Another Online Site Building Tool

DoodleKit is another one of those online publishing tools that lets you create a Web site from your browser. What's interesting about this one is that it offers a suite of what I would call more advanced features that are database-driven, which means that it stores your information in a database, and lets you play around with different ways to present that information. Many features are free, however some of the heavy duty stuff require that you plunk down $15+ a month.

Webapp for Note-Taking

NoteSake is a Notepad-like text editor that you can use and save online and then later download it in .doc or .pdf format. NoteSake also allows you to share your notes with others, or create a collaborateive notepad that a group of people can all contribute to. (via LifeHacker)

Coda

Another inexpensive text-based Web page editor (for the Mac, anyway) is Coda. While Coda is only for people who are willing to write the code by hand -- instead of using a WYSIWYG editor like Dreamweaver -- I can't imagine a cleaner, simpler environment in which to do this. What's impressive about Coda is that it includes all of the tools you need in one window: file browser, the text editor, CSS editor, preview, ftp, and a complete set of reference materials.

Coda was awarded the 2007 Apple Design Award for "Best User Experience."

SEEdit

Mac users reading this blog who might be tempted to take my advice about editing their Web pages using a text editor (that must be a pretty small group) might want to take a lok at a $39 program called SEEdit. Despite its awful name, it's actually a pretty impressive program -- for advanced users it makes entering little bits of code very quick and easy. The program also includes Tidy Checker that will help you write standards-compliant code, a Quick CSS Tool for rapid CSS development, and Multi-language support. If none of those features sound familiar, then this is probably not the tool for you, but for people who like to write their own HTML, it's worth a look.

Especially worth looking at now, because last week the developers announced a Free SEEdit Education Project that includes a free copy of SEEdit Edu 1.0, (a special edition of SEEdit Maxi), available for free. This version is fully functional for education usage. The package also includes support for 3 months

The offer expires on November 30th, 2007.

Check Your Spelling When Filling out Web Forms

ieSpell is a free Internet Explorer browser extension that spell checks text input boxes on a webpage. It might be a handy tool for students -- or anyone, really -- who is entering text into a text box on a Web page and is not confident about their spelling. According to the developers, "[E]ven if your web application already includes spell checking functionality, you might still want to install this utility because it is definitely much faster than a server-side solution. Plus you get to store and use your personal word list across all your applications, instead of maintaining separate ones on each application."

Cheap Alternative to Dreamweaver

Nvu is a Web Authoring System for Linux, Windows or Mac users that is similar, according to the developers, to "rival programs like FrontPage and Dreamweaver."

Nvu (pronounced N-view, for a "new view") may be worth a look for classroom use as it is certainly a lot cheaper than Dreamweaver. Remember, however, that you can still edit all your Web pages in a text editor -- and that, crazy as it may sound, it might not be a bad idea to learn the basics of HTML even if you do use a product like Nvu.