Nvu 1.0 Released

An anonymous reader writes "Version 1.0 of Nvu has been released. Nvu is a standalone WYSIWYG HTML editor and a continuation of Mozilla Composer. As one would expect for a Mozilla-based product, it is fully Web standards-compliant and all the code will soon be available at mozilla.org. Nvu 1.0 can be downloaded for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. Further details are available at MozillaZine. Slashdot reported on the first beta of Nvu way back in February 2003."

Comments

Messy WYSIWYG

[niskel]

Personally, I have always found WYSIWYG editors to produce very messy code. It's refreshing to hear that Nvu actually supports standards, but like most other WYSIWYG editors, it's produced code looks a bit messy. I think I may just be a stickler for good looking code but maybe because it's hard to add PHP and other such code when it's hard to navigate the initial generated code. Vim is still my editor of choice :)

Re:Messy WYSIWYG

[Universal Nerd]

I agree about WYSIWYG making messy code, that's why I finish off my pages with a pass through TidyHTML.

It's a little more work but the results are very readable, not-messy HTML.

Re:Messy WYSIWYG

[Will2k_is_here]

Yeah, I usually use NVU to build a base page, but then I used jed to fix up the code so it works and looks perfectly.

Re:Messy WYSIWYG

[Universal Nerd]

Sorry 'bout that... the correct link is:
http://tidy.sourceforge.net/

Let me just add that TidyHTML reformats the code, strips out excessive tags, changes a few tags into CSS equivalents (if you allow it to do so), points out open tags and, what I like the most about it, it reindents the HTML to increase readibility.

Re:Messy WYSIWYG

[StrawberryFrog]

If both NVu and tidyHTML are open source, then can't they be integrated? e.g. automatically tidy the page before saving. The tidy project page even says "a library form of Tidy has been created to make it easier to incorporate Tidy into other software."

Source code highlighting

[Kick the Donkey]

about the only thing I find myself wanting in an html editor is source code highlighting. everything else is just fluff.

I almost left work early as a result of this.

[BandwidthHog]

I'm sitting here staring at the text on the download page, and I'd swear I'm seeing something not unlike JPEG artifacts around the bold text, except that I'm sure it's not a graphic. Eventually I realized there's a faint vertical band image behind some of the text, and that my vision wasn't going all screwy. If making users question their eyesight is one of the great new features they offer, then, uhh, yeah. That's not cool.

No such thing as WYSIWYG

[Anonymous Coward]

The design of a web page changes depending on all sorts of different circumstances.

• The size of the monitor
• The resolution of the display
• The font size of the user
• The size of the window
• Whether or not the user has a sidebar open
• What toolbars the user has installed
• Various other browser settings
• Platform/browser-specific issues (e.g. form control appearance)

The term "WYSIWYG" simply doesn't apply to the web. The web is a fluid medium and web pages change in appearance under varying circumstances without any change to the code. The term "WYSIWYG" applies to paper. The web is not paper.

Re:No such thing as WYSIWYG

[BandwidthHog]

Yeah, but there's an ActiveX control that can account for these things and once you do that, everything should look exactly like the mockup I did in Photoshop.

Re:No such thing as WYSIWYG

[alacqua]

WYSIWYG in this context means not looking at raw html. Even though "the web is a fluid medium and web pages change in appearance...", I still think seeing how a page renders on this machine, with this rendering engine, etc., and being able to directly edit the same view, is useful. "The web is not paper", yes, but in all cases the WYSIWYG view in Nvu is a lot closer to the way the page will actually appear than opening the html file in vi.

Useless...

[GypC]

... to me without vi keybindings.

PHP

[Beuno]

Now, if only Glazman would give up fighting against PHP and make is useable enough for us web developers. (You can't open PHP files in Linux unless you do it VIA FTP or you stand on your left foot while holding your nose)
Although for those who still only develope plain HTML it's a great app.

Re:PHP

[JamesTRexx]

And that's the people they're aiming for right now (despite the claim to rival Dreamweaver). I use it because I only need simple pages without any scripting behind it. I believe as soon as they've got the whole "plain" html and css done they'll extend nvu with support for scripting languages. After all, you don't want to start by trying to do everything at once.

WYSIWYG is misunderstood...

[Gopal.V]

What you see is what you get ...

But that does not apply to someone else with a different browser, different resolution and color depth.

What I want in an editor

[adamUndefined]

I use Dreamweaver at work and love it. But it's a bit too expensive for my personal use. I never touch the WYSIWYG view or any of the fancy "features." What I want in an editor is code highlighting, auto-indenting, auto-complete tags, tabbed file editing, and the lovely tree menu and ease of uploading that Dreamweaver has. If someone can point me to something along those lines I would appreciate it. I have done a bit of searching but didn't seem to find anything.