Nvu: a very good open-source WYSIWYG HTML page editor
Every so often I’m tempted to think that open source methods just won’t produce anything that’ll be properly user-friendly. But then you get a day like today, where you run across something like Nvu.
For someone like me who really hates editing HTML by hand (because I’m so bad at it), this is perfect: you type in the window of the page what you want, and it does the tedious stuff of changing the code.
It did take me a while to adjust my mindset; for 20 minutes or so I was still editing the HTML code by hand. Then I twigged it… and the revised home page for the Jojo Moyes website is the first result. (More reviews, more pictures.)
I haven’t tried it on PHP pages, or pages that access a database. But it’s darn good so far. Cross-platform too: Windows, Mac, Linux. That’s classy. And the price… free, you say?
(BTW any *proper* web designers who’d like to suggest how that website should look are welcome to apply here. We’re looking for someone who could give it the time and look it deserves.)
…hmm, having tried it on some PHP, it’s pretty horrible. My favourite there remains Hyperedit - see PHP code come alive as you type. Now that’s properly cool.
- These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
- Eudora to go open source, but not as it was (11 October 2006; score: 62.37%)
- Suggestions for CSS welcome (7 July 2004; score: 54.04%)
- Ooh, a navigation bar (27 September 2004; score: 53.17%)
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July 2nd, 2005 at 12:19 pm
You haven’t been looking hard enough for user friendly open source software. :P
I consider Camino (another mozilla based product) to be pretty user friendly, as well as… well, ok, so there is a darth of user friendly OS products…
finally, there is my own hobby project, currently titled spychat, with a primary aim of being user friendly.
i hope that i can inspire other OS products to put some user centric polish on their products too.
July 2nd, 2005 at 12:50 pm
As someone who regards code as random black marks that spoil an otherwise pristine white screen or page (seems my head just got plumbed that way), I’m always on the look out for anything that’s easy to use. Nvu comes close. I am however spoiled by Freeway Pro, as I get the freedom of using CSS layers/divs rather than tables, and get around the endless cell splitting madness required for any complex layout. Now, it might be me, but I couldn’t drag around independent floating div boxes without the whole layout going awry. I tried. And tried. At that point I trod on the spider and gave up.
I’m sure hard core coders will scream pink regicide at me for using an app that can’t do ’round-trip’ editing. That’s the point. I can’t do ’round trip editing’. Any editing - OK some very basic stuff. Just like I have no desire to learn to read music - I just play - I have no desire to learn to code. With Freeway I just design.
Right, now that’s out of the way, Nvu is pretty good. I guess it’s similar to Contribute in many ways in it’s feel, but is many times quicker - OK you’re not connecting to a server to pick up the files to edit but that’s probably a good thing anyway. It just needs the ability to freely move layers around without things going all David Ike on me. I’ll do the right thing and contact the developers. They may have the beginnings of something good here.
July 2nd, 2005 at 10:18 pm
Ah, Camino - it’s very good. The latest 0.9 release, though alpha, is pretty damn good. They’re aiming to make it interchangeable with Safari, and I think there’s a good chance they’ll win me over. (Safari 2 does some strange things when it’s been open a long time.) However the RSS icon in Safari is very tempting…
Ian, can’t agree about Contribute. I tried it - an experience that was some of the worst 10 minutes of my life. Awful, awful, awful software. Nvu has an integrated feel about it that I like, for vanilla HTML at least. I’m so rubbish at HTML that CSS layers and divs whizz right over my head.
July 4th, 2005 at 9:39 am
And I know it’s nit-picky, but “layers” referrs to an old Netscape 4-specific idea of how to do layouts on the web. CSS is what saved us from all that nonsense.