Ongoing growth in the availability of strong open source
applications encourage keeping an eye out for Open Source
alternatives to commercial applications. With the release of
Nvu there is a potential alternative to FrontPage, GoLive and
Dreamweaver as a graphical web editor.
This review is written for a non-professional web developer. A
non-professional web developer is expected to have a mandate to
create the web-site, comfort with 'publishing and design'
concepts, and a light understanding of HTML and CSS editing. This
developer relies on the graphical tool to guide the site
creation, and perform the heavy lifting in terms of HTML coding.
Microsoft FrontPage, Adobe GoLive and Dreamweaver provide the
comparison. Nvu 1 (20050620), Windows version was used in this
review.
Review Summary
Solid table-based web-site editor. A good choice for non-
professional web-site developer following a table-based layout
for sites with limited complexity. For basic web-page creation
Nvu has it all there. Highly accessible standard features, clean
interface and a solid community to provide assistance..
Nvu has significant weaknesses supporting more complex web-sites
and current web-site practices, including CSS and DIV-based
formatting. In this category, Nvu is in a difficult position, it
does not provide enough site-management support to those who need
it, and shortcoming will frustrate more advanced users. A number
of bugs that limit usability of the product. As a final note:
Nvu's included CSS editor should not be used.
Expected Features at a Glance
* Table Support
Very Strong
* Image Placement
Strong. Image Placement dialog assists including the
attributes often forgotten.
vForm Support
Good. Very accessible form support through toolbar and
configuration dialog.
* Site Management
Limited. No site view or link-state warnings. Options to
save images will save images to page location not a /media
or /graphics folder.
* Template Management
Limited. No site management. Saving a template-based page
in a sub-folder breaks the links in the template.
* View/Edit HTML
Limited. Auto-formatting doesn't. In ability to save or
tab between pages in source-mode annoying.
* CSS Editor
Abomination. Do not use the CSS editor.
* DIV-based layout
No. Will show a layout created in source mode, but has
no ability to create it.
* Graphical Head Tag Editor
No. Glaring omission.
* Online Help
Mixed. Not all menu items can be found in the help.
Separately downloadable tutorial is quite good.
Overview
Nvu is designed to lay-up basic table-based web-sites. For this
function it works quite well. Like a word processor standard
toolbars assist you to write text, format it, insert graphics and
manage the structure through tables.
The toolbar, the menus or keyboard shortcuts provide the standard
functions needed to create a page, such as the insertion of
links, images, tables and forms. It is easy to step into your
first page with Nvu. Tabs across the bottom allow you to switch
between Normal mode, HTML Tags, HTML source and Preview. Buttons
across the top provide the standard tools a non-professional
developer will be reaching for - Anchor, Link, Image, Table, Form
& Spell.
For basic web-page creation Nvu has it all there. If you are
building a simple web-site it is an excellent choice. When you
want to go beyond basic web-page creation to web-site development
Nvu starts to show its limitations.
Strengths Clean Interface
Nvu has a very clean interface. The tools likely used are
presented front & center on the tool-bar. Selecting Image, Table,
or Form icons from the tool-bar presents a dialog that supports
complete editing of the item and attributes. Attributes placed as
CSS styles. 'Tool-tips' even display when a tool is not
available.
Table Management
Table management is a strength of Nvu. Standard table functions
are easy - Creating, resizing, adding rows and columns is easy.
Once you realize the triangles will add rows and columns, the
circle-x is for deleting and there are no 'handles for a cell
managing tables is easy. Resizing is managed by dragging the
edges inwards or outwards. A double-click on a table brings up
its properties (however, if your mouse is on text in a table the
same double-click brings up properties about the text).
This brings us to one of the flaws in Nvu, inconstancy in the
interface. If a table cell is empty, you can move from one cell
to the next, or add rows just by pressing the 'Tab key'. With
text in the cell pressing the 'Tab key' adds a non-breaking
space.
Image Placement
Image placement is another Nvu strength. Selection of the Image
tool opens a simple properties page that provides for the
pertinent questions. Always available is an advanced edit button.
Dragging the image moves it in the page tied to the text.
Working with images highlights two weaknesses of Nvu, site
management and going beyond the basics. Nvu has no concept of a
site, where pages may be grouped in a directory, where graphics
and scripts are collected in a single location. If the preference
'save images and associated files' is selected images and
associates files are copied to the current directory the page is
in, even if they were selected from a /graphics directory. The
second limitation is going beyond the basics - there appears to
be no facility for creating an image map.
Forms
Nvu's front-and-center support of forms greatly assists the non-
professional web developer. Many basic sites have contact and
information gathering forms. (As an aside if you have a contact
email that you want to hide from spam collectors use
Mindpalettes' simple email form NateMail.
Reasonably Clean Code
All graphical web-editors tend to write unnecessary code. Nvu
does a pretty good job. Behind Dreamweaver, but far ahead of the
unnecessary junk included with FrontPage.
Online Community
Nvu has an active helpful online community. We encourage Nvu
users to participate in the on-line community. Read the help and
examples, answer the questions within your knowledge, and help
the next person along. A functioning community supporting an open
source project is a critical test of open source software. Nvu,
passes this test with flying colours.
