Nvu - Open Source WYSIWYG Editor

Nvu, an Open Source project from Lindows, is being billed as the complete Web authoring system for the desktop. Flavors are available for both Linux and Windows. The IDE sports a tabbed editing environment in which you can jump between WYSIWYG and Html modes easily.



This is truly the first free WYSIWYG editor that I have tried that can even begin to compare to the likes of DreamWeaver or FrontPage; although Nvu does have a long ways to go. Still it is a very simplistic and easy to use interface as evidenced by this screenshot. You will see the tabbed editing environment in that image which makes the screen less cluttered.



The FTP site manager in Nvu become browseable in a sidebar. You can get a tree view of a site, à la Explorer's folders pane, or a one-dir-only view, à 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.



What is impressive about Nvu are some of the other features it has. Building Forms is a snap and provides for easy property assignments to build perfect forms in the blink of an eye ... well maybe not that quick, but it is fast.



Nvu is based on Gecko, the layout engine inside Mozilla. Support of XML, CSS and JavaScript is also offered. Its architecture based on XUL makes it more extensible.