Hey everyone!

We’re putting some finishing touches on a very cool new release of our famous HTML Editor, and I have the honor of filling you in on what we’ve added and improved.

We had two goals in mind for the new build:

1. Help our users create organized Websites that validate perfectly.
2. Pump up the program so it performs better, faster, and more reliably.

Here are a few of the big improvements we made. Read them over and let us know what you think!

Better organization. We renamed the Projects tool the My Websites tool, but the change goes a lot deeper than that. Gone are the days of throwing a bunch of Webpages and files into a folder — now the emphasis is on creating a well-structured Website. The process is a bit too involved to talk about in detail here, but here's the gist of it: Whether you’re starting from scratch or working with existing files, the My Websites tool can help you keep your files organized. We made it easy to copy external files like images from anywhere on your hard drive to the same folder that contains your HTML pages, which helps prevent common errors like improperly referenced files. You can also add elements from your Website Project directly to your page and download documents from your server to your Website Project.

Switching to Website Projects is like switching to a new toothpaste — it takes a bit to get used to, but after awhile you wouldn't dream of using anything else. To help make the transition process smoother, we put together a document that gives step-by-step instructions for how to use the My Websites tool and put it right in the HTML Editor. Just go to My Websites > All Website Projects > What is a Website Project. Not only does it explain how Website Projects work, it actually is a Website Project, so you can poke around and explore the structure for yourself.

http://www.coffeecup.com/files/forums/html-editor-forum-post-whatisaproject.png

Enhanced server access. When you look at the left-hand side of the program, you’ll see a couple of new additions: the Local Disk and Server tabs. These tabs allow you to seamlessly switch between your computer and your server from within the HTML Editor. Here's why this is awesome: Before we added this tool, if you wanted to edit a file on your server, you'd have to download it first. With this new tool, we cut out that step, and now you can edit and save documents right on your server. You can also double-check the structure of your published Website and download files to your computer.

http://www.coffeecup.com/files/forums/html-editor-forum-post-projects2.png

Improved validation. Not only have we updated the markup to meet current standards and reworked the code snippets for enhanced browser compatibility, we also added a tool that allows you to validate your document directly with the W3C.

Speaking of downloading Webpages… The Open From Web[/b] function can now download and open CSS files associated with any Webpages you download. This means you’ll have access to the page design code in addition to the HTML structure. This rounds out the Open From Web function nicely — now you can make changes to all aspects of a Webpage's design and structure, regardless of whether you have the files saved on your computer.

http://www.coffeecup.com/files/forums/html-editor-forum-post-openfromweb.png

Updated user interface. We made some purdy aesthetic changes, as well as putting helpful tools at your fingertips, like a non-breaking space button and search bar in the Toolbar.

http://www.coffeecup.com/files/forums/html-editor-forum-post-search.png

Increased performance. With one tweak, the search and replace is way, way faster. We also made a few changes that help the program run better on Vista.

Get started quickly. The new Welcome to the Editor window and the advanced customization options we added to the Quick Start window — including DOCTYPE, and charsets — help you get set up faster.

http://www.coffeecup.com/files/forums/html-editor-forum-post-quickstart.png

We're especially proud of this change: A cool, all-new CSS menu designer! DHTML menus don’t always validate or work the way they should, so we put this classic tool out to pasture. In its place is a tool that lets you design lovely, functional CSS menus. Some software companies sell CSS menu designers for crazy amounts, but we included it for free in the HTML Editor.

http://www.coffeecup.com/files/forums/html-editor-forum-post-cssdesigner1.png

http://www.coffeecup.com/files/forums/html-editor-forum-post-cssdesigner3.png

http://www.coffeecup.com/files/forums/html-editor-forum-post-cssdesigner2.png

Themes window. Our designers have been hard at work crafting new Website themes for the HTML Editor and we think they did an amazing job! You can check all the themes out for yourself at our new Theme Shop very soon. And guess what? We are giving you five of these new, trendy, and inspiring themes free with the pre-release.

http://www.coffeecup.com/files/forums/html-editor-forum-post-themes.png

Additional preferences. The new version of the HTML Editor lets you customize the workspace, including the option to select which tabs are open by default.

http://www.coffeecup.com/files/forums/html-editor-forum-post-preferences.png

For those interested in some of the nitty-gritty changes we made, here are a few more details we tweaked:

• Resizable extended search results box
• New preferences options for Website projects
• Option to select default editing tab
• Ability to customize up to 8 browsers
• Ability to customize up to 8 applications
• New resource pane control allows for faster access and load times
• Better character support when switching from Visual Editor to Code Editor
• Corrected bugs and typos
• New help manual

So now that you have the skinny on the latest version of the Editor, you can download the prerelease version including 5 free shiny new themes here: http://upload.coffeecup.com/users/Scott/CoffeeHTML.exe Note: I recommend that you uninstall any previous versions of the HTML Editor before installing this version.

As always , if you run into any problems or have questions or comments, let us know

P.S. Now that you absolutely love what this new version can do, take a look at our snippets contest over here at http://www.coffeecup.com/forums/html-ed … -the-love/

Very sweet!!! I've been using the HTML Editor to do my schoolwork for college. This is looking better and better. Thanks so much for the sneak peak Scott.

Some great changes

Wow, looks great. I've been using one from another company. I'll have to check this one out.

I'm Beginning to drool....

Absolutely fantastic!!!

I noticed that when I hit the info button on the CSS menu builder portion, it took me the the DHTML builder article section of the CC website.

Thanks David for pointing that out.

can't seem to get the arrows and shadow to show up so far tested in IE7 and FF. Not sure why yet, but looking.

Sorry about that David. That feature was just commented out and I forgot to update the screen shot.