Bill Stifler,   Chattanooga State Technical Community College

Arachnophilia is a customizable HTML and java-script editor. The
author, Paul Lutus of Port Hadlock, Washington, offers Arachnophilia 
as Careware. The user receives the program in exchange for "caring," 
everything from doing a good deed to refusing to whine--a worthwhile 
exchange for anyone.  For more information, see Lutus' website at 
http://www.arachnoid.com 

I have used Arachnophilia as my default editor for several years now. 
While Front Page and other programs offer WYSWIG HTML generation, I find 
that I still prefer working at the command line. Maybe it is because of my 
MSDOS command line roots, or maybe I just prefer the added flexibility that 
working at the command level gives. In the fall of 1997, I took an online 
course in web course development through Asynchronous Learning Networks (ALN), 
where I learned to use Front Page for the first time. While I like many of 
the features of Front Page 97, especially the support for CGI, I find that 
I still prefer Arachnophilia to the internal HTML editor provided
with Front Page. The Arachnophilia Help file includes a section on using
Arachnophilia with Front Page. I also use Arachnophilia to 
"clean-up" documents that I have fast-formatted with my word-processor 
(I use WordPerfect 8.0). 

One of the nicest things about Arachnophilia for me is the ability 
to create personalized toolbars that can paste in often-used commands or 
sequences of text.  Users can create Arachnophilia toolbars using 
the toolbar editor available from the Tools option on the menu bar. I have 
created toolbar buttons for mailto links as well as for pasting complicated 
chunks of code. Another useful feature for me is the ability to make global 
changes to all open documents. If I make a major change to my directory 
structure, I can open all my files, then search for the old directory entry
and replace it with the new in all the open files. Other nice features 
include automatic conversion of RTF documents to HTML format, the ability 
to configure up to 26 keyboard macros, power undo, tag coloring, and an 
option to beautify the script. 

For new users, Arachnophilia includes tutorials for creating that 
first web page while more experienced users can benefit from tutorials 
on java-script. 

If you are looking for a free HTML editor, I highly recommend Arachnophilia. 

Major features

      •Open unlimited numbers of documents at once (depending on 
        system resources) and search all of them to make a change. 
      •Drop RTF and Windows documents into Arachnophilia, and it 
        instantly converts them to HTML 
      •Create toolbars and buttons for common, repetitive tasks. 
      •Preview documents using the internal browser and up to six 
        external browsers. 
      •Transfer files to a website using the built-in FTP. 
      •Create file templates. 
      •Review tutorials for HTML and java-script. 
      •Analyze links using the built-in site analyzer. 
      •Automatically copy resources used (such as graphic files) 
        to the same directory where files are stored. 

Screenshots

      •Arachnophilia Work Area 
      •Arachnophilia Internal Browser 
      •Arachnophilia Toolbar Editor 

Additional Uses

      •Use as a text editor 
      •Create a shortcut in the Send to folder and use in place 
        of Notepad 

Arachnophilia is available for download at http://www.arachnoid.com/ 

Reviews and additional download sites

      •ZDNet - 4 stars 
      •Tucows - 5 cows 
      •C-NET's Dowload.com