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> I wish there was still something good that just edited HTML and CSS locally and uploaded it.

What's wrong with launching a file watcher, opening the page in a browser, and editing away with any IDE of your choice?

That's writing HTML and CSS by hand, which is a pain.

Not everyone makes websites by hand. I know people that strictly use WYSIWYG editors to make static content. My friend uses this very archaic looking program to make his static content. They all look like design straight taken from geocities but it's what they use. I doubt they're a small co-hort.

They're probably larger in number than devs.

> Not everyone makes websites by hand.

OP literally said "I wish there was still something good that just edited HTML and CSS locally and uploaded it."

OP didn't say that he personally wanted to edit html and css, just something that did it for him :)

Sure, if only people who are programmers should have the right to express themselves online. The old school internet was completely destroyed when all wysiwyg tools where killed for no reason about 15 years ago. And now the same hackers who killed it and banished all normal people to social media are wondering "where did my good old internet go?".

How much good music would we have if you were forced to build a guitar in order to play it?

> The old school internet was completely destroyed when all wysiwyg tools where killed for no reason about 15 years ago.

The power of CSS has increased to the point that you don't really need Javascript for layout any more.[1] So WYSIWYG tools could work again. Probably faster.

[1] https://codingstella.com/15-advanced-web-development-techniq...

That suggests a new kind of WYSIWYG editor. It only does declarative HTML/CSS, no Javascript. Maybe it edits the DOM, not the source. When you save to a file, the HTML and CSS are generated. Maybe use Webkit to do the rendering.

If you want any Javascript, it has to be in a separate .js file, not mixed in with the document.

It looks like RapidWeaver still exists, though last I used it, it wasn’t a typical WYSIWYG editor like classic Dreamweaver. I found it has a higher learning curve than I’d like.

https://www.realmacsoftware.com/rapidweaver/

Most WYSIWYG editors have become text editors. Panic’s Coda has become Nova (a text editor). Even what I last saw of Dreamweaver, it was very code-forward.

I think the less technical users just use platforms. More technical users have historically turned up their noses as WYSIWYG editors, so it left a gap in the market.

Looking at AlternativeTo, there are some options out there.

https://alternativeto.net/software/adobe-dreamweaver/?featur...

- Rapidweaver. Nice, but MacOS only. Seems to be on the way out, too. It's called "Classic" now, and they want users to migrate to "Elements", which comes with "cloud storage".

- Silex. "It is designed for no-code developers with basic HTML/CSS knowledge". That's an oxymoron. Silex looks interesting, but the documentation is confusing. It used to be a desktop application.[1] That was discontinued in 2022. Now it seems to be more closely tied to Gitlab. Worth a look.

There are some commercial products, but most are cloud-dependent.

[1] https://github.com/silexlabs/silex-desktop/releases

> Just a decent WYSIWYG editor that can also manage uploads.

There is your problem.

Any such editor will invariably be heavily limited to what its developers envisioned the user’s use cases as being, and therefore WYSIWYG software is fiendishly complex as a result for even simple layouts and designs (as opposed to straight code editors).

Plus, web frameworks (HTML, CSS, JS, etc.) are still evolving on a yearly basis, requiring constant updates to any WYSIWYG that demand either a paid product or something that rides on the well-funded coattails of another service or product.

If you want a piece of software that lasts, learn how to code directly. If you can picture a soccer ball in your mind, you can (mostly) reliably envision what code will appear like on the screen before you even test it. It takes practice and experience, but building the WYSIWYG aspect into your own mind is eminently doable unless you have aphantasia.

And honestly, that’s how I view WYSIWYG editors: as accessibility tools for people whose legitimate disability is aphantasia.

For everyone else, WYSIWYG tools are a skills-nerfing crutch, as it isolates the user’s use of code from its direct consequences. By working directly with code, you are forced to envision the output of each element and its relationship to everything else on the page.

And honestly, the only major exception I can come up with is desktop publishing, where the underlying “code” is typically restricted to that master file on the designer’s computer, and has no effect beyond it… once the file is printed out (and the content leaves the designer’s control) everything is cemented ‘in stone’ and the underlying “code” no longer has any impact. Because the system is radically more constrained, with markup standards that are limited to the software and not world+dog, a WYSIWYG program makes sense. And yet… most are still paid products.

> WYSIWYG tools are a skills-nerfing crutch

Everyone should be writing their documents in LaTeX, not using Microsoft Office or Google Docs as a crutch to understanding formatting.

I assume you know how to drill out a cylinder then if you drive a car? Because people who don't know how to reassemble their engine shouldn't be allowed on the roads.

Use SeaMonkey Composer. It's still alive and I use it.

That's still alive! Sort of. Last updated in June 2025. I downloaded it, and created a page.

   <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">

Haven't seen that in a while.

The publish command supports FTP, but not, apparently SFTP.

WordPress isn't just for blogs and I think it might fit your use case for documenting a set of API endpoint. There is likely a free swagger plugin in WordPress that would help you, although I hadn't really looked.

Other than that, you could look at using a static site generator like MkDocs or Docusaurus. It'll generate a site of HTML pages, and you could either manually upload them to your host, or you could set up an automation that updates your host when you merge changes into git.

I think my response illustrates another problem with modern tools compared to the 90s - there isn't any single tool that edits HTML/CSS and upload them. You now have to glue together several tools.

SeaMonkey is still actively maintained, and still has Composer.