WYSIWYG stands for “What You See Is What You Get“, which means that the editing display closely corresponds the appearance of the page displayed to the end-user.
WYSIWYG is especially popular for web designing professionals and amateurs because it allows you to work directly on the website’s design as it displays on the screen.
Such editors are especially useful if you have no or little coding, HTML or CSS experience or knowledge. And they’re also good for folks that want an editor that helps you create web pages quickly. You don’t have to understand HTML at all to make engaging, high-quality, and professional content!
One thing we know is that you don’t need to pay for a good HTML editor–they are still some excellent free options, even for Mac users!
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What should a free WYSIWYG Editor include?
Why everything a paid one does of course!
Not to get ahead of ourselves or anything, here’s what we think is important
- Keep HTML markup invisible but offer a way to edit the HTML
- Shows you exactly (or near to) what ends up on your web page
- Simplicity in design so anyone can use it!
- Offers a distraction-free writing mode like using a word processor
- Functionalities and formatting options like changing alignment, bold and italic text, various headers sizes, copy and paste, undo and search
- Offer different fonts, sizes, and colors
- Makes tables, lists, blockquotes
- Embed images, videos, or other media
- Add links to other internal or external pages
- Easily switch between HTML and WYSIWYG content viewers
Here are the best WYSIWYG web editors for macOS and Mac OS X
We think the current best free macOS/Mac OS X WYSIWYG HTML Editor is SeaMonkey, part of the lovely free and open source Mozilla Project.
First, it’s a completely free WYSIWYG editor and is part of a larger suite that includes its composer, an Internet browser, email & newsgroup client with an included web feed reader, HTML editor, IRC chat and web development tools.
What’s great about SeaMonkey is that you can test your site with ease. Plus, SeaMonkey offers FTP features too!
SeaMonkey Composer
- SeaMonkey is an Internet suite meaning that it consists of a web browser, an e-mail and news client program, and an HTML editor (SeaMonkey Composer).
- SeaMonkey is an Internet suite meaning that it consists of a web browser, an e-mail and news client program, and an HTML editor (SeaMonkey Composer).
Amaya
- Amaya is also a free and open source WYSIWYG (X)HTML editing tool. This tool also includes browsing abilities.It supports CSS, MathML, SVG, RDF, and XPointer.
- Amaya is also a free and open source WYSIWYG (X)HTML editing tool. This tool also includes browsing abilities.It supports CSS, MathML, SVG, RDF, and XPointer.
BlueGriffon
- BlueGriffon is a WYSIWYG content editor and it complies with the W3C’s web standards and it is free to download.
- BlueGriffon is a WYSIWYG content editor and it complies with the W3C’s web standards and it is free to download.
Like KompoZer? Sorry, it’s NO LONGER AVAILABLE
KompoZer was an open source WYSIWYG web/HTML editor. KompoZer also allowed direct code editing and a split code-graphic view.
Too bad it’s no longer an option!
Wondering what happened, check out this article from Drop in Blog.
Love text editors?
There are a lot of HTML and text editors out there, especially for folks looking to code HTML directly, without WYSIWYG.
For our money, we love Sublime Text or TextWrangler for Macs and NotePad for Windows
What’s your WYSIWYG Editor of choice?
Like something else that we haven’t mentioned? Quite a few readers recommend Atom (made by the folks Github) and Google Web Designer. Both are free as well.
Share with us your experiences and thoughts in the comments.