Ask HN: Local Mac Wysiwyg HTML Editor? (for “Lo-fi” website)
After futzing with static site generators, and markdown/Obsidian publishing pipelines. I’m trying to get into writing - and making it part of a daily flow. I’ve really wanted to like using Obsidian, but I’m not a huge fan of the desktop app, and the mobile app takes too long to open - I’d like to try something else.
I want to take a swing at a simple folder of HTML files, which I rsync/SFTP to AWS S3. I’m posting how-to articles, blogs etc.
I’m looking for somewhat of a “lo-fi” solution. Local app, Not-cloud based, open-source preferred. I thought there was a VS Code plugin, but haven’t found it. I’d like to editing experience to be similar to editing Google Doc - as opposed in writing markdown/html tags. I frequently copy my notes into email, or exporting as PDF. An HTML doc is pretty good for that.
I was hoping to find an OSS version of Dreamweaver or something like that a but haven’t found it.
What do you suggest? I’d love to maintain the Obsidian-like cross linking ability… for now, I’m thinking to just put the HTML cross links in manually (unless you have better ideas)
Thanks!
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 92.7 ms ] threadhttps://bkhome.org/shellcms/
Update: Just tried this out. It seems to require you already have a remote blog setup (e.g. Wordpress), and you can't make a local site of static HTML, nor can you just open an HTML file and edit it.
However, I'm looking for something that's less of a local CMS, and more of just... a document editor which can open up HTML files, edit them with a GUI interface, and save them somewhere.
Ideally, it would be an editor like Sublime, where you can drag a folder containing HTML files in there (so you can navigate folders and access other files & content), and edit visually...
https://support.apple.com/guide/textedit/work-with-html-docu...
I had hoped that simple HTML would become a better choice than PDF or MS-Word for ordinary people writing for posterity, but unlike old Dreamweaver, almost all HTML tools today produce docs that must be served by a web server (and consist of separate HTML, CSS, JS, img files that get scattered.)
I’m currently using Apple Pages as my “local document editor” (eg for things to be printed), its fine - but doesn’t handle the “edit this HTML file cleanly” mission.
https://github.com/coteditor
https://www.realmacsoftware.com/rapidweaver/
I made a few color scheme changes to increase line height, limit line width, and improve header contrast. The MarkdownEditing plugin is also nice if you use special features like footnotes.
I was thinking to lean into something similar with VS Code - the hypothesis being that VSC is widely used, open source, and a powerful text editor.
Have you / others come across similar plugins? I’d be OK with editing markdown files - would love using a GUI editor. I’m not a fan of writing in markdown with a separate rendered window to the side. Would rather it “feel” like a simple MS Word / Google Docs authoring experience.
* Kompozer
* nVu
* BlueGriffon
(In that order, IIRC.)
- Kompozer - http://kompozer.net/ is offline, last update 2016
- BlueGriffon - just downloaded it. It doesn't seem to run - I just get a frame of an empty window...
The trendy way to do websites now is programmatically generated text, mostly from Javascript. So these are old school tools, but that seemed to be what you were asking for. Perhaps I was wrong.
I was replying on a phone, so no links or anything -- sorry.
I just downloaded and tried Blue Griffon on macOS Monterey (the latest my Mac will run unaided) and it worked fine and happily opened a local HTML file and displayed it. LGTM.
Seamonkey is active and currently supported. I still use it occasionally.
https://www.seamonkey-project.org/
It uses an old version of Gecko, though. It still has a web editor and it still works.
I just updated to:
SeaMonkey 2.53.17.1 Platform: macOS x64 Language: English (UK)
By the way, it's funny that you mentioned Dreamweaver, dv35z, because I experimented with using Dreamweaver as a writing app in the 90s. I still have hundreds of HTML files that include notes and essays I wrote back then using Dreamweaver. Needless to say, I definitely prefer Emacs with Org!
Emacs Org-mode is on my list technologies to check out which have stood the test of time, and may continue to do so...
Another option is Pinegrow, an NW.js desktop-based website development app that uses plain HTML, CSS, and JS, just like Dreamweaver. Its UI is quite complicated, but you can hide what's not necessary for you. It also includes a bare-bones CMS, but it's not mandatory to use. It's not open-source, though.
Pinegrow - this seems to be close to what I'm thinking... a visual HTML editor. But wow, the interface is complicated. Looks like they've crammed AI/ChatGPT into it, a news reader widget (?!). $150/year price tag. - A simple, open-source app along these lines would be great.
I started in plain HTML/refresh IE back in the day, and Dreamweaver (for all its many _many_ flaws) did a great job.
I really wonder how many young web engineers aren’t having their calling realized because of this simple gap - being able to write in a WYSIWYG editor and view the source, alter it, learn what the HTML and CSS were doing, and instantly see the results, was inspiring for me. I wonder how different it would’ve been to have the editor just push the work out to WordPress or whatever and never really get to see the inner workings.
Share this page with people who are passionate about this topic, and perhaps we can gather experts to rally behind an open-source initiative or start one.
I'm currently on the hunt for a notes app and found that. It seems to be a notes app / static site generator wysiwyg that uses HTML.