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Lindows Announces Nvu - Frontpage For Linux?
CmdrStone writes "Michael Robertson, the Lindows founder, has announced in his 'Michael's Minute' newsletter that Lindows has started the creation of a Frontpage-type program for Linux, called Nvu." Nvu promises to be "...a complete Web Authoring System for Linux Desktop users to rival programs like FrontPage and Dreamweaver", is "100% open source", and will be free to download when it launches.
You wouldn't think the guy who was able to combine "The instability of Windows, with the complexity of Linux"(or was it the other way...) would be able to even have any ground on which to speak of Linux. Lindows has not been all it was once hyped up to be, and this guy isn't a Linux guru. Bah, he has no place to talk.
it will be more like dreamweaver, and less like frontpage. I can handle a tool that takes out a lot of the headaches from doing rollovers, adding scripting, and flash files. Dreamweaver was always great at that (I haven't messed with web design in a few years). But if anyone tries something as stupid as frontpage extensions, I hope the whole community laughs in thier face. From what I've seen from him, he is not stupid, just trying to make it easier for non-tech geeks to get away from windows, and this could be a good thing. I have had many people tell me one of the reasons for shying away from linux is (besides lack of cutting edge games) no easy wysiwyg html editors. Not everyone wants to lookn at the code. Granted, even when I used to use dreamweaver, the code always got cleaned up in homesite or notepad (thank god I use linux now) before it ever saw the net. This should work out to be a good move.
> People actually use those things?
> I thought every self-respecting geek just used text editors.
You just answered your own question. Nvu is for people, not geeks.
The unofficial
Same ol' from Robertson and co, take an existing open source project, change a few graphics, and call it a revolutionary new product which will change the world.
Guy's got balls, I'll give him that.
I congratulate the lindows team for launching this project.. clearly not aimed a linux geeks, but for the average lindows user. Those who use vi or emacs wont be using lindows anyway... thank you lindows for making linux more accessable to those who are fed up with windows
The thing is just a rerelease of mozilla composer man.
You can start using it way before 2004, go to mozilla.org and download it today!
is a Quickbooks replacement. Give me that and I could have every office in town running Linux. I mean, with it you can have a $25,000/year secretary do your accounting instead of a $60,000+ CPA (at least for small to mid-sized businesses). That's the killer app Linux is missing.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
atleast it will put out compliant HTML code. One more incentive to get people to switch.
Mainly due to the fact that IT IS Mozilla Composer.
Damn, you gotta give the Lindows marketing department credit though, it does make the company look all innovative or something...
well, ok, not innovate per se, but at least productive...
I know there are a lot of geeks out there who will blast this effort as unnecessary--they are the same people who believe the best HTML editor is really a text-editor with an HTML quick-reference sheet handy... These are some of the very same people who loathe the idea of ANYTHING that might pollute the open source world with Windows-like things--in short: anything that infringes on their idea of Unix-like purity. Sure, I too can edit HTML myself if I really wanted to.
However, I think this effort is a HUGE leap forward, not only because it is all open source, but because it is one more tool in the open source arsenal that can be used to fight back at the Microsoft camp.
The fact of the matter is, there are a LOT of people out there for whom FrontPage is absolutely indispensible. These are some of the same people who will be asking a very pointed and straightforward question about migrating to Linux: "Will Linux run something like Microsoft Office?" Just as we need an Office suite like OpenOffice or StarOffice, I think it is high time we had a complete website authoring tool. People from all walks of life, both those in the professional world as well as those doing it just as a hobby, could benefit.
Why do they(Nvu, Macromedia, etc.) insist on using FTP to update remote sites? SSH would be a lot more secure.
Sarcasm and self-importance aside, there is some validity to "if they need a gui, they shouldn't have a web site". The average Windows user has little to no need for web page design software. Having said that, it's good that Lindows is creating tools for your average Windows user. Making "idiot proof" apps is the best way to get Windows users to use Linux.
Jesus, there's less than a hundred posts and there are already people trying to act cool and knowledgeble by saying that they do all of their HTML coding in vi and Emacs. Good for you. No wonder your web pages look like shit. Have you take a look at www.gnu.org lately? Lots of great info, but it's uglier than sin. People who design great looking websites usually do a quick layout in Dreamweaver, and then finetune the HTML in vi, Emacs, BBEdit, etc. Best of both worlds.
