Without a doubt, the best way to design a web page exactly like you want is to code it in a text editor. This gives you ultimate control over your end result and the possibilities are only limited by the web technologies you're willing to learn.
But sometimes you just want to create something simple in a graphical user interface. That's where WYSIWYG web editors become useful. WYSIWYG stands for "what you see is what you get." You use a GUI to design your website instead of a text editor. The source code of your website may turn out a little sloppy, but it's easier to see your changes as you make them.
For the purposes of my Web Design Tools assignment, I tried out three different WYSIWYG editors. Here are my thoughts on each. (I should note that the leader in this category is Adobe Dreamweaver. Unfortunately, Dreamweaver is very expensive. For the purposes of this class, we're sticking to free options.)
After selecting my three candidates, I was sure that this would be the winner. It was the selection for best free web editor of 2012 by PC Mag. It was the last one I found, but it has been updated recently and includes support for HTML5.
I installed BlueGriffon and liked the interface. I walked through Professor X's brief recommendation by adding a "Hello world!", centering it and resizing it. All looks good so far. Then I inserted an image. I chose an image from my camera, a massive 4752x3168 pixel photo. Obviously, this huge image extended way off the screen. I tried to resize it so that it would fit. And I tried again. I couldn't figure out how to change the image properties of the image! The only I found to resize the image (other than manually changing it in the HTML code, which defeats the purpose of a WYSIWYG) is to drag the corner in using the mouse. But this picture is so big that I have to do this several times to get it to a manageable size. This oversight immediately disqualified BlueGriffon for me.
The next editor I decided to try was #1 on the about.com list of Free WYSIWYG Web Editors for Windows that Professor X linked us to. Let me start with the good: SeaMonkey passed the image resizing test. When you select to insert or edit an image, there is a tab that allows you to change the image dimensions. This is so much easier than the drag-to-resize option in BlueGriffon.
I didn't go much further than that in SeaMonkey. The first thing that became obvious is that this is not just an HTML editor. This is bundled as a total web solution. When you open SeaMonkey, it is a web browser similar to Firefox (it's build on Mozilla's open-source technology). It took me about a minute to figure out how to create a web page. In the bottom-left bar, there are icons for Browser, Mail & Newsgroups, Composer, Address Book, and IRC Chat. The only thing that I need from this software is the composer, so the bundled approach immediately turned me off.
This editor comes highly recommended. It's recommended by Professor X as part of this assignment, but it was also recommended as the top Dreamweaver replacement by one of my favorite sites, Lifehacker.com. Before I saw BlueGriffon, KompoZer was my likely pick. After testing out BlueGriffon and SeaMonkey, KompoZer will be my choice.
KompoZer immediately passed my image resizing test. It has the same exact image insert/edit tabbed menu as SeaMonkey. Unlike SeaMonkey, KompoZer is just a web editor, which is all I need.
Unfortunately, KompoZer hasn't been updated since 2010, so it's likely behind several other options when it comes to features. Since Professor X recommended it, I'm sure it will do everything I need it to for the purpose of my assignments.
