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What Are the Different Types of HTML Tools?

Alex Newth
Alex Newth

There are many ways of making a website with HyperText Markup Language (HTML), and there also are many HTML tools to help people use this language faster or more efficiently. HTML editors can be simple or complex, and some may not offer any assistance at all for website designers. Some HTML tools are made to help with one section of HTML code, such as tables or forms, and they help people generate the coding. Search engine optimization (SEO) uses HTML in certain ways to help target search results, and there are some SEO tools to properly optimized the coding. Each new version of HTML adds or deletes coding, so there are version-specific tools that assist people in understanding the differences.

Perhaps the most basic of the HTML tools is the HTML editor. In its simplest form, this can be a basic text-editor program that enables the user to type in HTML coding, which then can be exported into a website. More complex editors, known as what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) editors, help novices and experienced designers alike. With a WYSIWYG program, if the user types in text and makes a colored box, then the program will generate HTML based on what the user entered.

HTML coding can be used to design and setup a webpage.
HTML coding can be used to design and setup a webpage.

Many sections of HTML can be customized, but this usually is tedious and difficult for users. For example, text can be customized for size, color and font type; forms can be customized for submissions and questions; and tables can be optimized for size, borders and padding. These HTML tools usually perform in-depth HTML generation and typically help users understand all the options they have when coding.

An HTML text editor may include a syntax highlighting editor or have validation and other features available.
An HTML text editor may include a syntax highlighting editor or have validation and other features available.

To help get high search rankings, HTML should be coded in a way that makes it easy for search engines to read and crawl the website, because poor HTML may inhibit crawling. For this reason, SEO HTML tools go through the coding and remove unneeded sections and optimize others. While this does not guarantee high search rankings, it should help. Another benefit is that the coding for high search rankings typically is a cleaner type of code, which should improve loading speeds.

HTML occasionally is upgraded, and each upgrade introduces and deprecates tags. Version-specific HTML tools are optimized to teach and show users how the new HTML version works. This typically is packed in a common HTML editor, but it sometimes is a standalone program. The standalone version may or may not be able to create websites, depending on how powerful the program is.

Discussion Comments

umbra21

@Ana1234 - I don't even memorize the code. I use it to make tweaks on my blog sometimes, but mostly I just go to a website that has lists of the different HTML codes and I copy whichever one I need, then paste it into the editing bay.

Ana1234

@KoiwiGal - You can probably try wrapping your words in HTML tags in other forums and see if that works. Some places just don't want their forums to be filled with lots of pointless tags, I guess, or maybe they just didn't want to put in an editor when they made the forum.

Once you get the hang of it, HTML for things like blogging or forums is really easy and simple. You will basically memorize all the most common tags for what you want to do and, whenever you want to use them, you just type them out as easily as anything else.

It doesn't even slow me down to type out the tags when I want to make something bold or emphasize it.

KoiwiGal

So I guess forums use a little "what you see is what you get" editor so people can customize their posts. I've always wondered why some of them seem to be so complicated and others aren't. In my favorite forum, you can basically do almost anything you like with the text, including change colors, make it big or small, and add hyperlinks, pictures, video and so forth.

But in others all you can really do is post the text and there's no customization buttons.

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    • HTML coding can be used to design and setup a webpage.
      By: Nikolai Sorokin
      HTML coding can be used to design and setup a webpage.
    • An HTML text editor may include a syntax highlighting editor or have validation and other features available.
      By: spaxiax
      An HTML text editor may include a syntax highlighting editor or have validation and other features available.