I don’t like front-end development but I enjoy writing things by hand rather than rely on one-off classes. Even in my blog, I tend to write a lot of HTML manually throughout the post, like creating a quick container to put two images side-by-side and center them, making blockquotes, the occasional nested list, in-line CSS, etc…

I’ve written some of it in VSCode and Joplin but I didn’t find it comfortable to write in either of them. What editor/extensions do you use to make dealing with HTML easier? I’m currently looking at Emmet, but it looks a bit intimidating to learn.

Edit: I ended up using Emmet for writing HTML in general along with Espanso for quickly inserting some templates I use. It’s working out pretty well!

  • NostraDavid@programming.dev
    12·
    24 days ago

    vscode with the built-in Emmet support.

    Emmet isn’t intimidating, unless you don’t know CSS, in which case it is extremely intimidating.

    a+b:
<a href=""></a><b></b>

a>b:
<a href=""><b></b></a>

a*2:
<a href=""></a><a href=""></a>

div.yeet:
<div class="yeet"></div>

A combination:
a>b+i*2.dollah:
<a href=""><b></b><i class="dollah"></i><i class="dollah"></i></a>

    That’s 99% of what you need to know to get started with Emmet.

    Anyway, I used to write 100% hand-written HTML, but switched to using Hugo because: Go’s built-in Templating language I knew from working with K8S, build-times are sub-second, and I can write a page in either Markdown or HTML, whichever I need (or even mix in some HTML in the Markdown!)

    Because of hugo I don’t need to mess around with repeating parts (like the nav menu).

    Only downsides:

    • it strips the comments, which I would’ve loved to leave in for people to read
    • the formatting is my favorite, so I format with prettier before committing

    I use git submodules to have the public/ folder be my Github Pages host repo, so I can just muck about locally, while I do a rebuild (which changes the files in the submodule). Only after a commit, I’ll effectively publish the website.

    Check out the website (mostly for the HTML - the articles are… meh): https://Thaumatorium.com (no trackers, so no Cookiewall nonsense either :D)

    • Eager Eagle@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      24 days ago

      This is the way. It reminds me of writing pug back when it was still called Jade. Probably the only time I enjoyed writing HTML or templating.

    • popcar2@programming.devOPEnglish
      1·
      23 days ago

      I appreciate the rundown! I started getting used to Emmet now, it’s certainly more friendly than it looks. I think this is what I was looking for.

      The short-hand for CSS in Emmet is also pretty neat, but It’ll take some time to get used to it. w75p m10 turns into width: 75%; margin:10px

      • spartanatreyu@programming.dev
        3·
        23 days ago

        I would advise against using pixels for margin/padding since it’ll have issues for users who have different zoom/text sizes than you do.

        Stick to rem for margin and padding.

        If you’re still early days with css, it’s worth pointing out that you should use a “css reset” file. It will solve problems for you that you don’t even know exist yet.

        • Zoop@beehaw.org
          3·
          23 days ago

          I’m not the person you were saying this to, but thank you for this! I’m a super-noob, sort of learning as I go by trying different things as I make my cat a webpage for shits and giggles, and you gave me some helpful stuff to try and look into. I appreciate it! :)

  • Antithetical@lemmy.deedium.nl
    131·
    24 days ago

    I bit the bullet and bought the Jetbrains Ultimate bundle because I develop in lots of different languages. It includes WebStorm and it is a joy to use. It helps where necessary and doesn’t get in my way…

  • MajorHavoc@programming.dev
    6·
    24 days ago

    I use Vim, but I don’t really write pure HTML. I write Markdown and convert it into HTML as needed.

    Markdown covers 95% of my HTML use cases, and I embed pure HTML into the Markdown for the last 5%.

    My Markdown tools (mostly command line utilities such as Pandoc) handle HTML inside Markdown quite nicely. A few need a special “hey, there’s HTML in here, pass it through unchanged” command line flag, if I recall correctly.

    In a few advanced cases I’ll use a variant of Jinja2 template syntax, and convert that into HTML - often with some converted Markdown mixed into it at build time.

  • juliebean@lemm.ee
    51·
    24 days ago

    usually, calibre’s ebook editor, but that’s cause most of my html writing and editing is to make epubs.

  • BehindTheBarrier@programming.dev
    4·
    24 days ago

    The following isn’t any professional advice or anything, I am writing HTML manually for my hobby blog code. I don’t have much experience with HTML outside occasionally reading it.

    I write a bit by hand, to layout my blog page, which is using HTMX. Generally I use RustRover since that actually gives details for attributes and such along with autocomplete. And apparently yesterday it asked if I wanted to enable HTMX support, which was even more intriguing. The main articles are however converted from markdown to HTML.

    I do want a better way to design with preview of my page but I think it’s a long shot to find something that does HTMX at the same time. Especially since that often means having segregated pieces of HTML mixed into one document at page loading.

  • Kissaki@programming.devEnglish
    4·
    24 days ago

    Depends on context, but

    • Notepad++
    • Visual Studio
    • Visual Studio Code
    • Double Commander “quick”-editor
    • vim
    • micro
    • Firefox dev tools (console, dom edit)

    When I write HTML, I don’t use IDE features but accept them in Visual Studio.

  • IllNess@infosec.pub
    2·
    24 days ago

    Thr nice thing about Emmet is you can use what you know and slowly add on to it. I don’t really use the CSS shortcuts. It’s really useful for writing HTML that requires a lot of elements.