I’ve been a Dreamweaver user for a while now, but I thought it was about time to look at some of the free options available. I’d messed around with Nvu a bit a few years ago and thought it was impressive, so I was looking forward to some impressive free software in this area. I wasn’t disappointed.
- KompoZer
KompoZer is Nvu’s official bug-fix project (Nvu has been discontinued). It’s a complete solution, with a WYSIWYG editor, an integrated FTP client, an automated form creator, a CSS editor, and more. KompoZer an ideal tool for creating standards-compliant web designs. It’s also cross-platform, running on Windows, Linux, and Mac. - Bluefish
Bluefish is an overall editor for programmers and web designers alike that runs on Linux and other Unix platforms, though there’s an unofficial Windows port. It seems to be geared more toward programmers than designers, but with a pretty, streamlined interface and an impressive list of features this program could serve as a decent replacement for more expensive web development applications. It has a WYSIWYG editor, supports lots of different formats, and uses gnome-vfs for accessing remote files (this means FTP and a bunch of other protocols are supported). - Amaya
Amaya is a “complete web browsing and authoring environment.” It has full support for (X)HTML, MathML, SVG, and CSS files. Though it’s a very old program (it’s a continuation of one of the first HTML editors ever made), it’s constantly updated, and even used as a “test-bed” of sorts by the W3C for technologies that are not yet adopted by the major browsers. Like KompoZer, it’s cross-platform and runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac.
3 Comments
I really have to try Amaya soon.
For read/write reasons and for SVG capabilities.
bah, who needs anything more than syntax highlighting for html?
I kinda agree with you. Recently I’ve been using Topstyle for xhtml/css (commercial program… it has no WYSIWYG editor, but has excellent auto-completion and built-in validation/testing tools), but even back when I used Dreamweaver I never used the WYSIWYG feature — really, that’s why I decided to ditch it… I wasn’t getting my money’s worth because I ended up writing all the XHTML myself.
Of the programs I mentioned above, Bluefish seems like a great choice for someone who writes all his or her own markup without a fancy editor. It’s practically an html/php IDE anyway.