Phuonglan Dang
CISB-11 (40367) - Computer Info Systems
Professor Victor Zamora
12 May 2010
Out of the many web editors available, I find that Dreamweaver is the most user friendly. Dreamweaver has this feature where it hides the coding from the user, allowing the user to create a webpage strictly as if they were editing a word document. The code will automatically update with the changes the user makes on screen. Much like Word templates, Dreamweaver has custom CSS starter layouts for a number of different types of user-friendly websites. It appeals more to the non-coders because of its ease of implementation and use. On the technical side, Dreamweaver features code-hinting (where you start to type the code and it provides a drop-down list, much like auto-complete in the google web search), ensures cross-browser compatibility, allows for CSS toggling (changing from one CSS to another), and has easy integration with other Adobe software including Subversion, Business Catalyst, Flash, and Illustrator.
Dreamweaver is the easiest of web editors for amateur designers. However, Dreamweaver is limited in its features. It takes a few addons for it to work on a more technical level. As a general program, it is very basic. Dreamweaver is not meant for database implementation, as it only allows for single record edits. It cannot handle multiple records and its coding system is very inefficient. In short, Dreamweaver is a decent web editor for those who are looking to design a very simple, a very basic webpage with little knowledge of web language. For more complicated and complex websites, Dreamweaver would probably not be the best choice.
FrontPage -
FrontPage is a lot like Dreamweaver. It has a split window where the user can see the code and the design at the same time, allowing for much easier editing. FrontPage has Dynamic Web Templates, like Dreamweaver, that provides a single CSS layout across all the related webpages. It also includes Intellisense, which is basically code hinting, but with both the code view and the design view. It has a photo gallery that allows for easy implementation of pictures and photos onto your website. FrontPage has a cross-browser enhanced drawing tools that allow for image editing without the use of other programs, such as Photoshop. It has other tools that help create and maintain certain types of websites including, a discussion board, online surveys, automatic live content, top 10 lists, and much more. FrontPage has a database interface wizard that helps walk the user through the steps to set up and maintain databases.
FrontPage ahs been known to be limited in browser capabilities. In the family of Microsoft (the monopoly of the PC world), most coding from Microsoft FrontPage is optimized for Microsoft Internet Explorer. FrontPage, like Dreamweaver, has not perfected it's design to code programming, and does produce duplicate and non-efficient coding.
KompoZer -
KompoZer is the most basic of the three web editors that I researched. It's design looks a lot like the program "TextPad" for the PC. It's very simple with the coding on the main panel and the files along the left frame. With KompoZer, the html editing is done completely by the user. The codes are written from the base structure, to each individual implementation. KompoZer does offer visual marks to allow indications of codes, features a tabbed window that lets you edit more than one code, and it does offer a color picker, which does what WebMonkey can do in the same program. However, unlike Dreamweaver, KompoZer does have an automatic spell checker, which is essential when you're writing the codes by hand.
KompoZer is very limited in its features, as it is all text based. To be able to use KompoZer, the user must have knowledge of the html language, javascript, flash, or any other coding languages the user wishes to implement into the website, or they're pretty much left in the dark. The GUI is very basic, and one could do just as much with TextPad, a free program, than a paid version of KompoZer.
