What's the best WYSIWYG (freeware) website editor?

L

Leesa_Tay

What would reccomend for a beginner who wants to create a webpage
without any HTML knowledge? Basically... looking for a FREEWARE
WYSIWYG editor that is easy to use and will produce decent results.

A friend of mine said to use Netscape COMPOSER. Is that any good or
are there better choices?

Thanks in advance

Leesa (I)
 
J

jedisb

You might also consider WebDwarf
(http://www.virtualmechanics.com/products/dwarf/) or DHE Web Editor
(http://www.hexagora.com/home.htm).

WebDwarf is the little brother to SiteSpinner, which is only $50. The
major limitation with WebDwarf is that it can only work with one page
at a time. You can still build a site built you'll have to do it one
page at a time.

DHE is nice because you can actually embed one DHE file into another.
So you can great a title file and drop that file into each page instead
of recreating it each time. You can create a menu and drop that into
each page, etc. It is sort of an "object oriented" approach to web
development. It has tabs for different pages as well. It spits out code
that's pretty clean as well.
 
M

Michael Laplante

What would reccomend for a beginner who wants to create a webpage
without any HTML knowledge? Basically... looking for a FREEWARE
WYSIWYG editor that is easy to use and will produce decent results.

A friend of mine said to use Netscape COMPOSER. Is that any good or
are there better choices?

Thanks in advance

Leesa (I)
Click to expand...

All four previous suggestions -- NVu, WebDwarf, DHE and WYSIWYG Site Web
Builder -- are good programs.

Some further observations:
WebDwarf, DHE and Web Builder produce proprietary files. When you are
finished designing you then "publish" the project and they then produce the
HTML output. They all use CSS coding which is a kind of specialized HTML
that uses something called stylesheets. Thus, if you want to "tweak" your
website, you'll have to go back to the original program and the proprietary
files, unless you're confident editing the HTML files themselves with a text
editor. These programs lend themselves more to producing sites which will
more or less be static.

However, they allow you to place text and images anywhere on the page and
you can even apply special effects of sorts.

NVu produces code directly. You can open your HTML files directly and edit
them. You can switch between graphical editing and text editing. It can
produce pages using CSS or just HTML. However, I have found it buggy at
times when attempting to use it in CSS mode to move layers about. I usually
have to resort to tables with it set up my page layout, something that
designers are trying to move away from. It's very similar to Netscape
Composer as it is an offshoot of the original code for Composer.

If I had to rate them from easiest to hardest:
1. Web Builder
2. WebDwarf
3. NVu
4. DHE

Keep this list in persepective though. The differences between all of them
are slight.

DHE gets the lowest rating simply because I found the interface less usable
that the others. However, I haven't tried DHE in sometime so it may be
better now. Another recommendation is Cascade DTP at:
http://www.price-media.demon.co.uk/cascade.html

Serif also gives away an older version of their package called Webplus at:
http://www.freeserifsoftware.com/software/WebPlus/default.asp

I don't recommend it, as I believe it is spyware that wants to phone home
whenever you use it and it nags you to upgrade. Someone else in the NG could
probably correct me on that.

M
 
J

jedisb

Serif recently changed their entire registration process. They still
require that you register and you will occasionally get speical offers
from them via email, but they no longer ask for your adress, phone,
etc. I've used a few of their apps and there is no "phone home" spyware
in it at all.
 
F

FTR

What would reccomend for a beginner who wants to create a webpage
without any HTML knowledge? Basically... looking for a FREEWARE
WYSIWYG editor that is easy to use and will produce decent results.

A friend of mine said to use Netscape COMPOSER. Is that any good or
are there better choices?

Thanks in advance

Leesa (I)
Click to expand...

Anyone knows Namu6 freeware ?
http://namu6.com/9290/

Frank
 
I

intelligent-life-form

if you want to learn in general, use NVU since it uses standard procedures.

If you just want to make a page.. there are those others, the other people
said.
 
M

Martin R. Howell

What would reccomend for a beginner who wants to create a webpage
without any HTML knowledge? Basically... looking for a FREEWARE
WYSIWYG editor that is easy to use and will produce decent results.
Click to expand...

I use Nvu. . .very easy to work with and lots of options. My site is
www.theastropost.com


--Martin
 
V

Vic Dura

I almost forgot about Amaya: http://www.w3.org/Amaya/

It's a WYSIWYG editor that is developed by W3C, the web standards
people.
Click to expand...

Welcome to Amaya
W3C's Editor/Browser

Amaya is a Web editor, i.e. a tool used to create and update documents
directly on the Web.

Does "..create and update documents directly on the Web.." mean that
when using Amaya, you edit the .html files on the server, rather than
editing them localy for later upload to the server?
 
C

Craig

Vic said:
Welcome to Amaya
W3C's Editor/Browser

Amaya is a Web editor, i.e. a tool used to create and update documents
directly on the Web.

Does "..create and update documents directly on the Web.." mean that
when using Amaya, you edit the .html files on the server, rather than
editing them localy for later upload to the server?
Click to expand...

I just typed in the url for my website's index.html. Amaya loaded it.
I did some edits and then clicked "save." Amaya tried to save it under
a different name. When I forced it to save with the same name as the
original file, Amaya came back with:

"Failed to save to URL. This method is not allowed Server reason:
Method not allowed."

So, it looks as if the proggy has the ability but the user needs the
rights to write directly to the webserver's directory. Maybe this is
more common in an intranet situation.

Btw, I was able to crash Amaya 9.2.2 w/o much trouble (on a Win2ksp4
platform).

fwiw,
Craig
 
M

Michael Laplante

jedisb said:
I almost forgot about Amaya: http://www.w3.org/Amaya/

It's a WYSIWYG editor that is developed by W3C, the web standards
people.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I tried this program too. I don't recommend it to anybody. Not user
friendly, and what you are able to (painfully) design on it, looks nothing
like what you get.

M
 
B

BruceM

And if you only want to do one or two pages & can't be bothered doing much
"homework", you can just use Microsoft Publisher if you have it. Once you
have the page looking good, just "save as" & change it to web page (html).
Will be a bit bloated but most WYSIWYG will be bloated anyway.
 
A

Azzman

And if you only want to do one or two pages & can't be bothered doing
much "homework", you can just use Microsoft Publisher if you have it.
Click to expand...

Which brings me to good old Frontpage Express, available here:

http://sssd.k12.ar.us/departments/dts/training/fp.htm

It's pretty old, but IMHO the best basic WYSIWYG editor out there to start
with.
If you want something decent, I recommend you learn some basic HTML and CSS
and use a notepad replacement (there are some good online tutorials), it's
not rocket-science and it will give you the feeling you have more control
over what you're creating. And in the end it will even save your time over
using a WYSIWYG-editor.
 
J

John Fitzsimons

Serif recently changed their entire registration process. They still
require that you register and you will occasionally get speical offers
from them via email, but they no longer ask for your adress, phone,
etc. I've used a few of their apps and there is no "phone home" spyware
in it at all.
Click to expand...

The problem with Serif however is that every time you change drive you
need to get new registration codes from them.

Regards, John.
--
****************************************************
,-._|\ (A.C.F FAQ) http://clients.net2000.com.au/~johnf/faq.html
/ Oz \ John Fitzsimons - Melbourne, Australia.
\_,--.x/ http://www.vicnet.net.au/~johnf/welcome.htm
v http://clients.net2000.com.au/~johnf/
 

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