Say what you want about the quality of the Lindows product -- these guys understand what it means to give back to the community. Good for them.
Finding God in a Dog
Wow. How do you get your head through doors?
Emacs (or vi, for the enlightened) is fine if you do little bitty websites. It's even fine if you want to php your website. But if you are only one of several people who provide content, a large number of whom are (*gasp*) writers or graphic designers by trade, and think that PHP is what ravers use to stay up all night long, Emacs and vi won't cut it. Now, this is a development. Not as big of a development as when it is actually ready, but still a development.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
Free to download, cool. That's nice.
But will it run on anything other than Lindows? Considering Lindows costs money, saying that Nvu is free to download and neglecting to mention that it only runs on Lindows wouldn't be something I'd put past Robertson.
It's like how MS offers IE 'free to download' (or used to) but it only runs on Windows - big deal, you have to buy Windows to get it.
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
- Lindows.com is *paying* a developer to continue working on a current OSS product, Mozilla, which in turn will add to their product
- nvu claims to be fully open source, which they seem to have every intention of following up on.
- Lindows.com is paying.
This is a case of lindows putting their money where their mouth is. They're contributing to open source, while also trying to differentiate themselves in the market. Let's give em a chance here.If you don't know HTML, then you don't deserve to have a website.
/.'ers are so intelligent, but so stupid when it comes to understanding that it takes all types of people to make a world. There are many times I've needed to research subjects and found useful information (which I cross checked with other sources, so I knew it was valid) on poorly designed sites by hobbists or authorities in a subject, but not expert web designers.
/. posts, one would think geeks really were stupid enough to believe that only they had any right to use computers or design web pages. If that were true, computers wouldn't be as popular, as easily available, and as inexpensive as they have become. Many of us who program or develop would NOT have the jobs we have and wouldn't be able to afford computers because they'd be only in the back rooms of the universities and large corporations that could afford them.
If you don't know how to do all your own repairs, you don't deserve to have a car.
If you can't install it yourself, you shouldn't have cable.
If you can't put it together yourself, you don't deserve to have a computer.
If you can't build it yourself, you don't deserve to have a house.
If you can't cook it yourself, you don't deserve a gourmet meal.
That's about how stupid that statement is. Not just this statement, but all the ones here where people say there's no need for any WYSIWYG editors or anything different than what any particular poster uses.
I'm constantly amazed that
Honestly, by reading
Maybe you are so f*cking brilliant you can design wonderful web pages without using WYSIWYG editors and that you can do everything you'd ever want in emacs. But there are many people who lead balanced lives that are very active and can't spend years at a computer being supergeek and doing nothing but programming obscure code in emacs. I think it's great that such people can put out good websites with WYSIWYG editors. The world is richer for their work.
I also have to add that often it's easy to recognize sites that were entirely coded in text editors. They look, well, geekish, without any sense of design.
But maybe that's because they were designed by someone who is so fluent in emacs, vi, and/or html that they can do everything in html without ever once seeing the design. As opposed to someone who has a sense of humanity and has done more with their life than spend it growing fat and greasy in front of a computer, coding and whacking off to porno pics of chicks they could never meet in real life because their great coding skills come at the expense of their poor social skills.
(Poor social skills as in not being smart enough to realize that while THEY may prefer text editors, that doesn't mean there isn't a good use for other types of editors -- and as in geeks that have to continually bash any new technology that makes it easier for people who have lives to do what geeks have spent sequestered in their basements learning to do.)
The Mozilla/Netscape Composer module is a solid tool for non-techies to create and maintain web pages. If Nvu keeps that going, while the Mozilla crew focus instead on the browser and mail client, that's a Good Thing.
...for BBEdit. Because It Doesn't Suck. Someone needs to build a workalike for BBEdit that runs on Linux, because Bluefish, Quanta and Screem all are wannabe HomeSite clones. I mean, HomeSite is nice, but BBEdit just...rocks, y'know?
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
How complex a website?
Maybe because I've got a full life and a lot more things to do with my time.
I can do straight HTML. But if I'm doing a big site, it is much more efficient to do it in WYSIWYG, get it done, and go on and have time with my friends.
But the point was not whether or not your nephew could do it (I'm assuming, since he is such a good example, that his sites include CSS and javascript controlled menus -- right?), but that there are many people who have good reasons for doing web sites but don't have time to learn HTML.
