HTML editor that supports tag-matching?

M

Mikey

New member
I've been using Notetab Pro and Notepad++. Both of them support syntax highlighting, but neither seem to be able to support tag-matching.

Example of what I want it to do:

52nck94.png


Ideally, I'd be able to left-click an opening tag and have it automatically highlight the closing tag. Anyone know of any editors that do this?

<P ID="signature"></P>
 
give Nvu a whirl

> Ideally, I'd be able to left-click an opening tag and have
> it automatically highlight the closing tag. Anyone know of
> any editors that do this?
>

<P ID="signature"><a target="_blank" href=http://www.lp.org>
adolcoolie.txt
</a></P>
 
Eew, center tags?
<P ID="signature"><marquee direction="left" scrollamount="8">
kelet_av.gif
</marquee>
!luos ruoy tae lliw stelek ehT</P>
 
> Eew, center tags?

Valid HTML and cheaper than span tags.

Plus the myriad of obscure HTML tags with no default browser behavior work well for cheap CSS styling.

If you don't actually *need* XHTML for some specific reason, better to use HTML as it degrades much better than XHTML, and is easier to use Javascript with.
<P ID="signature"><font size="-2">I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.
~ William Shakespeare

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0</font></P>
 
> Eew, center tags?

It was just an example. If anything, you should have faulted me for not including a document type. <img src=smilies/headshake.gif>
<P ID="signature"></P>
 
> > Eew, center tags?
>
> Valid HTML and cheaper than span tags.

Quoting w3schools, "the center element was deprecated in HTML 4.01.". So hu-uh, not valid. And in the givven example, span tags are overtly redundant. A simple css styling on the body element would have worked better. Eg:

body {
text-align:center;
}

> Plus the myriad of obscure HTML tags with no default browser
> behavior work well for cheap CSS styling.

what?

> If you don't actually *need* XHTML for some specific reason,
> better to use HTML as it degrades much better than XHTML,
> and is easier to use Javascript with.

[valid] XHTML gets parsed much better and gets an overall better rendering than regular not-valid html, where the browser had to assume how it should look.

And JS works much better when it can interpret and navigate the dom correctly (for document manipulation stuff). Every other JS use is nearly identical on both sides.

Say what you will, but I have been charged on semi large website projects, and writing proper xhtml has helped me a lot on long term maintenance (including browser support and strucutre updates).

I do know CSS rendering is still a long way to go (damn/bless you Acid2 test! :p), but it still works quite well as it is.

/wwwthreads/images/icons/tongue.gif
<P ID="signature">_- | -_
</P>
 
> Ideally, I'd be able to left-click an opening tag and have
> it automatically highlight the closing tag. Anyone know of
> any editors that do this?

I haven't seen any editors that do that, and god knows how much I would be willing for one (specially xml).

The closest I have seen is dreamweaver 8 tag folding.

<P ID="signature">_- | -_
</P>
 
> give Nvu a whirl

I gave NVU a try when I needed to maintain by hand some fucking finnancial tables. The whole thing broke my beautiful hand made code and its identation afetr some extensive use.

Also, it uses span tags when you bold text, rather than just use strong
<P ID="signature">_- | -_
</P>
 
One thing I don't understand about CSS is that there's a text-align, but there's no simple align for non-text objects. Yes, sometimes text-align works on the non-text objects, but it's been hit or miss when I've tried it. Far from consistent.

Is a simple align feature technically infeasible or something?
<P ID="signature"></P>
 
> The closest I have seen is dreamweaver 8 tag folding.

Notepad++ does tag folding, and it has an indent guide that draws a line between opening and ending tags:

67xqgbp.png


But it's useless if the page you're working with isn't properly tabbed/spaced.
<P ID="signature"></P>
 
> If you don't actually *need* XHTML for some specific reason,
> better to use HTML as it degrades much better than XHTML,
> and is easier to use Javascript with.

I ended up using XHTML on my site for three reasons.

1) To see if I could actually do it.
2) To find out why no one else was doing it.
3) To get actual experience with XHTML so my advice to people about how to use and indeed whether to use it was more relevant.

In the end I came to the conclusion that XHTML is a lot of hard work, difficult to get right, and has few actual advantages (something I wrote about http://pointlessness.freehostia.com/2007/april/xhtml.phpat length</a>). For aspiring web designers, I recommend HTML 4.01 Strict with as much presentational coding in CSS as possible (since it actually makes things easier in the long run).

I also recommend making as much shared code as possible dynamic (I use PHP to this end), avoiding divitis whenever possible (which actually means minimizing the use of div and span tags), and keeping code clean and easy to read with proper use of indents and spacing.

