Several times, in the Web section of this blog, I have looked for and reported ways to create and design a website, without having to follow the html code. CMS are those programs that allow you to create a website with guided procedures, drop-down menus, drag & drop and so on (see the best CMS software to try for free)
Webmaster professionals, on the other hand, use the Dreamviewer program as a work program for designing web pages from scratch.
This software, besides the fact that it is not free, still requires some study of the programming language and is not really recommended for beginners who do not intend to take a manual in hand.
Until a few years ago Microsoft had the terrible FrontPage program included in the Office suite that allowed you to draw web pages as if they were Powerpoint slides.
The best alternative to Dreamviewer, the open source NVU program to which you dedicated an article last year, came out from Mozilla Labs, the developer of the Firefox browser.
Since NVU has not been updated for a long time, the project came back to life in 2009 with another open source and free software that allows anyone to design the graphics of a website, without using HTML code .
This program is called Kompozer .
Kompozer allows you to easily create tables, insert images, create shapes and various components of common web pages .
The program is free and is also portable, in the sense that the files can be copied to a USB stick for use on any computer.
The user interface is very simple and easy to use.
Everything is arranged on the main page in a well organized way, with consistent menus and sub menus for each object that can be incorporated into the web page.
On the left side there is a menu for navigating the various web pages of the site under construction while at the center there is the real editor.
Kompozer, being updated to modern web 2.0, supports CSS style sheets that define the rules of the site's graphics .
You can easily generate the CSS style by giving the rules for each title, for the writing style, for the size of the images, for the spaces between paragraphs, the borders, the thicknesses, the page width, the size and the font of the text and so on, without absolutely having to know this newest programming language.
Just select the type of element you want to configure and create the rules for CSS.
The tool also works very well for drawing a web page as if it were a typical blog or newspaper article, with an image immersed in the text and well formatted.
You can easily upload a computer image and add it to the web page.
Kompozer then allows you to resize it directly from its editor, deciding its width and height, with the option of maintaining the proportions.
The wizard to create the table is very reminiscent of Microsoft Word and its graphic style can also be set from the properties.
Again, there is no complicated HTML code to write.
In the same way, modules and selection menus can be added with configuration wizards.
Kompozer becomes a program that really surprises even the most precise webmasters when, after designing a web page, you go to check the html code that has been automatically generated.
If, for example, it is better not to look at what kind of code comes out when saving a Word document as an html page, with Kompozer the result, I can assure you, is worthy of professional quality.
You will thus notice that the html code is clean and well-formatted, not confused, it allows those who know the programming of websites to make changes and easily find the objects designed using the visual and graphic editor.
In the end, with the preview button you can see how the web page would look on the browser, if it were published on the internet.
Even in a quick test it will be noticed that nothing changes, that the spaces correspond to the chosen ones, that there are no scattered lines or dashes and that text and images are well formatted.
So, with Kompozer, if you buy a domain or if you sign up for a free hosting, you could create your website on the fly, with speed and flexibility and publish it even if you have no idea what is behind it .
Kompozer is free, under the GPL license and downloadable for Linux and Windows.
Download Kompozer
