HTML editors are a funny breed, some are text, some are WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get). The difference? The text editors you have to learn HTML and type what you've learned into the editors. You have complete control how your page will look, assuming you LEARN HTML. With a WYSIWYG editor you do a lot of "drag" and "drop". WYSIWYG is very good if you don't want to learn HTML, but your pages are only going to be as good as the WYSIWYG editor allows. It's a toss up. You can get a WYSIWYG, see if it will do what you want, build the page and look at the "source" and see how the "editor" did it. You can learn that way.

  So flip a coin and see which you would prefer to use. You don't even have to download an editor. If you have Windows, you can use Notepad to write HTML. It looks very intimidating when you first open it and you are looking at a blank "sheet of paper". In the beginning, I would suggest downloading an editor, going through a couple of tutorials, and then experimenting. Learn how to do tables, and you'll be off and running.

  Just remember, you heard it from me, learning HTML is addictive. You'll be surfing the internet looking at pages, telling yourself  "I would have done that differently", and building pages just to do it better. I have one thing to say to you: Welcome to the Abyss.

This is the editor I use. It supports up to 6 browsers, supports CGI, frames, and JavaScript. You can customize toolbars for frequently used tags, it has a color picker, and you can right click to choose different options. This editor has a lot of features that I haven't gotten to yet, since I just started using this version. His latest version, 3.2, even has an ftp client to make it easier for uploading to the internet. You can download his (1.76 MB) version 3.2 Arachnophilia here.

Lorenz Graf's HTML Tool

Dialogs for most HTML tags, you can use either upper or lowercase tags, has assistants (wizards) for style sheets, tables, lists and URLs. You can download his (358kb) HTML Tool here.

HTML Constructor

Includes Netscape and HTML 3.2 extensions: layers, java applets, forms, tables and client-side image maps. Download (229kb) Constructor here.

HTML Buddy

Built in image browser, color picker, character map and project management. Includes help on HTML as well as an HTML reference. Comes with some free graphics to use on your page. Download (898kb) HTML Buddy here.

I was very fortunate that the first editor I downloaded was Arachnophilia. I have come to rely on it for everything I do; because of this, I have not played with any other editors. If you download any of these other editors, please drop me a line and let me know how you like 'em. I'll then put up some recomendations other than Arachnophilia.

Each of these editors to my knowledge are free. I didn't want to go out and spend any money and then find out I didn't enjoy building pages. If you do decide you enjoy HTML, please feel free to go out and spend money. Front Page was highly recomended to me.