by Edward Prislac

Created on: February 23, 2007   Last Updated: May 12, 2007

This is a subject near and dear to my heart. Of course, as many a software pirate will tell you, "All software is free if you know where to look", there are those of us that would rather avoid getting into trouble with the software companies, and wish to seek out legal ways to be stingy yet productive.

After having tried a slew of lesser products in the past, I was nearly at the end of my rope in this search. My benchmarks for the free products were always the commercial industry leaders like Adobe GoLive and Macromedia DreamWeaver (sorry Microsoft, but FrontPage just doesn't measure up in comparison). Dreamweaver has always, for me been the high watermark in terms of features and ease of use, so finding a freeware product that could compete on that level was my goal. I was beginning to think it was a wild goose chase until I found N|vu. N|vu, which is, in it's current for now called KompoZer is such a good piece of freeware, I can't even begin to mention everything all in one post. I will try, however. KompoZer is an open-source WYSIWYG HTML/CSS editor, based on the Gecko layout engine used by Mozilla (the makers of Firefox), available for EVERY major OS. That's right, EVERY major OS. Whether you are a Windows, Mac, or Unix/Linux user, binaries and source code are readily available for your downloading enjoyment. There are no ads, pop-ups, or nag-screens, as might be found in lesser products. N|vu/KompZer's ftp features rival Dreamweaver in terms of functionality and usability, and resemble them enough so that anyone who has used the Macromedia product should feel right at home uploading from N|vu/KompoZer. in fact, many of the features Dreamweaver are replicated in KompoZer, from customizable toolbars, site management and automated spell/tag checking to built-in CSS control and a tabbed interface (with each tab featuring it's own seperate undo/redo stack). KompoZer's handling of CSS is, in fact, much more accurate than Dreamweaver's has ever been, allowing the developer tighter control over site design by enabling a better idea of what the finished product will actually look like. Other handy features include accessibility and mark-up validators, and an XUL-based UI for form editing.

Alas, it is not all wine and roses. As is the case with most open-source software, support for N|vu/KompoZer is limited to forums and WIKI documentation, and the extensibility provided by Dreamweaver in the form of Macromedia Exchange is also sorely missed. Novice Linux users may also find that N|vu/KompoZer is no exception when it comes to the pains of updating to a new version, like most linux software, you'll need to check your dependencies to make sure everything will go smoothly. But hey, you get a lot more than what you pay for with this software, so what is there to camplain about? As the Blues Brothers once sang, "Whadda you want for nothin'? A Rubber Biscuit?"

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