Quick edit text on a page without opening the code

Small text changes don't have to mean hunting through HTML. In FTP by Zaweba you can double-click text in the Live Preview, type the new wording and press Enter, and the change is written into the file in the editor. Esc cancels if you change your mind.

It is the quickest route for typos, a changed opening time, a new line on a menu card or a sentence a client wants reworded. You see the words where a visitor sees them and change them there.

What it does, and what it won't touch

The edit goes into the editor, not straight to the server. The file is changed in its tab, unsaved, and the change can be undone like any other edit. You still save it yourself, and if Upload on Save is on for the site, that save sends it up.

It only works when the text in the source is plain text that reads exactly as it does on the page. A heading written as ordinary words between tags is fine. Text that comes out of PHP, or text with markup mixed into it such as a bold word or a link in the middle of a sentence, is different. In those cases the editor jumps to the code that made it instead, and nothing is changed. That is deliberate: rewriting generated text or text with tags inside it from the preview could quietly break the page, so FTP by Zaweba hands it back to you.

Changing the words

Open the page and turn on Live Preview with Ctrl+Shift+P. The preview sits beside the code, or in its own window if you pop it out onto a second monitor.

Find the text you want to change and double-click it. Type the new words. Press Enter to put them into the file, or Esc to leave things as they were.

Look at the editor. The change is there in the source, and HTML pages refresh in the preview a moment after you stop typing, so you can read the result in context. Save when you are happy.

Habits that keep pages tidy

Keep quick edits for words. If the job turns into restructuring a paragraph, adding a link or changing emphasis, click the text once instead. In Select mode, which is on by default, a single click selects the line of code that produced the element, so you land in the right place to do the bigger edit properly.

Read the whole line after editing. A changed phrase can make a sentence too long for a narrow column. The preview's device sizes help here: switch to phone (375) to see whether the new wording wraps awkwardly on a small screen.

Watch for PHP. On a PHP page, the text you see may come from a variable, an include or a database. When a double-click jumps to code instead of opening an edit, that is your clue that the words live somewhere else. Find in Files can then search the site for the text to see where it is set.

Why this is safer than editing on the server

Some hosting control panels let you change text in an editor on the live site, which feels quick until a slip goes straight out to visitors. Here the change is local and unsaved until you decide. FTP by Zaweba keeps a local version history before an editor save overwrites a file, and before a Put overwrites the server copy it warns you if someone else changed that copy since you last fetched it.

When to edit the code instead

You can of course make the same change in the code by hand, and for anything more than a few words that is the right choice. Ctrl+P opens a file by name, and Find in the editor will locate the exact phrase. The quick edit simply removes the searching for the many times a week when all you need is to change some words you can already see.