Monday, December 13, 2010

A free HTML editor: Kompozer Review

KompoZer
What is it?
“KompoZer is a complete web authoring system that combines web file management and easy-to-use What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG)
web page editing. KompoZer 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.”
  • KompoZer is Free. It is open-source.
  • It is something that you would download and run on your computer.
  • It can be used on Windows or Mac.
  • KompoZer may be a free alternative to using Adobe Dreamweaver.


Ease of use:  Although it was easy to download, it doesn’t show up as a program under the “start” button. Each time you want to open the program you would click the KompoZer.exe file. So as long as you keep track of where this folder is (that contains the .exe file) or if you make a shortcut to it, you are ok. (However, this might be problematic if you can’t install programs on your computer without the intervention of ITS)
Using the scale indicated below in the table, KompoZer ranks a 4 on general ease of use. If you simply are using the product to make clean edits to your course pages and that is it, then it is ranking a 5. There are some features that may seem a little complicated for a ‘non-tech’ person, such as using style sheets or the site manager but are not necessary to use if you are only making edits. In other words it has the capacity to design an entire website if you wanted to.

Please NOTE: It is still not advised that you copy and paste from Microsoft Word as this program will not clean the code for you.

Availability of tutorials/help/support:
There is a “Help” knowledgebase located inside the program. The knowledgebase includes a search feature, an index, a glossary and a beginner’s tutorial. There is also a web-based user-guide that was created by a user. http://www.charlescooke.me.uk/web/kz-ug-home.htm

Rating scale:  Excellent (5) Very good (4), Good (3), Fair (2), Poor (1)

Feature or task
Rating
Downloading the product and launching the program
3
General ease of use
4
Editing an existing page
5
Creating a new page
3
Creating a link to open in a new window
5
Ease of working with tables
4
Ease of working with ordered lists
4
Quality of tutorials or help
5




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