If you use Firefox you might take a look at the Xinha! Here extension. It uses the Xinha open source html editor..

The benefit of this is that your editor is a part of your browser now so is not dependent upon anything being delivered from the server. But there still has to be a text area field for it to work. But it does work very well. So all you have to do is create a simple program on the server to open a file and put the contents in a textarea and then you can edit it with Xinha. Then your program has to save.

If you are building your own application on the web server and need an html editor for your project then I've used several both that I've purchased and that are free. I think the last one I used was tinyMCE so you might check it.

You might look at fireFTP for Firefox - gives you a nice FTP client that you can use directly from your Firefox.

I personally use UltraEdit but I've been using it a long time.