E-Musings Mon Immorata

Author!Author! Free web authoring suites give commercial software a run for its money Let's talk about authoring tools. Not the usual Dreamweaver, HomeSite+, FrontPage, Visual Studio or PHPEd. But about several free to use. And frequently updated and enhanced real free web site and web application (webapp) editors. I'm especially interested in a good, free editor for both personal and professional reasons. Personal because I think that my web site not only needs its content revamped. But also the overall presentation. Professional because in an age of search engine spammers and stuffers. Search engines are going back to standards. Because several of the more questionable SEO (search engine optimization) methods don't conform to W3C standards as defined for different document type definitions (DTD). For the relatively uninitiated, a DTD informs the browser (and by extension a search engine spider) what's the HTML programming standard used. Of course lots of web designers take a shortcut. And avoid defining the DTD. Or use one that's at odds with the actual code used. Yet while regardless of DTD inaccuracies, most page will render somewhat correctly (or at least as their developer intended) in browsers identical to the one the page designer previewed their work in. The page (or site) will probably fail almost all validation checks. If you are truly interested in what web standards are all about W3C.org is the place to start. A good web authoring software doesn't necessarily require a built-in preview. Although that is a plus. But today you definitely need some form of spell checker for the content. Plus a syntax checker for the code. And if the software also support contextual highlighting that's a great extra since you can see if you (accidentally) forgot to close a code string.

Right now I'm testing out two free tools: the open source Nvu. And the free HTML Gate. Nvu is the closest open-source rival to Dreamweaver and FrontPage. Built on the Mozilla 1.3 platform it uses the latter's Gecko rendering engine. And offers multiple views including designer, display tags, HTML and preview. I found the editor can destroy a page's layout when working with a template set developed in one of the commercial applications. The tweak is not to use the designer mode. Instead work at the HTML code level and you won't go wrong. Nvu also includes a color picker so you can easily select background colors and shades. The tabbed interface lets you work on multiple open documents; each with its own Undo/Redo history. Both spell-checker and CSS editor are integrated. As is a code cleaner. And an FTP manager that you use to setup site definitions. You can also Contribute-style work on a live site. There's a complete feature list. And I strongly recommend this tool for organization and individuals searching for a free yet powerful web authoring tool.

HTML Gate Free 2005 is exceedingly powerful with both WYSIWYG and code-level editing. But the interface leaves someone not wholly comfortable with HTML wondering where to begin. But this user interface issue is common to commercial software as well. For a web authoring standpoint, HTML Gate supports not just plain vanilla HTML and XHTML, but JavaScript, CSS and server-side scripting languages like PHP, ASP, JSP, SSI, WML 1.1, HDML 3.0, SMIL and WebTV! It also supports colored syntax marking. And includes both a tag inspector as well as an HTML compressor. HTML Tidy code validation is included. But there's no spell checker. And although there's an FTP Manager, using this is frustrating. Despite setting up my web site, I was unable to directly edit files. Each time I had to download the file to a local folder. Then open it in the main editing program. Nor was uploading the modified files easy. Again instead of a single-click driven update, I had to navigate through multiple dialogs. However as I've used Nvu more than HTML Gate do forgive me any current biases against the latter. I plan to subject HTML Gate to a more thorough workout to better understand why simple stuff seems so hard to achieve. If you've missed out (so far) on the great GMail offers, your next super mail account may be with Hriders.com. I first learnt about this web site from reader Jitender L, but didn't rate the service very highly because the sign-up process was very difficult. The site appears to have improved registration. Each account offers up to 1 Terabyte of email storage with 500 MB attachments. However there's still a catch: you have to join Hriders and subscribe (free) to their beliefs to activate your account. Don't say you haven't been warned. In other software news, Crap Cleaner (CCleaner) has been updated to v1.16.082. And now includes new Language versions, improved cookie cleaning, Opera detection, and updated file cleaning for Ad-Aware and WinRAR. Plus an improved uninstaller. Maxthon too has been updated to v1.1.090. If you attempted to download the update but your browser seemed to do nothing, the developers tell me their servers were overloaded with user requests. They've added a new server. But it may be faster to just download a fresh copy. New in this version is Search and HighLight in the browser context menu. The latter also supports the defined skin view. There's a new Google-style search bar but it insists on displaying links to separate searches for each individual keyword. And can be annoying. Plus several other tweaks, bug fixes and general improvements. That's it for this week. Stay safe until the next time. Click Here to Email Me