Agnivo Roy

Most people who still create or have designed some basic static web-pages sometime in their life should remember what FrontPage is. For those who are new to website and web-page designing, FrontPage is a HTML editing application from Microsoft that’s still in use for designing simple web-pages and websites. It’s extremely user friendly and helpful for beginners as well as pros, but it’s a commercial software package.

So, here comes Nvu : the free, open source and multi-platform alternative to Microsoft Frontpage and the likes. Nvu is a sponsored project of Linspire: bringing Desktop Linux to the masses. Nvu is open source and covered under the MPL/LGPL/GPL tri-license.

Nvu (pronounced N-view, for a “new view”) is a complete Web Authoring System that combines web file management and easy-to-use WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) web page editing that runs on many different operating systems. Nvu is designed to be extremely easy to use, making it ideal for non-technical computer users who want to create an attractive, professional-looking web site without needing to know HTML or web coding. Mozilla Composer was created to bring HTML editing capabilities to the Mozilla Internet Suite. Nvu takes that basic functionality to a new level by adding integrated web site management, better form and table support, better browser compatibility, etc.

Quite interestingly, Nvu supports themes, widgets and even .xpi extensions like Mozilla Firefox as it uses the Gecko engine!

Some Features of Nvu :

• WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editing of pages.
• Integrated file management via FTP.
• Reliable HTML code creation supported by major web browsers.
• Switch between WYSIWYG Editing Mode, HTML code and preview.
• Tabbed editing to make working on multiple pages a snap.
• Powerful support for forms, tables, and templates.
• The easiest-to-use, most powerful Web Authoring System available for Desktop Linux, Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh users.

[ Nvu Download and Official Website ]

I’ve been using Nvu for about 2 years now and am quite amazed what this open source free software can do for free. It was originally recommended to me by some Essex based web designer friends and I’d recommend everyone who needs basic to moderate level HTML editing solution to consider Nvu - the free alternative to FrontPage.