interface or a WYSIWYG interface. We will examine each type and give you options for each type to look at. These are options for Mac users, who may also want to consider using a Mac-based hosting service.

Remember, we are only discussing free HTML editors and free text editors. Paid options can meet your needs as well, but if you’re on a budget, here are some of your best choices for free text editors:

1. Brackets

Brackets is an open-source free text editor for Mac OS. It is maintained on GitHub, and is written in HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Its features include live preview, which presents an updated WYSIWYG preview as the code changes.

Some languages that Brackets supports are C++, VB Script, Python, Perl, JavaScript and more than 33 others. It also has extra functionality by way of extensions. It is a very popular no-cost choice for code developers.

One special feature is its ability to take CSS hints from Photoshop PSD files. This feature, called PSD Lens, can extract logos and pictures from Photoshop files without having to open the application.

2. Komodo Edit

This free text editor can track changes, has an autocomplete feature, and has a great interface. It can track changes, has a code preview and also supports several languages like Python, CSS, Ruby, XML and many more.

This editor is well-suited for developers with solid coding experience. It doesn’t have a WYSIWYG editor, link checker, or other app wizards to help beginner web developers. It does have color coding and built-in FTP functionality, making uploading extremely convenient.

3. Sublime Text

Sublime Text isn’t technically free but has no limit on its evaluation period. The software has a friendly interface, and support for many languages. It also offers a lot of customization that allows users to change almost all editor settings, like key bindings, completions, and menus.

It also has a unique “distraction-free” setting which allows the user to display only the code and hide all the other UI elements. It is open-source and can be scripted with Python to add new features.

4. Atom

Atom is also an open-source editor for Mac OS. Like the other editors, it supports many programming languages and has additional functionality through plug-ins.

Some useful capabilities Atom offers are auto-completion, a file system browser, multiple editing panes, and a package manager. And there are thousands of free packages available to increase Atom’s functionality.

5. BlueFish

The most outstanding quality of BlueFish is its speed. This editor can load a complete website in a second. Developers can work on multiple projects at a time due to its ability to perform concurrent operations.

It also can perform search-and-replace functions and full auto recovery in case files get mishandled. This editor also gives programmers remote editing capabilities and syntax checking.

6. Visual Studio Code

VSCode is a newcomer to the world of HTML editors, but developers are making it their editor of choice. Like other applications, VSCode has thousands of extensions, with built-in management.

It has a configurable typeahead completion that yields immediate benefits to the user, and Git integration that can speed up development time.

7. Amaya

Amaya is an open-source project that is now hosted by W3C (World Wide Web Consortium). This editor has a built-in browser and remote access features that offer a seamless collaboration environment.

It also offers an SVG editor and support for CSS. W3C uses Amaya as a testing medium for web standards and is a complete browsing and authoring environment.

8. BlueGriffon

BlueGriffon is a WYSISYG editor based on Firefox’s rendering engine. It has solid standards support so it capable of editing nearly all types of web pages.

It offers very easy switching from WYSIWYG to source code and is intended for intermediate developers. Like other editors, it has plenty of add-ons available, including an FTP publisher, and has been developed for Mac OS, Windows and Linux.

9. Atom.io

Atom is a modern editor gaining a lot of popularity for features like workspace sharing and real-time collaboration. It also has version-control support through Git which helps code management.

Atom was developed by GitHub, which allows for numerous updates and bug fixes. It was developed for cross-platform functionality and works well on all operating systems. It is customizable, has a dark mode, uses autocomplete, and programmers can write their own plugins.

10. Rocketcake

Rocketcake is a WYSIWYG editor for both beginner users and pro web developers. It has a drag-and-drop interface and users have no need to learn HTML or CSS. It offers view switching and support for important HTML elements like slideshows, buttons, gradients, and HTML5 video.

This application also offers a user-friendly and intuitive interface and can generate previews of how the resulting website will look on multiple device screens.

Choosing Your Free HTML Editors

The beauty of these free HTML editors is that they’re, well, free. So once you find an editor you think you might want, just download it and start using it. You may not know exactly what you need from the editors until you use a few of them.

We encourage you to browse our blogs and knowledge base to help your decision-making process and see what we have to offer.

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Do me a favor and look at your email inbox right now. I’d be willing to bet that at least some of the emails aren’t typical plain text emails; instead, they’re nicely formatted messages that look more like a web page than just a bunch of words. These are HTML (HyperText Markup Language) emails that are usually designed to inform or entice you, with fancy graphics, photos, animations, and of course some text. As nice as these sound, Apple Mail isn’t designed to let you create HTML emails; instead, it uses what is called RTF or “rich text format”. In today’s tutorial, I’ll show you several ways to design an HTML email, then let you in on the secret of how to send those emails from the Mac Mail app.

Creating Your HTML Email
Let me repeat one point from that opening paragraph — there’s no way to make an HTML-formatted email in Mail, which means you’ll need to use some way of designing your email and generating the HTML file and any associated cascading style sheets (CSS). For those who have experience in coding HTML, you could just pop open your favorite text editor and design the page totally with text. Most of those reading this post will want an easier way to accomplish the task.

If you’re going to be emailing thousands of people on a regular basis, you don’t want to use Mail to do this as you’ll most likely end up having your Mail account put on spam blacklists! Instead, services like MailChimp or Constant Contact offer a way to design and send mass emails. They’re also usually quite expensive, but if you are sending those thousands of emails daily or weekly these services are well worth the cost.

