FIXIT MENU:
home about us contact us

WHAT'S AVAILABLE:
free scripts advanced scripts online tools great books web related tutorials contributed tutorials news archive geek toys!

SUPPORT:
help forum live chat help



Selected article

RSS feed   enewsbar Live Subscribe    Add to MyYahoo    Add to Google

Other HTMLfixIT articles:




by Franki

Finally, an article about something directly related to web design.

Open Source software is not just for Linux, there is a growing amount of multi-platform and Windows open source software showing up all over the net. (Even Microsoft is getting into the act as a PR campaign.)

Based on a very recent Mozilla platform, Nvu (pronounced N-View) has produced versions for Windows and Linux. The goal for this program is pretty simple, to make an open source program for web developers that has the best features of both Frontpage and Dreamweaver in a small and easy to use package.


I’ve had it installed on both my Linux and Windows boxes for a while now, and although I normally use a plain text editor for (x)HTML work, I’ve been very impressed with this program. It has features that many Frontpage users will find familiar like “Design View”, “Tag View”, “HTML Source” and “Preview” it also has a great colour chooser and table creator. Extra features include a built in code validation and clean-up tools, and some excellent CSS creation and editing tools as well.

What’s good? Well the code it creates is neat, very neat. It also avoids using depreciated tags and attributes and uses modern CSS where ever possible by default. It indents code very nicely and adds doctypes and relevant meta tags. It also has the usual “publish site” facilities, though I have never used them in any package, preferring to do the uploading manually) Another very handy extra that Nvu got from its Mozilla heritage is the tab system, you can have half a dozen pages open for work and each page has its own “undo/redo” stack. You can read more about Nvu features here.

What’s missing? Well from my testing so far, the most noticeable emission is the lack of syntax highlighting of HTML code, which is kind of odd since Mozilla itself supports syntax highlighting, so no doubt it will show up at some stage. (or it might already be there and I’ve not yet found where to turn it on.) I’ve also not seen anywhere that you can specify XHTML instead of HTML (But again, I might have just missed it. Not that it matters much since the code produced is so clean that swapping it to xHTML is a snap).

The other omission from what I can see, is any concessions to dynamically generated code like Perl/PHP and database integration, so its missing the high end stuff that Dreamweaver MX users will take for granted, but since it’s an sponsored (Lindows backs NVU) and active project, you can expect to see all manner of new features added as time goes on.

There are no free cross platform WYSIWYG HTML editors I have found, that can compete with the professionalism shown in this application, everything is where you expect it to be and the interface is clean, logical and uncluttered. I had no experience at all with this program when I started looking at it, and in fact I had not used anything but a text editor for my web work for a considerable time, and yet I was able to start work straight away and had knocked out a couple of nested table layout pages in less then 30 minutes.

Give it a go, you might be surprised and in any case, it costs you nothing so why not?

Regards

Franki








One Response to “Excellent free Frontpage/Dreamweaver contender.”

  1. laniorla Says:

    waiting for more good articles, I have read a lot about it and know how difficult it is. shell shockers







This site is totally free to use, you have absolutely no moral or legal obligations to help us continue.
There are however, some costs involved in running the site.

<random humor>
Plus we have nearly doubled in visitors in the past week, (We hope :-).
</random humor>

So if this site helped you find your way, perhaps you could consider contributing to our costs. Whatever amount you feel this site was worth to you would be just wonderful.
Use PayPal if you do decide to share and help us with the costs and in appreciation for our time and attention, or alternatively buy a book from our Bookstore..


  Time  in  Don's  part  of the world is:   March 18, 2024, 5:22 pm
  Time in Franki's part of the world is:   March 19, 2024, 6:22 am
  Don't worry neither one sleeps very long!



privacy policy :: support us :: home :: live chat help
contact us :: forum ::tutorials :: bookstore :: Site Map



      Valid XHTML 1.0!             powered by Apache Server
Pic 3 Pic 3

SEARCH:
USEFUL LINKS:

CIGHTML Firefox Thunderbird ClamWin WordPress SpyBot S&D TheGIMP Apache for Windows Registry Cleaners More cool stuff:

//-->

HTMLfixIT Site Stats.

Browser Statistics
Internet Explorer 85.88%
IE 717.63%
IE 62.3%
IE 50.00%
IE other8.6%
Moz Firefox 3.x3.03%
Moz Firefox 2.x0.18%
Moz Firefox 0.x/1.x26.65%
Netscape 8.x0.00%
NS 6+/Mozilla2.73%
Moz Seamonkey0.00%
K-meleon0.00%
Epiphany0.00%
Netscape 4.x0.00%
Opera 9.x0.00%
Opera 8.x0.00%
Opera 7.x0.42%
Opera 6.x0.00%
Opera other0.42%
Safari Mac/Intel5.21%
Safari Mac/PPC0.06%
Safari Windows25.2%
Google Chrome1.51%
Konqueror0.18%
Galeon0.00%
WebTV0.00%


Resolution Statistics
640 x 4800.25%
800 x 60026.14%
1024 x 76836.55%
1152 x 8640.25%
1280 x 80011.68%
1280 x 8540.00%
1280 x 102417.01%
1400 x 10500.00%
1600 x 12001.02%
1920 x 12007.11%
2560 x 10240.00%


OS Statistics
Windows 741.55%
Windows Vista2.4%
Windows 20033.91%
Windows XP20.86%
Windows 20000.36%
Windows NT40.05%
Windows 98/ME0.05%
Windows 950.00%
Linux/UNIX/BSD8.76%
Mac OSX8.03%
Mac Classic0.00%
Misc14.03%



New Windows Virus Alerts
also by sophos.

17 Apr 2011 Troj/Mdrop-DKE
17 Apr 2011 Troj/Sasfis-O
17 Apr 2011 Troj/Keygen-FU
17 Apr 2011 Troj/Zbot-AOY
17 Apr 2011 Troj/Zbot-AOW
17 Apr 2011 W32/Womble-E
17 Apr 2011 Troj/VB-FGD
17 Apr 2011 Troj/FakeAV-DFF
17 Apr 2011 Troj/SWFLdr-W
17 Apr 2011 W32/RorpiaMem-A

For details and removal instructions, click the virus in question.