Open Source Heritage
Nvu is built upon the Mozilla Composer codebase. The project is
sponsored by Linspire Inc. Nvu is licensed under the Mozilla
Public License 1.1.
Weaknesses
The moment you go beyond the basics, or move beyond table-based
layout to follow current web site development practices Nvu's
weaknesses start showing. Any current 'How-to book' will guide a
web-site developer towards using CSS and DIV controls. Once you
start moving beyond the basics site management, HEAD tag editing,
and HTML editing become increasingly important. In all these
areas Nvu struggles, significantly limiting its appeal.
Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) Support
Nvu's CSS support is extremely limited. This is unfortunate for a
product reaching the market in the spring of 2005. Most non-
professional web-developers have other design responsibility and
use styles to format text, whether in page-layout or even MS
Word. With reasonable browser support for CSS it is a natural to
use styles in web-site development.
The ability to apply a CSS style class to text through a simple
menu is appreciated. Again, once you start to go beyond the
basics Nvu stops supporting you.
A feature of CSS is the ability to have a common style-sheet that
controls the entire site. With Nvu, a page created from a
template into a directory not only unhooked the page from the
site CSS, but saved a copy of the CSS in the subdirectory.
Unselecting the preference to 'save associated files' eliminated
this behaviour.
Nvu's single biggest weakness is its CSS editor. Nvu's CSS editor
can only be called a disaster. Moving from one attribute
automatically saves changes. Further, simply opening a CSS file
results in proprietary Mozilla CSS tags being applied. Any editor
that has no provision for not-saving should not be used. One that
silently applies proprietary tags, and automatically saves them,
shouldn't exist.
Recommendation: Nvu's CSS editor should not be used and the
product would be strengthened by its removal.
Advanced Layout Support (DIV)
Associated with Nvu's table-based focus and limited CSS support
is the lack of support to build a multi-column layout based upon
CSS and DIV using the Graphical interface. Multi-column layouts
are a standard used by many web-sites, and creation using CSS and
DIV a staple in 'How-to publications. An inability to create them
from the graphical interface is a significant barrier.
Site Management
As a web-site grows managing its components becomes important.
Nvu has limited support for managing templates, grouping pages
and graphics in directories. Other basic features of site
management include gathering images selected from elsewhere into
the site, identifying in-site broken links, and site wide
search/replace
If you have an existing structure, Nvu can accommodate it.
However any changes after the fact require each page to be re-
edited. As well, pages created from a template loose links when
the created page is saved into a different directory than the
template was created for.
HEAD Tag Editing
Nvu provides no graphical support for creating and editing of
Header elements, such as META tags for keywords or adding an
external CSS style-sheet. Any editing of tags in a page's header
requires HTML source editing. Header-tags are standard in non-
beginner web-sites.
HTML Source Editing
Nvu's HTML editor is weak. A standard features on most code
editors, 'pretty formatting', is simply unreliable. There is no
rhyme or reason to the line breaks, and manual coding doesn't
result in any display change. Switching from Normal mode to HTML
mode does not always result in the cursor being located in the
same place. This is a serious weakness for the non-professional.
Most non-professionals learn a bit of HTML coding, usually to
work around their graphical editor, but they rely on context
being maintained. To further our annoyance, when context is
maintained the cursor does not flash after switching mode.
When editing source the tab interface supporting multiple pages
vanishes, saving your work automatically reverts to 'normal
mode'.
Bugs
Nvu has a number of recurring bugs. Some are minor and
transitory, the list below are significant:
1. Spell Checker Vanishing - without warning the spell
checker is menu is greyed out.
Work-around: Use the toolbar spell checker icon.
2. Insert function vanish - without warning insert functions
like horizontal line and anchor from the Insert menu will
be unavailable.
Work-around: Close & restart Nvu (Note: Nvu is very quick
to launch. It can be quicker to close & restart Nvu than
to move around in GoLive or Dreamweaver).
3. Context Loss - when moving between multiple pages Nvu will
leave the context where you were instead of where you are.
There might even be a flashing cursor where you think you
are, but the cursor is really where you were. Common if
you are copying & pasting between pages.
Work-around: Save early & save often.
4. Copy & Paste - with multiple tabs open pasting can go into
the left-most tab even though the cursor is flashing in
current tab. Even if no recent edits have been done in
the left-most tab.
Work-around: Save early & save often.
Nvu Conclusion
Solid table-based web-site editor. It is a good choice for non-
professional web-site developer following a table-based layout
for sites with limited complexity. For basic web-page creation
Nvu has it all. Standard features and functions are presented in
a clean, easy-to-use interface. As an Open Source product it is
free, and has a good on-line community that will help you through
difficulties. Nvu can be obtained, free of charge, from
http://www.nvu.com
If you work with more complex sites and are using CSS & DIV
formatting controls Nvu's weaknesses start to show. At this point
the non-professional web-site developer should consider GoLive
and Dreamweaver. Balance the high price-tags of these commercial
products with the productivity loss and limitations of Nvu. As a
last word of warning, Nvu's CSS editor should not be used.
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