The most professional HTML-editing software on the Archimedes is HTMLEdit from R-Comp. When loaded up this looks superficially like Edit with an extended tool bar, but there's a lot more to it than that.
All the HTML tags correspond to buttons on the tool bar so if you want, say, to put some text into heading style 1 than you highlight the text, click on the 'headings' pop-up menu and choose 'heading 1'. The correct start and end tags are automatically inserted. If you don't have any text selected at the time, you get the <h1></h1> tag pair with the cursor positioned neatly between them ready for you to type a heading in.
HTMLEdit really comes into its own when editing images or links. Not only does the dialogue box allow you to set the relevant options really quickly - and reminds you to enter alternative text for an image - but HTMLEdit will automatically enter the name of a file dragged to one of the writable icons, intelligently converting slashes to fullstops in file names. The newly-released HTMLEdit 2 will even work out the relative pathname of the file, making page linking even more painless.
HTMLEdit will appeal greatly to HTML novices and is highly recommended to anyone who can't face inserting all the tags by hand. Its main drawback is that it is tied to the Edit interface - Zap and StrongEd fans will find it a step backwards. The original program can only open one file at once, so I'd certainly recommend going for HTMLEdit 2 where this problem has been fixed. It's very handy to be able to cut and paste chunks of HTML from one document to another. Couple this with the improved user interface of version 2, and I would really encourage you to spend the £15 extra on the newer version. It stands up well against much more expensive programs on other platforms.
Richard Goodwin has produced a free program which works along similar lines - HTMacroL. Again, you are presented with a tool bar and HTML tags are inserted when the buttons are clicked on, but it's a lot less sophisticated than HTMLEdit.
For one thing the start and end tags need to be entered separately; you can't just select a region of text and expect it to put the tags at either end. Also, the buttons generate pre-set text - no editable dialogue boxes here. On the other hand, because HTMacroL simply types text at the cursor, it works with whatever text editor you happen to like, or even Textease and other DTP packages.
Personally I don't like interrupting my typing to move the mouse, but if you're a tool bar fan then HTMacroL might be just what you need. After all, it's free.
If like me you're a Zap fan, then I can highly recommend ZapHTML, a free HTML mode for Zap written by Matthew Hambley. As well as making the tags a different colour so that you can easily see what is text and what is markup, any of the HTML tags can be generated by a pair of key-presses. The module currently has a few quirks and little documentation, but the odds are that if you're a Zap fan this isn't going to worry you.
ZapHTML will appeal to anyone who basically knows how to write HTML and just wants a quick way to enter the tags. If there's good free software around, why would I recommend spending money on an HTML editor? Well, not everyone will be happy with ZapHTML; it's a bit of a hacker's solution and you need to remember some awkward key combinations to make it work. If this doesn't appeal to you then spending money on HTMLEdit would be a better idea - it's a professional package with a good manual.
All three of these solutions will only generate raw HTML. In order to see it as a browser would display it, you have (surprisingly enough) to load it into a browser. This shouldn't be a problem, but if you're after a more WYSIWYG display and you have Impression then you might consider Ben Summers's HTMLTools for loading and saving HTML from Impression. It's important to get this in perspective because it won't give a fully WYSIWYG display, but you will get something much close to what you'll see in a browser. The tools are Shareware, so do register them if you use them.
ZapHTML is available with Zap by ftp from hensa, and HTMacroL is on Stuttgart. The Impression tools are also on hensa, and were on the first Acorn User CD-ROM. HTMLEdit costs £30 and HTMLEdit 2 costs £45 (no VAT) from R-Comp.
R-Comp