(A typical HTML email, as viewed in Mac Mail.)

Mac HTML Editors
What we want to do is create an HTML file that can be opened on a Mac in Safari; if that goal is reached, then the same file can be sent from Mail. There are a number of web and email design apps available for Mac and I’ll list some here, but since not all email is read on a desktop device these days, you’ll want to make sure that the app you use is capable of what’s called “responsive design”. That means that it can create web pages that look good no matter what device you’re using to view them — a Mac, an iPhone or an iPad. It’s also useful if you can use a “what you see is what you get” (WYSIWYG) drag-and-drop editor that gives you a way to just drop elements like text, images, and buttons onto a blank page or template, then export an HTML file. Here are some well-rated Mac web design apps:

  • Sparkle (Mac App Store): A WYSIWYG design tool that is rather expensive ($89.99 for Sparkle Pro), but creates responsive HTML and can export a file.
  • EverWeb: At $79.95 for the software only, Everweb is pricey but offers good support, responsive HTML and the ability to publish to a folder. EverWeb will seem very familiar to those who used Apple’s iWeb app.
  • Wolf – Responsive Web Designer (Mac App Store): $59.99, provides responsive design and is well-loved by users.

If you’re a designer you probably already have a subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud, and the company’s Dreamweaver app is very well-suited to the task of designing responsive emails.

Regardless of the app used to create the HTML file, you’ll most likely end up with an exported file that contains the file in addition to a folder containing the images that were used in the email design. On your Mac, you can double-click that HTML file to open it in Safari and you’ll see exactly what you’re going to be sending, images and all. However, if you tried to send that email at this point, your recipients would see well-styled text and buttons, but no images because they’re on your Mac!

You’ll need to host those image files somewhere to ensure that Mail is able to grab them from a server and then display them in the email. If you already run a website, then it’s a relatively easy task to just create a hosting folder, place your email images in that folder, and then change the image links in your email HTML code to point to “https://mywebsite.com/images/myphoto.jpg” instead of to the local “/images/myphoto.jpg” file. If you don’t have a place to host your photos, there are plenty of website hosting services that charge a monthly fee for a domain name and hosting. You then upload your files to the host via ftp, then change those image links in your email HTML. Thinking of hosting those files on a cloud service like Dropbox or iCloud? Neither of those services works for this purpose.

Remember that you can use your own Mac as a server, either with macOS Server (be sure to read our series on macOS Server) or MAMP. This takes a while to get everything set up, but if you’re planning on sending out the occasional HTML email to friends or business prospects, it can be a low-cost source of hosting image files.

Free Mac App Html Wysiwyg Editor Download

Online Email Editors
This looks like an expensive proposition, especially if all you want to do is design and send an custom invitation to a few friends. Still, for small businesses or even the occasional personal HTML email, if you have a host for those images you’re well on your way. You probably noticed, though, that the Mac HTML editors aren’t exactly inexpensive, so what’s a good way to design an HTML email without that added expense? Use an online HTML email editor.

Online Wysiwyg Html Editor

Bee is designed specifically for the purpose of creating responsive HTML emails. What’s really nice is that for the occasional one-off HTML email, you don’t need an account nor do you need to pay a cent; just go to the Bee website, select Bee Free, and start designing by dragging and dropping elements (see screenshot below):

(Bee Free is an easy-to-use and free way to design HTML emails.)

Once you’ve created your masterpiece, click the Save button in the top right corner of the Bee editor and you’re given the choice of downloading it (free) or saving it (requires an account). Download to your Mac, and you’ll get a folder containing the HTML file as well as an “images” folder containing the images in your email. Upload the images to your host, edit the HTML file to point to those files, and then test your HTML file by opening it in Safari. Broken image links — meaning that the link in your HTML file isn’t correctly pointed to the image files — can ruin your whole day (see image below):

(A broken image link in an HTML email.)

Fix the broken link, then check the file again in Safari.

Other free online HTML email creation services include:

  • Topol.io
  • Stripo.email
  • Mosaico.io

Each service provides a way to design HTML emails through a simple WYSIWYG editor, then download the completed HTML file. Regardless of which service you choose to use, be sure to check your file in Safari. When everything looks just the way you want it to be, it’s time to use the remarkably easy trick to send out the email in Apple Mail.

Mac

Sending the HTML Email in Apple Mail
After this lengthy process, you’d think that sending the HTML email in Apple Mail would be difficult as well. Wrong!

Free wysiwyg html editor for mac

With your HTML email opened in Safari, choose Edit > Select All from the menu bar or press Command – A. This command highlights all of the HTML email on the screen, after which you need to copy the email using Edit > Copy or Command – C.

Navigate to Apple Mail and create a blank email, then click in the spot where you’d normally start typing your message. Instead, paste the HTML email you copied from Safari into that space using Edit > Paste or Command – V (see image below):

Free Mac App Html Wysiwyg Editor Software

(An HTML email pasted into Apple Mail and ready to send.)

This method works regardless of how you created the HTML file. Just make sure you’ve hosted your images somewhere, select the entire “web page” you’ve designed, copy it, and paste it into Apple Mail. The nice thing is that by hosting those images on a server, the formatted email complete with photos is actually quite small — the example above is 323 KB in size, even though the images that are used in it are well over 2 MB each.

Free Mac Html Editor

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