Increase Site Traffic by Including Multi-language Content in Your Web Page [con't]
HTML editors for Mac include:
- MUWSE (Multilingual HTML Editor for Macintosh): Muwse is full Unicode support and a built in professional HTML editor all in one.
- GoodPage: Made by TARI, a small family-owned company in Central Europe. They offer a 30-day trial.
- Taco HTML Edit: Designed exclusively for Mac OS X and has many advanced features including spell and syntax checking, live browser previewing, and PHP previewing. Available as a 30-day trial download. Costs only $24.95 USD.
- OmniWeb: Actually a feature-rich browser, OmniWeb uses the open source WebKit framework from Apple to handle page layout. Apple built the framework for Mac OS X using the source code for KHTML and KJS, two components of the KDE project from which the Konquerer browser for Linux is built. WebCore and JavaScriptCore  the two main components of WebKit  provide great support for today's Internet standards, such as HTML 4, JavaScript, CSS (including some CSS 3 standards), and DHTML (through the W3C DOM-2 spec).
- Web Minimalist: A useful free program.
Linux doesn't offer as many web development IDEs as Windows and Mac, but it does have a lot of great text editors that support Unicode and UTF-8 character encoding:
- Quanta Plus: A free, community
based open source web development IDE. It is fully extensible, so you can
import DTDs, write scripts to manage editor contents, visually create dialogs
for your scripts and assign script actions to nearly any file operation in
a project.
Some free text editors that can save as UTF-8 include:
- CoolEdit: Full-featured X Window text editor that supports multiple edit windows, 3D Motif-ish look and feel, shift-arrow and mouse text highlighting, column text highlighting and manipulation, as well as color syntax highlighting for various sources. Other features include as you type spell checking, an interactive graphical debugger, macro recording, regular expression search and replace, pull-down menus, drag and drop, an interactive man page browser, run make and other shell commands, and redefine keys with an easy interactive key learner.
- Mined 2000: It was the first editor that supported Unicode in a plain-text terminal powerful text editor with a comprehensive yet concise and easy-to-use user interface.
Some of the best products out there are multi-platform and will likely work on your particular operating system:
- NVU: Nvu (pronounced "N-view," for a "new view") is a free, open source software program that allows you to build websites and web pages using a simple WYSIWYG editor. Nvu makes creating web pages as easy as using a word processor and, in some respects, rivals such programs as Adobe's Dreamweaver and Microsoft's Expression Web. Nvu includes a built-in site manager, so connecting to your website and making changes is a simple process. Although it is free, they do accept donations via their web page.
- Dreamweaver MX: Now sold by Adobe since their purchase of Macromedia. It's definitely PRO quality and it's got a $399 USD price tag to prove it! Available for Windows and Mac OS X.
- The Mozilla-powered Sea Monkey Composer also provides WYSIWYG editing of multi-script pages, supports the Global IMEs and Visual Keyboards, and can save files with UTF-8 encoding.
- AbiWord: Another free and open source word processor. It was originally started by SourceGear Corporation as the first part of a proposed AbiSuite. Development stopped when SourceGear changed their focus to Internet appliances. AbiWord was adopted by some open source developers and AbiWord continued to be developed. The name "AbiWord" (pronounced "Abby Word") is derived from the root of the Spanish word "abierto", meaning "open". It runs on Linux, Mac OS X (PowerPC and Intel), and Windows
Windows tools, such as Dreamweaver, run quite well under Crossover or Wine. These programs allow you to install many popular Windows productivity applications, plug-ins and games in Linux. Both these programs include an easy to use, single click interface, which makes installing a Windows application simple and fast. Once installed, your application integrates seamlessly with your Gnome or KDE environment. Just click and run your application, exactly as you would in Windows, but with the full freedom of Linux.
There are countless other tools out there, but whichever one you decide to
get, make sure that it can use UTF-8 character encoding.
That should pretty much set you up to create multilingual pages. The next topics that we'll be taking a look at, in a month from now, include the Windows Language Bar, Visual Keyboards, and how to configure your PC to use International keyboards. First, we'll be revisiting the subject of JavaScript error handling. Dorian Garson, a former Bing front-end developer and team manager at Microsoft Corporation, has come up with a novel way of capturing those hard-to-track JavaScript errors.
Have an suggestion for an article topic? Do you have a product or service that you'd like reviewed? Email it to Rob at
Rob Gravelle combined his love of programming and music to become a software guru and accomplished guitar player. He created systems that are used by Canada Border Services, CSIS and other Intelligence-related organizations. As a software consultant, Rob has developed Web applications for many businesses and recently created a MooTools version of PHPFreechat for ViziMetrics. Musically, Rob recently embarked on a solo music career, after playing with Ivory Knight since 2000. That band was rated as one Canada's top bands by Brave Words magazine (issue #92) and released two CDs. Rob's latest, entitled KNIGHTFALL, was a collaboration between himself, the former Ivory Knight vocalist, and legendary guitarist/producer, Jeff Waters of Annihilator fame. Rob is available for short-term software projects and recording session work. to inquire, but note that, due to the volume of emails received, he cannot respond to every email. Potential jobs and praise receive highest priority!
Original: January 15, 2010
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