1276 Instead of typing in HTML code and guessing what the published Web site may look like, WYSIWYG authoring programs allow users to constantly monitor how their site will look even before it is posted online while working in a friendly, visual environment much like a word processor, The programs automatically create HTML code in the background -- code that can also be easily previewed and directly edited.

The newest kid on the block in WYSIWYG HTML authoring programs is Nvu (pronounced "n-view" for a "new view") , a free, open source program spun out of the Mozilla (Netscape) Composer module, but with more features and a much slicker and more attractive user interface.

The Linspire Linux-based OS folks have picked up the ball that Mozilla/Netscape had more or less set aside, and broken out to run with it, a demonstration of one of the positive advantages of Open Source application development. Particular programs are not dependent on the continued interest and development effort of one proprietary source for their continued up-to-date availability.

Linspire provided more development resources and capital to the Composer-based product -- renamed Nvu -- to round out the Mozilla Internet suite. Along the way, Linspire partnered with several individuals and companies in the open source community, including Disruptive Innovations ( http://www.disruptive-innovations.com ) and Mozdev Group, Inc. ( http://www.mozdevgroup.com ). Daniel Glazman from Disruptive Innovations is the lead developer and maintainer for the Nvu project. Daniel has been the chief architect for Mozilla Composer and brings a tremendous amount of experience and expertise to the Nvu project.

What the project has produced is a much nicer, more powerful program that the old Composer module, and have made it available for OS X with an attractive Aqua interface,and for Windows, as well as the Linux version that was the primary objective of their project. The cross-platform Web editor works on numerous operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, Apple OSX, OS/2, FreeBSD, Linspire, and many other Linux-based systems.

Nvu's five main advantages are cited to be:
1) Emphasis on ease-of-use for the non-technical user
2) Robust WYSIWYG editing
3) Integrated web file management
4) Enhanced handling of forms, templates
5) Extensibility which allows advanced users to build their own extensions to Nvu with a just a dash of JavaScript. For instance, it will be very easy to create new "smart widgets" (i.e. a calendar, a date/time widget, a mail widget, etc.) and integrate them with one click into Nvu.

Nvu is based on Gecko, the layout engine inside Mozilla, Firefox, Camino, and Netscape; it's a super-fast, very reliable, standards conformant engine maintained on a daily basis by a wide community of developers. Its remarkable support of XML, CSS and JavaScript offers the best authoring platform on the market. Its architecture based on XUL makes it a highly extensible editing tool. Nvu is a standalone tool that runs independently of any other Gecko-based tool and does not contain the other applications from the Mozilla Application Suite .

The recently-released Nvu 1.0 has several new features and improvements, including better performance and stability, a default in-line spell checker, a new user guide, and an expanded help section.

In addition, Nvu 1.0 now complies with strict HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0 standards, producing even cleaner code than before and ensuring that Web sites developed with Nvu function across a wide number of browsers. Nvu also includes a cascading style sheet (CSS) editor, giving users a powerful tool for transforming and controlling the look and feel of their Web sites. CaScadeS, the well-known CSS editor add-on to Mozilla Composer, is integrated into Nvu. Create stylesheets easily and manage the styles attached to your documents. Full-powered by Gecko, of course, you can see your style settings applied '"live" to the document you're editing. Right-click on any element in the hierarchical toolbar at the bottom of the window and set directly its style properties.

With Nvu's FTP site manager, all the sites you have specified in your Publishing Settings become browseable in the Nvu window sidebar. You can get a tree view of a site, à la Explorer's folders pane, or a one-dir-only view, à la Explorer's directory view. It is also possible to filter files and show all files, or only HTML documents or image files. The browsing area also allows to show for each file its size and the date of last modification.

Nvu Tabs allow you to have one window only on your screen and edit several documents at once, each document having its own Undo/Redo stack.

I have been checking out NVU for the past week or so, and it is indeed a very nice piece of work that creates quality HTML. It even makes the picky little adjudicator face in iCab stay smiling. However, for my purposes NVU has a serious shortcoming. All of the HTML in documents saved from NVU runs together continuously with no white space between paragraph breaks and so forth. That is perfectly fine in terms of how the data displays on a browser page, but it's nightmarish for someone like me who frequently has cause to edit, had to, add to, or otherwise tweak HTML after it is originally produced.

One can of course still do that sort of thing by opening the document again in NVU, but I need data that can be edited easily and quickly as plain text, and for that purpose, HTML documents created by the several AppleScripts I have for Tex Edit Plus are much more satisfactory.

Here is a document saved from NVU:

And here is the same article converted to HTML using a Tex Edit Plus AppleScript:

They both look the same when opened in a browser, but it's obvious which one you would want to work with for editing purposes.

Nvu can instantly toggle between the WYSIWYG editing view and the HTML code view. but even there I had issues. He was necessary to expand the Nvu window cover most of the screen width in order to see entire lines without having to scroll sideways.

Another thing I found annoying is that Nvu does not support opening documents by dragging them to its Dock application icon.

But not everyone has the same needs and requirements as I do, and if you want a pure WYSIWYG HTML authoring experience, NVU is a very nice, user-friendly package, and the fact that it's free doesn't hurt a bit.

For more information, visit:
http://www.nvu.com/


Charles W. Moore

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