Saturday, April 26, 2008

KompoZer: The New Nvu


Where were you!!!?
I admit, I've been lazy for the last month or so and haven't been posting, however, I do have a legit reason...in fact, a list of legit reasons, and better yet, at least half of them are true ;). Anyways, if you're curious, I had mid-term testing, for those of you in California, you should be familiar with the STAR test.

The irony's just soooo thick!
Back on topic. What I love about KompoZer, is that it is the new version of Nvu, which stands for New View. How ironic. What basically happened was that Nvu is owned by Linspire Inc. and therefore due to copyright infringement, the company that released Nvu cannot update Nvu with a bug-fix and therefore released KompoZer, an 'unofficial bug-fix release'.

So, what is this...KompoZer?
Like KompoZer claims to work, with 'no knowledge of HTML', I don't intend to delve into the technicalities of KompoZer, using intimidation acronyms such as WYSIWYG. KompoZer is basically a web-authoring tool designed for people who aren't that adept and adjusted to the modern web, with new programming languages coming out everyday, like Java and Python, and even LOLCODE (believe it or not). With its easy-to-use interface that allows you to view a page in HTML, with HTML tags, live-preview and edit mode, KompoZer is the ultimate tool for beginning web developers. KompoZer allows you to create password forms and buttons with a single click, and in addition to its speedy response, KompoZer is small in size and completely stripped of unnecessary features. And if you are an old user of Nvu, you'll find that almost all the old bugs are now fixed. There are however two things in which I think I'll have to critique Kompozer on: (1) Its interface is great for beginning scripters, but its power just doesn't even come close to that of professional programs like Adobe's Dreamweaver, and (2) It doesn't allow you to sync it with a MySQL database, at least not easily, making managing accounts extremely difficult. Otherwise, I found it easy and fun to use!

Easy-to-use?
All you really need to know how to do with KompoZer is...type! After creating a page using a Microsoft Word-like interface, just click HTML and copy and paste the code into a blank web-page and 'ta-da!'. It is also fast to load and comes in a compact 7.6MB, making it ideal for storage on a portable flash-drive as I store my copy of KompoZer for on-the-go scripting.

KompoZer is just an amazing tool, and having used it for only 3 weeks, I can say that with full confidence; to download KompoZer for either Windows, MacOS or Linux, click here.

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