But as to why I still use XHTML, there are two reasons. First, I like that it fails on bad coding rather than leaving it (meaning each load is a mini-validation). Second, I managed to get myself on the http://www.goer.org/Markup/TheXPhiles/X-Philes</a>, which I'd have to leave if I went back to HTML.
<P ID="signature"><marquee direction="left" scrollamount="8">
kelet_av.gif
</marquee>
!luos ruoy tae lliw stelek ehT</P>
 
> Is a simple align feature technically infeasible or
> something?

Equally sized lateral margins on the object to-be-centered. At first I was also like "isn't that stupid?", but later on it started to make sense in my mind.
<P ID="signature">_- | -_
</P>
 
> It was just an example. If anything, you should have faulted
> me for not including a document type.

I'm actually starting to see the logic in the recommendations of the WHATWG with their '(X)HTML5' working draft.

Their recommendation is to include a DTD (Document Type Declaration, or 'DOCTYPE'), that simply reads:

[Here would be a minimal DTD, if it weren't for the forum coding forcing me to preview each page (converting my character entity references to characters) before posting it (converting the characters to HTML and and blanking the fucking stuff out). So just imagine the DTD on http://pointlessness.freehostia.com/test/xts/xts9.phpthis</a> page was here instead.]

For pages served as HTML, and no DTD at all for pages served as XHTML. I've tried it, and it works well since the browsers themselves have no actual concept of HTML versions, they simply work in terms of 'quirks mode' or 'standards compliance mode' (also 'almost standards mode' for Gecko-based browsers). So the only practical purpose of a DTD is to trigger standards compliance mode, which the minimal DTD above does quite well.

As for XHTML, all browsers that actually support XHTML media types (e.g. almost everything except Internet Explorer) automatically enter standards compliance mode upon seeing the XHTML media type, and ignore any DTD. Hence, there's really no point in having one.

I debated moving from XHTML 1.1 to (X)HTML5 on pointlessness, but eventually decided to stick with the formalized XHTML 1.1 (and HTML 4.01 Strict for legacy user agents) and wait to see how the WHATWG's proposals pan out.

Do not try to match my level of nerdiness on web coding, I will always win.
<P ID="signature"><marquee direction="left" scrollamount="8">
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!luos ruoy tae lliw stelek ehT</P><P ID="edit"><FONT class="small">Edited by Lillymon on 05/02/07 10:51 PM.</FONT></P>
 
> Their recommendation is to include a DTD (Document Type
> Declaration, or 'DOCTYPE'), that simply reads:
>

You actually put the tag, didn't you? :p

Anyway, I may be missing something crucial here, but I still don't see the point of providing a DTD, when there is already Schema.

DTD goal should not be to make the browser be aware that it is an xml technology (it should be aware of it much before even parsing the first lines), but rather provide the document type specification (ie, how should it be formed).
<P ID="signature">_- | -_
</P>
 
> Equally sized lateral margins on the object to-be-centered.
> At first I was also like "isn't that stupid?", but later on
> it started to make sense in my mind.

Too bad something like this:

div {
width: 200px;
margin: 0 auto 0 auto;
background-color: red;
}

doesn't work in IE6 (without hacks, that is).

<P ID="signature">_______________________________________
</P>
 
> You actually put the tag, didn't you? :p

Actually, I did at first, thinking maybe the forum software would be smart enough to turn them into character entity references (ha!). But when that didn't work, I typed the character entity references in myself. It seemed to work OK in the post preview, but it turns out that the post preview converts the character entity references to characters, then the actual posting has an HTML tag in it! I couldn't edit it either, since the forum software forces a preview when editing!

It didn't even put the page into standards compliance mode, which added insult to injury.

> Anyway, I may be missing something crucial here, but I still
> don't see the point of providing a DTD, when there is
> already Schema.

The WHATWG apparently feels the same way.

> DTD goal should not be to make the browser be aware that it
> is an xml technology (it should be aware of it much before
> even parsing the first lines), but rather provide the
> document type specification (ie, how should it be formed).

From what I've seen, the XML namespace in current XHTML 1.0/1.1 documents supplies enough information to render the page properly, and XML schema locations XML declarations will provide enough for expansions on this. So the DTD ultimately ends up only being useful for DTD-based validation (the prime example of which you'll find at the bottom of my main page).

I'm not sure why browsers can't just know that my pages are XHTML before they even start parsing (since the media type is application/xhtml+xml, which would seem to be self-explanatory) but an attempt at making an XHTML page without even a namespace resulted in failure. So there must be a good reason why it's needed.
<P ID="signature"><marquee direction="left" scrollamount="8">
kelet_av.gif
</marquee>
!luos ruoy tae lliw stelek ehT</P>
 
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