Bluefish

GNU/Linux Desktop Survival Guide
by Graham Williams

Bluefish

Editing HTML (and indeed any type of XML document) is supported through bluefish, a purpose built editor based on the Gnome edit toolkit. Bluefish is described as a programmer's HTML editor because it is not a graphical editor (in that you work directly with the mark-up, i.e., the actual HTML tags, rather than with how the final page might look, as with Netscape Compser). Features include a multiple file editor, multiple toolbars, custom menus, image and thumbnail dialogs, open from the Web, CSS dialogs, PHP, SSI and RXML support, HTML validation, and many wizards.

Figure 44.1 shows the basic interface editing a simple HTML document. Syntax highlighting has been turned on under the View-->Highlight syntax menu. You may also need to initialise a set of highlighting patterns with Options-->Lists-->Reset syntax highlighting. You can refresh the highlighting with View-->Refresh highlighting or else F5.

**Figure 44.1:** Bluefish HTML Editor with syntax highlighting enabled.

When you are ready to see what your marked up document will look like in a browser simply select View $\rightarrow$ Preview or use the F4 keyboard shortcut.