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Feature: Web Development
First look: NVU RC 1.0
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CommentsAfter a painless install on my Ubuntu box, I found NVU's interface neat and well-organized. The main workspace includes the site manager (about which more in a moment), the main window, which comprises an untitled document by default, and three toolbars: Composition, Format, and Unnamed, which is essentially a second formatting toolbar, plus a menu bar. All are customizable. You can easily add or remove items from any of the toolbars. For instance, I turned the icons off in the Composition tool bar and chose the text-only option, because the artwork didn't fit with my GNOME color scheme. The menus are tidy and organized into easy to understand categories. NVU has a menu layout similar to Firefox's; this is no accident, as NVU was built on the same code base as Firefox.
I began working with NVU by creating a new document. The New Document dialog lets users choose one of three options: HTML, XHTML, or template. Opening an existing document from a local site or a Web server is equally easy.
The site manager's main function is to manage projects, either locally or remotely. At this point, however it can't accomplish this function flawlessly. When, for instance, I tried to create a local site, the Publish settings didn't provide me with a separate dialog; instead, I had to fill out the Publishing Server section and using the Select Directory button, which refers to a remote site. This is confusing. NVU should offer separate dialog boxes for connecting to local and remote sites. However, once I figured out the trick, I could create a local site. Eventually, all my files and directories showed up in the site manager, after which I could double-click on an HTML file in the site manager to open a file in a new tab. However, the site manager won't let users hide or select the sites they want to work on; instead, all sites appear in the site manager all the time. If you're working on many projects this could be annoying.
Tables, images, but no forms
Creating tables and inserting images are easy in NVU. The program has a handy interactive table creation tool that let you visualize the rows and the columns. To modify a table's attribute you can right-click on a table to bring up the Properties window. To insert images in a document, click on the Image button in the Composition toolbar. This opens the Image Properties window; from here, navigate to the image folder, fill in the alternate text box and NVU inserts the image in the document. However, in contrast to Macromedia Dreamweaver, a proprietary graphical Web design application for Windows and Mac OS X, NVU lacks the ability to create image placeholders, which can help a Web designer create page layouts or templates.
Unfortunately, I couldn't even start checking out the Form feature of NVU. After filling out the Form properties dialog a window popped up to tell me: "A script on this page is causing Mozilla to slow down. If it continues to run, your computer may become unresponsive." When I closed the window, the Form properties dialog became unresponsive preventing me to proceed creating a form object. I tried the process several times, unsuccessfully.
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Creating CSS and manual code
NVU's CSS editor is quite powerful. However, when I created a link to an external style sheet, NVU didn't update the site manager, even after clicking on the site manager's Refresh button. I had to restart the program to make the external style sheet appear in the site manager. Worse still, NVU didn't create a link in the HTML document's heading section; I had to do this manually. On a related note, NVU won't let you edit external style sheets without resorting to a separate text editor.
In previous beta releases, NVU had the nasty habit of reformatting hand-written code even when the "Retain original source formatting" box was checked. To see that this behavior was still persisted I inserted a JavaScript code in a document. After saving the page indeed the code remained the same; the bug was fixed in RC 1.0. However, I wasn't able to paste the JavaScript code from a text editor into NVU in source view mode. I tried the procedure several times; in each case, the paste button was grayed out, preventing me from pasting in the content. I had to type the entire code in manually.
Room for improvement
NVU offers a fair amount of functionality, but it lacks some useful features. For instance, there's no function that lets users insert media content, such as Flash, Shockwave, or video, into an HTML page. I also missed a property toolbar similar to the one Dreamweaver has, where you can edit the most important page attributes. I'd also like some kind of tool for creating rollover effects that could work on both graphics and text, similar to Dreamweaver's Navigation Bar tool, which lets designers import graphics, set their Up, Over, and Down states, and generates the corresponding JavaScript code for them.
Still, NVU is a promising open source project. It has a clean, effective interface, and its features are well thought-out. I expect the developers to build on more sophisticated tools in future releases. However, some of the existing components need more polish. But despite the glitches, NVU is already one of my favorite open source applications.
Comments
on First look: NVU RC 1.0Note: Comments are owned by the poster. We are not responsible for their content.
I want an editor that will give me nice, clean HTML, that doesn't try to format every single space and font type definition.
but I think I should respond.
NVU is one of the first open source products to actually succeed as a well known alternative.
I've tried using BlueFish, Mozilla Composer, and OpenOffice to create pages... and well..
http://saist.fateback.com/index2.html
That's the result of that.
using NVU however, by myself, I managed to create something that isn't so evil looking
http://www.mepisguides.com
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I think the Author is justified in saying that NVU is one of the first, if not "the first" HTML editor that the casual non-coder can pick up and use.
What I would like to see though, is a comparision to FrontPage, not Dreamweaver.
je.saist
If in fact, the author DID mean that it is the first WYSIWYG editor that can compete with the bigger windows ones, he is clearly bad at what he does.
although using it made you want to shoot yourself in the face.
but it did produce valid html, which is more than you can say about a lot of tools esp. in the windows world.
for details.
I'd like to see DENIM and NVU combine.
This program still has some growing pains to go through, but I feel it has a definite shot at being the best offering for Linux users that do web development (and who don't want to use Crossover Office or Wine).
It definitely has it's place in the Web Development world, and I look forward to it's further offerings, especially with my beloved Macromedia being bought by Adobe, who knows how much longer Dreamweaver will be around...
Needs integrated gftp, ability to synch all files.
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on May 07, 2005 03:34 PMAll the files that are images, links to pdf files, etc that are in the public.html folder that is local need to be moved to the web publish location with one click. Then, the whole site needs to be able to be brought back from the publish location with one click (no patents please)!
Editing on the fly is wonderful to do... but, all files need to move (without having to start gftp to get them there)! One of the easiest web publishers in the WYSIWYG world is found built into Microsoft Publisher. It uses the Front Page engine... so, you lock your site into having to use the same Microsoft creation tool due to Front Page Extensions that must be used and limit the ability to use anything else (the front page extensions I believe is another Microsoft non-open, lock-in type of move)! But, it Nvu would target the features of MS Publisher, would look to merge with Scribus, would look to merge friendly-like with Open Office (for easy and clean import of documets from and use of data base features)..., would be able to synch up and down from web publish location by having a robust built-in FTP client, then, it would be a killer app. For now, it has to go thru growing pains and does not land a 1.0 with the thunder of a FireFox.
this would make nvu a really nice tool for simple web pages.
Crappy screenshot
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on May 05, 2005 11:25 PMI mean, if you're *reviewing* a product, maybe you'd like to show the product actually *doing* something instead of sitting idle at the opening screen. I don't know, maybe show some of your HTML in there at least? Maybe a table? Basically, anything that would correspond to something you did in your "review"...
For a WYSIWYG editor, there's not a lot to see in your screenshot.
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