Free HTML editors are often seen as the best kind of editor to get...

Free HTML editors offer flexibility and power without a large outlay of cash. But beware, if you're looking for more features and flexibility, there are many reasonably priced HTML editors available.

The list below are a mixture of FREE and commercial HTML editors.

nVu - nVu is a great WYSIWYG free html editor. I prefer text editors to WYSIWYG editors, but if you don't, then nVu is a great choice, especially considering that it's free. I love that it has a site manager to allow you to review the sites that you're building. It's surprising that this software is free. Feature highlights: XML support, advanced CSS support, full site management, built-in validator, and international support as well as WYSIWYG and colour coded XHTML editing

Amaya - Amaya is a free html editor but is a bit hard to use, but it's endorsed by the W3C, so you know that pages you build in it will be standards-based. It offers features like CSS editing and will edit XML really well. Feature highlights: XML support, scripting support, advanced CSS support, built-in validator, and international support as well as WYSIWYG and colour coded XHTML editing.

XML Spy Home - XML Spy is one of the premier XML editing software packages available. It provides all you need to edit and maintain large repositories of XML data. This is a great package to download if you need to do small amounts of XML editing or want to do it on a more casual basis. Feature highlights: XML support, scripting support, advanced CSS support, built-in validator, database support, and international support as well as colour coded XHTML editing.

Emacs - Like vi, Emacs is found on most Unix systems and Mac systems which makes it easy for you to edit a page even if you don't have your standard software. Emacs is a lot more complicated than vi and so offers more features, but I find it harder to use. Feature highlights: XML support, scripting support, advanced CSS support, and a built-in validator, as well as colour coded XHTML editing.

PHP Designer - PHP Designer is an interesting text editor for developers who work with PHP. It has built-in support for things like HTML, CSS, and PHP, but doesn't do tag completion or simple validation like you might expect in editors that are not free. Feature highlights: Database support, scripting, site management, and colour coded XHTML editing.

jEdit - jEdit is a text editor written in Java. It is primarily a text editor, but includes things like support for Unicode, colour coding, and allows for macros to add-in features. Feature highlights: XML support, scripting support, advanced CSS support, and international support as well as colour coded text XHTML editing.

1st Page - This text HTML editor is really nice for creating high-quality Web sites. It offers many of the features of high priced software without a licensing fee. There is no reason to stick with Notepad when you can use 1st Page. Feature highlights: Built-in validator, scripting support as well as colour coded XHTML editing.

HTMLGate Free - This is an interesting free software package. It appears to have WYSIWYG, but when I tried it out, I couldn't get it to work. There were also some frustrations like I couldn't get it to do things like make my text an h1, and all the tags were converted to upper case by default. Feature highlights: Built-in validator, scripting, and colour coded XHTML editing.

Crimson Editor - This is FREEWARE. Crimson is a very nice streamlined text editor. It offers a lot of features, including tabbed pages, syntax highlighting for various types of text files, line numbers, formatting options, and other coding extras. If you use a text editor for writing Web pages, I would switch to Crimson. Feature highlights: International support as well as colour coded XHTML editing.

Netscape Composer - Netscape Composer is a simple little Web page editor that comes included with Netscape. There isn't a lot to recommend it other than that it's free and is built-in to your Web browser. Feature highlights: WYSIWYG XHTML editing.

Vi (pronounced vee eye) - One of the best things about vi is that it is ubiquitous. If you build a Web page on Unix or Macintosh servers vi will be available for you to edit with. It can be hard to learn and doesn't offer a lot of extra features, but the fact that it's everywhere makes it very useful to know. Feature highlights: text editor, some versions have colour coding.

Arachnophilia - Arachnophilia is not free - it's "careware", but just because you don't have to pay cash for it doesn't mean it's not a good product. In fact, it's a great text HTML editor with a lot of functionality. The colour coding makes it easy to use. It may or may not work on Mac and Unix. Feature highlights: Colour coded XHTML editing.

Notepad - Microsoft Notepad is a text editor that comes with Windows. It doesn't offer a lot of features beyond coming with your operating system. However it is free and somewhat easy to use. Feature highlights: XHTML

NoteTab Light - NoteTab is a very powerful free text editor with good HTML support. It is one of the most popular HTML editors among About Guides. The macro libraries make common tasks simple. Feature highlights: text XHTML editing.

PageBreeze - This is very good totally FREE html editor and is the editor of my choice. There is no spyware, no adware or any advertising nasties. it had problems in earlier editions but the later edition, version 3.0f, seems to work just right now.

At the end of the day you have quite a few free HTML Editors here to choose from.