Welcome to my KompoZer Page!

Before choosing KompoZer for this project, I reviewed 2Easy HTML Editor, open WYSIWYG, and SeaMonkey from Mozilla. I was fascinated by the shear number of free ware programs available. And here I thought we had to BUY such things! Heeding warnings from cautious friends, I was hesitant to download from unfamiliar sources. This page is being created using KompoZer 7.7, a free wysiwyg application based on NVU. Authors of KompoZer built this platform because of the slow release dates and bug fixes from NVU. I chose KompoZer because my extremely limited use of NVU left me a little frustrated. Will KompoZer be easier to use? Here I will demonstrate some of KompoZer's tools.

Table of Contents

Welcome to my KompoZer Page!

Text Formatting

Formatting text is simple using KompoZer's tool bars pictured here.
toolbars

Headings are easy with KompoZer's drop-down selection box. This is Heading 3, whereas the page title is Heading 1 and the title, "Text Formatting," is Heading 2.
Heading 4 is a bit smaller. You get the picture.
Fonts are changed just as they are in word processing documents. I highlight the text I want changed, click Format on the tool bar, and select from an extensive list of fonts. The font menu does lack, however, a preview feature. So unless you're familiar with a particular font, it's guess and check.

Other text editing features similar to those found in word processing programs include changing font size with the click of an icon, boding text, italics, and underline. Most of these tools also use the same keyboard commands as windows and Mac. Changing the text color is cumbersome as you can only change one segment at time. For example, to change the text color of a sentence containing a link, you must highlight the part prior to the link and change its color, then highlight the part after the link and change its color. Then, go back to the link if its color needs changing.

Tables

The tables in KompoZer act as they do in word processing applications, with a few quirks. For example, I can make a short table of the movies I've seen this summer.

Pirates of the Carribean: The World's End

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

The Simpson's Movie

Clicking off of the table doesn't always work. You have to move the cursor with the arrow keys--a bit cumbersome. Also, the program does some weird auto-adjust thing to the column widths as you're inputting data, which isn't the easiest thing to fix.

What I dislike about NVU that I hope KompoZer fixed

Knowing nothing about forms, I played around with the menu and options in NVU. However, it is not a true wysiwyg format, as what appears in the published page differed from the edit page display. So, let's see if KompoZer is any different.

The form above appears in my browser exactly as it does here. I still don't know how to use forms, but I'm working on it!

While creating a website for my 590 net project, I tried to create a multi-page website in NVU. Sorry folk, NVU limits documents to one page. Can multiple pages be created in KompoZer? No such luck. I'm stuck creating separate files and linking them.

Features I Like

Adding images and links is as easy as clickin on the icons on the toolbar. Here's the Bean at Millenium Park in Chicago, as photographed by me.
bean

Another great feature is Browse, which launches your browser to display the page in question. Using Browse, I can make sure WYSIWYG (happy to have learned that this stands for What You See is What You Get from Wikipedia!). There's also a CSS KaZcadeS icon for creating Cascading Style Sheets (thus the CSS). At this point, CSS is a bit over my head. Creating this page is quite a lesson in itself. But if you're more advanced and are familiar with CSS, I'll bet they will be easy to create by clicking css

The Table of Contects was very easy to create. When I clicked Insert, Table of Contents, the program recognized the header values (heading 1, 2, 3) I had used and numbered them. This is where things get a little sticky. The numbering wasn't correct. I tried to change the table to a bulleted list, but only part of it changed although I had highlighted the whole table. Changing the text color was frustrating. No matter how many times I changed the color, it sometimes reverted to the default. To update the table of contents, go back to the insert menu and choose table of contents, then update. An automatic update would be more user friendly.

Summary

Overall, I was pleased with KompoZers ease of use, but frustrated by tasks that should have been easy (such as changing text color piece-meal). If you are a novice at web design and want to create a simple webpage, KompoZer will work. The tools are very similar to those used in word processing applications, making the transition an easy one. However, I'm not convinced that this is the best you can do. If you are more knowledgeable or want a more complex site, you will want to seek a more advanced software application. You can download KompoZer for free at www.kompoZer.net. Check out my classmates' HTML editor reviews by clicking the links below.

Easy to do in KompoZer	Difficult or cumbersome to do in KompoZer
creating your page	changing text colors
editing text	editing the table of contents (both format and text color)
formating text using bold, underline, headings, italics, etc.	changing column widths by dragging
adding links	creating multiple pages for one site (can't do)
adding images
changing the background
creating tables

CTER 10 Web Editor Reviews

Nic DiFilippo	Marcy Flessner	Ron Folkens
Rachel Fruin	Melinda Hafernrichter	Ann Harty
Bob Hayes	Rebecca Hix	Jimmy Juliano
Mike Lund	Dave Melone	Brett Moore
Brookelyn Schuppel	Brian Zeglin	Trish Stilts