Free web building software

[nesman]

http://nvu.com

I've just installed NVU, and it seems to be just as easy to use as FrontPage and Dreamweaver, and it produces compliant html. Looking over the demo pages, this looks like pretty good stuff if you don't want to code by hand.
http://www.nvu.com/demos/frames/frameSimulate.html

I was reminded of this by a link that Vladd posted for the InfoLister extension.

[battye]

Looks interesting, have you put any of the pages you have made with it on the net yet?

[nesman]

I haven't gotten around to building anything with it yet, but I'm planning to mess with it soon. I still find wysiwyg editors kind of hard for me to work with because I'm used to doing it all by hand. Still, I figure this'll be my best chance at writing something that'll be compliant html for once.

Edit:
http://nesman.afraid.org/nes/nvutest.html

I got bored trying to recreate the borderless heading that I use here so I gave up and threw some crap together.

Again, I usually do it by hand, and this gui stuff messes with my head, so I'm not a very good benchmark for it.

In any case, it seems that it's a little more difficult to 'draw up' a page than I thought it'd be.

[battye]

It seems to add the NVU logo / text a lot (in the title and at the bottom of the page). Is that something that you can control within the program?

Also, how does it compare with Frontpage do you think?

[nesman]

The logo is put there manually. I was running out of easy things to do in the interface, so I put the logo in there. All of the other Nvu l text bits I put in there so I wouldn't get confused later. It doesn't really do anything to the content that you don't tell it.

I like the layout of the demo page that they said they built using only the gui. I wasn't able to figure that one out, but I don't have a lot of patience for things like this.

I'd say that it's almost as easy to work with as Frontpage is for web building, and maybe a little bit more intuitive when it comes to publishing. As far as the code that it outputs, well, lets not talk about how many pages I've seen FP wreck.

[battye]

Their demo page definitely has promise, but by using Times New Roman they aren't doing themselves any favours. Using Arial or Verdana would instantly transform that page IMO.

[Grinch]

Looking at the source code, they used CSS for design. So building the site with the GUI would be rather easy as long as your familiar with the CSS. I haven't used a GUI for webdesign since first messing with FrontPage and probably would not like this GUI any more than the others.

[battye]

I've just downloaded this program, and I agree with Grinch about the CSS.

I wouldn't fancy building an entire website with it (it seems to freeze a lot ) but I can see myself using it to whip up a page quickly, such as for writing these type of pages.

[battye]

Here is a very basic example:
Clicky

[nesman]

One of the best things about using NVU is here

I wish they provided a bit more of a walkthrough to show how they generated the demo page. They say that was done with only the gui aspect of the program and that no coding was needed. I wasn't able to figure out how to replicate this myself, but then again, I suck with graphical editors.

[battye]

Good point about the validation.