I have switched to Ubuntu from Windows from last 6 months so was finding the alternative open-source software packages for Ubuntu which I can use for my development practice. When it came for finding the alternative for THE GREAT DREAMWEAVER, i got a simple, sleek yet powerful software: KompoZer! (Also available for windows, so MS lovers, don't get sad... :) )
Firstly, I thought I have to download the bulky software and may cost me 100s of MBs. But, when I went to Software Centre, it was just around 10 MB! Just imagine, the competitor for Dreamweaver weighing 370 MB of setup file is just 10 MB???
Well that makes KompoZer super light, fast and still, powerful.
I am not a PRO web designer, but I just want to quickly add my styles in the webpages, and I found really easy while making the CSS for the page. It was too easy. Atleast easier than that of Dreamweaver.
The basic misconception for Open-Source is that they are not user friendly at all, because they don't look good. But when I used Kompozer, I found Dreamweaver too complicated software, Open Source software being made by many developers, know how to make the things easy and what is needed instantly. They make such things handy and easy to use.
The only thing Open-Source software don't have is the Ultra fine GUI. Well, you can't expect a coder to make cool and sleek GUIs for you. ;)
Here are some of the features of KompoZer (Copied from their official site):
FTP SITE MANAGER
With KompoZer, all the sites you have specified in your Publishing Settings become browseable in a sidebar. You can get a tree view of a site, la Explorer's folders pane, or a one-dir-only view, la Explorer's directory view. It is also possible to filter files and show all files, or only HTML documents or image files. The browsing area also allows to show for each file its size and the date of last modification.
A NEW COLOR PICKER
KompoZer has a new extended colorpicker, more conformant to what most users are used to. Set a color from its red blue and green components, or its hue saturation and brightness. Or just use your mouse to pick up the color you want.
TABS!
One of Mozilla Firefox's killer features is now available in KompoZer! Have one window only on your screen and edit several documents at once, each document having its own Undo/Redo stack! Just glance at the tabs to know if a document needs to be saved or not!
CSS EDITOR
Create stylesheets easily and manage the styles attached to your documents. You can see your style settings applied '"live" to the document you're editing.
A DASH OF STYLE(S)
With KompoZer, right-click on any element in the hierarchical toolbar at the bottom of the window and set directly its style properties.
CUSTOMIZABLE TOOLBARS
Just customize your toolbar and show only the buttons you want/need.
FORMS
Take advantage from a XUL-based UI to edit all your forms, and edit all your form elements.
CLEANER MARKUP
KompoZer contains some machinery to get rid of most of those annoying <br>. Combined with the ability to call W3C's HTML validator from within KompoZer you'll make valid, clean documents.
XFN
When you create a new link to an external resource, or when you edit an existing link, you can now add XHTML Friends Network information to say that the owner of that resource is someone you know and trust.
VISIBLE MARKS
In a complex page layout, you often need to see visible carriage returns and block borders. KompoZer can now do that for you. And of course, everything is controlled by a CSS stylesheet so you can customize those marks and replace them by your own.
TABLE/CELL RESIZING RULERS
On the left and top side of the opened tab you will find the convenient table resizing rulers which will help you easily adjust the size of rows and columns in any table in the web page you design.
AUTOMATED SPELLCHECKER
The integrated in-line spellchecker will underline all misspelled words as you type to ensure correct spelling throughout the entire web page.
The con for the software? Well, every open-source software has it. (Even Premium softwares too E.g. Windows Vista!!! ;) ) Bugs and Error Handling!
Still, if you are looking to use some software that you can use commercially without worrying about piracy, Open-source has an answer for you!
Happy Coding!! :) :) :)
Yours, Akshit :)
No comments:
Post a Comment