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JHTMLEd

JHTMLEd - A java based html editor

Version 1.10 now available to download!

The description

JHTMLEd is a simple text based html editor. It is NOT Frontpage or Dreamweaver (1) (etc). JHTMLEd is a simple text based editor that is designed to teach you some basic html, but can also be useful to experts who code manually. JHTMLEd is not Notepad (1) - it is much more advanced than that. It is based on the idea that it is an extension of Notepad...

While just a text based editor - JHTMLEd makes things easier as it is designed for use with html code.

For instance: Break tags are as simple as pressing Ctrl+Enter, or clicking a button on the toolbar. Similar bold open and close tags are as simple as Ctrl+B, or again pressing a button. This was the main idea JHTMLEd was based around.

The latest version also colours your html code, making it easier to understand and navigate... e.g. Tags are blue, Strings are Green, special characters are grey and text is black.

JHTMLEd grew to become quite a bit more advanced. It contains an MDI - Multiple Document Interface, allowing many documents open at once, all in individual frames. It has more advanced features such as text import, font styling, image placing, table building, list building and a javascript/ascii e-mail link builder. To make things even easier, JHTMLEd has a preview tab in which you can create a preview file, or view the saved file currently open.

A list of features is below...

File menu:

New - Creates a new document and runs a new page properties dialog that allows: page title, body text colour, background colour, hyperlink rollover and a normal or watermark background image
Open - Opens a html file, with the file chooser filtering only htm and html files by default
Save - Saves an open file, will run save as if it hasn't been saved before
Save As - Opens a file chooser with htm/html filtering for saving a file
Import Text - Opens a dialog that can get text from a txt (or any file, but default filters as txt) and import it. It will import the txt putting a break tag </br> wherever there is a line break.
HTML Properties - Fo a blank document, this creates a blank template, complete with body, title and meta tags. Also supports links to CSS style sheets.
Exit - Exits, but first asks if the file has to be saved first (I want to add a cancel button to this dialog too

Edit Menu:

Undo - undoes the last few actions
Redo - you guessed it
Cut, Copy and Paste
Find - Can highlight all, or find next, previous words (little buggy at the moment)
Replace - Should replace, but doesn't quite do it properly yet
Select All - selects all the text

Insert Menu:

Most will put tags around selected text, or add the tags where the caret is (and then set the caret in between the tags ready for text entry)
Links and images can be inserted, done by pop-up dialogs asking for text, location etc. The link one does not ask for text if some is already selected - it will put the tags around that
Table - asks for table rows, columns, layout and size and creates and lays out tags for a table with those properties
List - asks for ordered/un-ordered and how many items and then sets out the tags for it, as I used to write this description
E-mail - can make a standard mailto:, or do a good job of a protected javascript mailto:
Insert time and Date - gets system time and date and inserts it

Tools Menu:

Spelling - A spell checker based on the Jazzy API. Though uncomplete as it currently checks spelling inside tags, this is functional
Tidy Code - Uses the JTidy API to suggest HTML code warnings and errors, improving the chance of writing web pages that work with every html browser

Help Menu

Readme - pops up a dialog which loads a help.html file
About - A little dialog saying JHTMLEd was written by me ;-)

There are also various shortcuts - keyboard based. Like Ctrl+Enter inserts a break tab, Alt+Enter gives a paragraph and all the other usual ones like Ctrl+B = bold, Ctrl+L = left align etc. And you can insert basic html special characters... Ctrl+, gives you < and Ctrl+. gives you a >. Ctrl+2 also enters a " and finally Ctrl+7 enteres a &.

A status bar also displays the current open document and the caret position.

On loading - it finds your screen resolution and optimises its size for it so it can be bigger for screen bigger then 800x600, but will set itself smaller for tiny resolutions down to 640x480. Quite handy.

Upcoming?

Who knows? But I would like to include the following if I find the need to work on JHTMLEd some more. There is likely to be a v1.1 which solves some other bugs and adds some features, but I make no promises, it took me a while to start work on v1.01, and then a day to finish it!

A line count
An options/preferences set-up which can change the look and feel of some of the program
Browse to inserted images and paste relative links (e.g. images/image1.jpg)
Spell-checker that ignores tags
Indent new lines automatically

Screenshots

Main editor window:
Main editing window screenshot

Preview Pane, with the help file in preview:
Preview screenshot

All taken in Microsoft Windows (1) using custom theme (JHTMLEd should base it colours and theme based on the windows style and look).

Usage

JHTMLEd is freeware - free to use, and will remain so. Currently it is not open source. I am not yet prepared to release the source code and I am also with-holding it for proof that I wrote the program. Please read the copyright license below:

Download

JHTMLEd is here in .jar format 1.11MB

View the readme

Simply unzip the file to a location of your choice. Windows XP/Me (1) should have zip file handlers built in, or you can use Winzip (1) or any other suitable program. When extracted, run JHTMLEd.exe (2) to open the program.

You will NEED a Java(1) VM to run JHTMLEd. Get the appropriate one here and install that to make java programs, like JHTMLEd to run.

JHTMLEd was tested and written in Linux Mandrake (1) in its early stages, but has not been tested recently on it. I will test it in Linux and release a tar file for linux users if there is interest.