HTML Writer Review

How many times have you been away from the computer and received a call informing you a clients site is down? Ok, if you're not in the web design industry, it's pretty unlikely this has happened. If your job does involve web design or development, you may be familiar with this scenario.

It's happened to me on several occasions and most issues are usually with the server. A quick restart and we're good to go. Problem solved. Client happy. Sometimes though, the issue lies within the code, be it a script error or a problem within the HTML. If you're away from your computer you're pretty screwed (well, your client is) until you're back at the keyboard.

That was until Ron Wheland released the excellent HTML Writer, a productivity app aimed at web design and development geeks. HTML Writer allows you to create and edit text files within your iPhone.

Some of the key features I found useful included:

• Create and edit web files
• Find and replace functionality
• Jump to line functionality
• Toggle Word wrap on and off
• Download and save source code from any web page
• Add and edit attributes, tags and snippets of code
• Use folders to organise projects
• Preview local versions of webpages before uploading them
• Share files through emails
• Import photos from your iPhones photo library
• Use FTP to download and upload files

To get a full feature listing head over to the app in iTunes to find out more.

HTML Writer doesn't come close to using a desktop or laptop to create and update websites. But to think that's what it's aimed at is to miss the point. The apps intended for quick updates, prototyping a javascript function or web page layout while you're between computers, accessing the server to fix a file or maybe using the FTP feature to access some files for emailing onto a collegue.

If your websites are static HTML code the app would be really useful for editing content. The attributes, tags and snippets options allows for quick and easy editing on the fly.

HTML Writer is an excellent web development app with some really useful features. If you're into building websites and are a bit of a code monkey you'll love the access it allows you when you're on the move and don't have access to a computer.

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