In my quest for the perfect Dreamweaver replacement, I have tried a lot of WYSIWYG editors but have not been successful in getting an editor that matches Dreamweaver. There is Nvu but it does not let you edit PHP code, then there is Netscape composer which is the same as Nvu. There are a number of other editors like Matrix y2k editor, PHP designer2006 etc but none of them match or measure up to Dreamweaver.
Enter Codetch although not a full replacement to Dreamweaver it is rapidly evolving into an editor that can take on Dreamweaver some day. Codetch is an Addon for Mozilla Firefox. It is a XUL based HTML editor that uses the Gecko rendering engine to provide a easy to use and flexible editor that fits right inside the browser. Some of the features of this editor include an ability to load inside a tab or a floating window, an integrated java console and a live preview feature. The editor is at its nascent stage and does not support syntax highlighting nor does it support scripting languages like PHP. The best feature is the integrated help browser that connects to GotAPI.com which provides an web2.0 based searchable interface to help manuals of various programming languages.
The features that I would like to see incorporated the most in Codetch is syntax highlighting, more shortcuts to HTML tags, a CSS editor, Support for PHP and other scripting languages and finally code completion. Overall its the best XUL based editor I have seen so far and holds a lot of potential in the future.You should definitely check this extension out.
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