It seems to be the general geek opinion, though, that anything less than "what I use as a geek" is inferior and those using something else that is easier shouldn't be doing anything in computers.
This is a great improvement of free web authoring tools, but today most websites do not consist of static pages. This worries me as this tool doesn't seam to handle that.
To be a Frontpage/Dreamweaver killer it need to handle database driven websites in a simple fashion. It also need to handle serverside scripting like jsp/php.
Anyway it's a start.
God is REAL! Unless explicitly declared INTEGER
Consistent if you are only developing for Internet Explorer or Netscape/Mozilla exclusively. Once you want your page to look good on both browsers you need to have a browser 'discovery' query that then points to a particular set of CSS files...
I haven't had the time to finish one up, but I have been on again and mostly off again developing a web-site and while it works and looks nice in Explorer, the text is cut-off in Netscape/Mozilla, I have no idea what it would look like under opera and I know that it won't work nicely in Lynx or Links, since it uses DHTML for some limited 'pop' with some menus...
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
I think I've looked at Bluefish before.
:-)
There are several great editors out there and Bluefish certainly stands near the top but...
where is the site manager like you'd find in Dreamweaver or (shudder) Frontpage?
Sorry, I love Linux and all other FLOSS. I use OpenOffice.org wherever possible. I browse and do email with Mozilla... I advocate as much as possible but until there is a high quality web authoring tool which also has a site editor, the only way you'll get me to give up Dreamweaver is by prying it out of my cold dead hand.
But I have hope - the tide of Open Source is rising faster and faster!
obviously Dell and AOL/Time Warner need CPAs. Medium sized (100 or so employees) buisnesses don't. I know of several that are doing exactly what I'm talking about. Accounting is basically a repetitive task that's only difficult because of the sheer number of laws, rules and computations involved. Quickbooks automates all that, reducing acounting to data entry.
As for a secretary being terrified of Linux, what makes you think they're not terrified of Windows. I once had to fix a computer where they only thing wrong was the secretary clicking 'cancel' when I.E. asked them if they wanted to leave a secure web site (they're homepage was a secure site, they couldn't get to any other site because they'd click cancel every time the dialog popped up). Computers are just tools to most people. Very expensive tools they're afraid of breaking. Heck, if anything Linux could finally put a stop to this nonsensical fear:
Me: This is your new computer.
Secretary: It looks complicated...
Me: Don't worry, you can't break anything. It won't let you.
Once people get used to computers they can't break the fear will evaporate and they'll start reading dialog boxes instead of panicing and clicking 'cancel'.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Speaking as someone who never really learned a lot of HTML, yet who has built quite a few web sites using WYSIWYG tools (plus some editing of the generated code to clean it up or fix little things, a bit of "cut and paste" javascript, and so on) -- I have to say I always *liked* FrontPage.
Granted, the extensions are a big problem - but I think mostly because of their poor implementation, as opposed to in concept. (It seems to me that "WebDav" is trying to be a standardized version of the same basic idea, these days.)
The biggest reason I think FrontPage is so widely disliked is the tendency for people to use the built-in "themes", which were generally rather gaudy, and always immediately obvious when they're used. (By contrast, Adobe GoLive comes with 5 or 6 sample sites that people often build new pages from as templates, but they're more "professional" looking and tasteful - so the results are better.)
IMHO, there's really no reason, nowdays, why it shouldn't be pretty much "point and click" to add such common elements as a response form to email or even online checkout via PayPal, and even features like text inside graphical buttons should be generated "on the fly", if needed.
It amazes me that even today, some people have 4 or 5 programs they go between to get a basic site put together - and they *still* usually have to tie it all together with some handwritten HTML in a text editor. (Perhaps even more amazing, some of these same people will tell you it's somehow better and more efficient than having all of these features rolled up into a user-friendly tool. Go figure....)
For the mozilla folk to accept code into their tree, it has to use the standard mozilla tri-license.
Lindows could release their enhancements under the tri-license, but instead they have decided to only release them under the MPL, therefore blocking the mozilla crew from benefitting from the Lindows enhancements.
Yes, it's all legal. But it's a sub-optimal contribution from Lindows.com, when an optimal contribution would cost them zero extra.
Ciaran O'Riordan
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