Nvu Review
by Dave Hornford
Published on this site: August 19th, 2005 - See
more articles from this month
Ongoing growth in the availability of strong open source applications
encourage keeping an eye out for Open Source alternatives
to commercial applications. With the release of Nvu there
is a potential alternative to FrontPage, GoLive and Dreamweaver
as a graphical web editor.
This review is written for a non-professional web developer.
A non-professional web developer is expected to have a mandate
to create the web-site, comfort with 'publishing and design'
concepts, and a light understanding of HTML and CSS editing.
This developer relies on the graphical tool to guide the site
creation, and perform the heavy lifting in terms of HTML coding.
Microsoft FrontPage, Adobe GoLive and Dreamweaver provide
the comparison. Nvu 1 (20050620), Windows version was used
in this review.
Review Summary
Solid table-based web-site editor. A good choice for non-professional
web-site developer following a table-based layout for sites
with limited complexity. For basic web-page creation Nvu has
it all there. Highly accessible standard features, clean interface
and a solid community to provide assistance.
Nvu has significant weaknesses supporting more complex web-sites
and current web-site practices, including CSS and DIV-based
formatting. In this category, Nvu is in a difficult position,
it does not provide enough site-management support to those
who need it, and shortcoming will frustrate more advanced
users. A number of bugs that limit usability of the product.
As a final note: Nvu's included CSS editor should not be used.
Expected Features at a Glance
- Table Support Very Strong
- Image Placement Strong. Image Placement dialog assists
including the
attributes often forgotten. vForm Support Good. Very accessible
form support through toolbar and configuration dialog.
- Site Management Limited. No site view or link-state warnings.
Options to save images will save images to page location
not a /media or /graphics folder.
- Template Management Limited. No site management. Saving
a template-based page in a sub-folder breaks the links in
the template.
- View/Edit HTML Limited. Auto-formatting doesn't. In ability
to save or tab between pages in source-mode annoying.
- CSS Editor Abomination. Do not use the CSS editor.
- DIV-based layout No. Will show a layout created in source
mode, but has no ability to create it.
- Graphical Head Tag Editor No. Glaring omission.
- Online Help Mixed. Not all menu items can be found in
the help. Separately downloadable tutorial is quite good.
Overview
Nvu is designed to lay-up basic table-based web-sites. For
this function it works quite well. Like a word processor standard
toolbars assist you to write text, format it, insert graphics
and manage the structure through tables.
The toolbar, the menus or keyboard shortcuts provide the
standard functions needed to create a page, such as the insertion
of links, images, tables and forms. It is easy to step into
your first page with Nvu. Tabs across the bottom allow you
to switch between Normal mode, HTML Tags, HTML source and
Preview. Buttons across the top provide the standard tools
a non-professional developer will be reaching for - Anchor,
Link, Image, Table, Form & Spell.
For basic web-page creation Nvu has it all there. If you
are building a simple web-site it is an excellent choice.
When you want to go beyond basic web-page creation to web-site
development Nvu starts to show its limitations.
Strengths Clean Interface
Nvu has a very clean interface. The tools likely used are
presented front & center on the tool-bar. Selecting Image,
Table, or Form icons from the tool-bar presents a dialog that
supports complete editing of the item and attributes. Attributes
placed as CSS styles. 'Tool-tips' even display when a tool
is not available.
Table Management
Table management is a strength of Nvu. Standard table functions
are easy - Creating, resizing, adding rows and columns is
easy. Once you realize the triangles will add rows and columns,
the circle-x is for deleting and there are no 'handles for
a cell managing tables is easy. Resizing is managed by dragging
the edges inwards or outwards. A double-click on a table brings
up its properties (however, if your mouse is on text in a
table the same double-click brings up properties about the
text).
This brings us to one of the flaws in Nvu, inconstancy in
the interface. If a table cell is empty, you can move from
one cell to the next, or add rows just by pressing the 'Tab
key'. With text in the cell pressing the 'Tab key' adds a
non-breaking space.
Image Placement
Image placement is another Nvu strength. Selection of the
Image tool opens a simple properties page that provides for
the pertinent questions. Always available is an advanced edit
button. Dragging the image moves it in the page tied to the
text.
Working with images highlights two weaknesses of Nvu, site
management and going beyond the basics. Nvu has no concept
of a site, where pages may be grouped in a directory, where
graphics and scripts are collected in a single location. If
the preference 'save images and associated files' is selected
images and associates files are copied to the current directory
the page is in, even if they were selected from a /graphics
directory. The second limitation is going beyond the basics
- there appears to be no facility for creating an image map.
Forms
Nvu's front-and-center support of forms greatly assists the
non-professional web developer. Many basic sites have contact
and information gathering forms. (As an aside if you have
a contact email that you want to hide from spam collectors
use Mindpalettes' simple email form NateMail.
Reasonably Clean Code
All graphical web-editors tend to write unnecessary code.
Nvu does a pretty good job. Behind Dreamweaver, but far ahead
of the unnecessary junk included with FrontPage.
Online Community
Nvu has an active helpful online community. We encourage
Nvu users to participate in the on-line community. Read the
help and examples, answer the questions within your knowledge,
and help the next person along. A functioning community supporting
an open source project is a critical test of open source software.
Nvu, passes this test with flying colours.
Open Source Heritage
Nvu is built upon the Mozilla Composer codebase. The project
is sponsored by Linspire Inc. Nvu is licensed under the Mozilla
Public License 1.1.
Weaknesses
The moment you go beyond the basics, or move beyond table-based
layout to follow current web site development practices Nvu's
weaknesses start showing. Any current 'How-to book' will guide
a web-site developer towards using CSS and DIV controls. Once
you start moving beyond the basics site management, HEAD tag
editing, and HTML editing become increasingly important. In
all these areas Nvu struggles, significantly limiting its
appeal.
Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) Support
Nvu's CSS support is extremely limited. This is unfortunate
for a product reaching the market in the spring of 2005. Most
non-professional web-developers have other design responsibility
and use styles to format text, whether in page-layout or even
MS Word. With reasonable browser support for CSS it is a natural
to use styles in web-site development.
The ability to apply a CSS style class to text through a
simple menu is appreciated. Again, once you start to go beyond
the basics Nvu stops supporting you.
A feature of CSS is the ability to have a common style-sheet
that controls the entire site. With Nvu, a page created from
a template into a directory not only unhooked the page from
the site CSS, but saved a copy of the CSS in the subdirectory.
Unselecting the preference to 'save associated files' eliminated
this behaviour.
Nvu's single biggest weakness is its CSS editor. Nvu's CSS
editor can only be called a disaster. Moving from one attribute
automatically saves changes. Further, simply opening a CSS
file results in proprietary Mozilla CSS tags being applied.
Any editor that has no provision for not-saving should not
be used. One that silently applies proprietary tags, and automatically
saves them, shouldn't exist.
Recommendation: Nvu's CSS editor should not be used
and the product would be strengthened by its removal.
Advanced Layout Support (DIV)
Associated with Nvu's table-based focus and limited CSS support
is the lack of support to build a multi-column layout based
upon CSS and DIV using the Graphical interface. Multi-column
layouts are a standard used by many web-sites, and creation
using CSS and DIV a staple in 'How-to publications. An inability
to create them from the graphical interface is a significant
barrier.
Site Management
As a web-site grows managing its components becomes important.
Nvu has limited support for managing templates, grouping pages
and graphics in directories. Other basic features of site
management include gathering images selected from elsewhere
into the site, identifying in-site broken links, and site
wide search/replace
If you have an existing structure, Nvu can accommodate it.
However any changes after the fact require each page to be
re-edited. As well, pages created from a template loose links
when the created page is saved into a different directory
than the template was created for.
HEAD Tag Editing
Nvu provides no graphical support for creating and editing
of Header elements, such as META tags for keywords or adding
an external CSS style-sheet. Any editing of tags in a page's
header requires HTML source editing. Header-tags are standard
in non-beginner web-sites.
HTML Source Editing
Nvu's HTML editor is weak. A standard features on most code
editors, 'pretty formatting', is simply unreliable. There
is no rhyme or reason to the line breaks, and manual coding
doesn't result in any display change. Switching from Normal
mode to HTML mode does not always result in the cursor being
located in the same place. This is a serious weakness for
the non-professional. Most non-professionals learn a bit of
HTML coding, usually to work around their graphical editor,
but they rely on context being maintained. To further our
annoyance, when context is maintained the cursor does not
flash after switching mode.
When editing source the tab interface supporting multiple
pages vanishes, saving your work automatically reverts to
'normal mode'.
Bugs
Nvu has a number of recurring bugs. Some are minor and
transitory, the list below are significant:
- Spell Checker Vanishing - without warning the
spell checker is menu is greyed out.
Work-around: Use the toolbar spell checker icon.
- Insert function vanish - without warning insert
functions like horizontal line and anchor from the Insert
menu will be unavailable.
Work-around: Close & restart Nvu (Note: Nvu
is very quick to launch. It can be quicker to close &
restart Nvu than to move around in GoLive or Dreamweaver).
- Context Loss - when moving between multiple pages
Nvu will leave the context where you were instead of where
you are. There might even be a flashing cursor where you
think you are, but the cursor is really where you were.
Common if you are copying & pasting between pages.
Work-around: Save early & save often.
- Copy & Paste - with multiple tabs open pasting
can go into the left-most tab even though the cursor is
flashing in current tab. Even if no recent edits have been
done in the left-most tab.
Work-around: Save early & save often.
Nvu Conclusion
Solid table-based web-site editor. It is a good choice for
non-professional web-site developer following a table-based
layout for sites with limited complexity. For basic web-page
creation Nvu has it all. Standard features and functions are
presented in a clean, easy-to-use interface. As an Open Source
product it is free, and has a good on-line community that
will help you through difficulties. Nvu can be obtained, free
of charge, from http://www.nvu.com
If you work with more complex sites and are using CSS &
DIV formatting controls Nvu's weaknesses start to show. At
this point the non-professional web-site developer should
consider GoLive and Dreamweaver. Balance the high price-tags
of these commercial products with the productivity loss and
limitations of Nvu. As a last word of warning, Nvu's CSS editor
should not be used.
Hornford Associates provides professional services
aligning Information Technology with business goals. Enterprise
Architecture, IT Strategy, Project Management and Operational
Efficiency support 4 focus areas (SME eCommerce, Storage,
Business Continuity and Linux (Open Source). For more
information, please take a look at: http://www.hornfordassociates.com
Or, call her: +1 403-818-4303
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infrastructure visit: http://www.hornfordassociates.com/library
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