Nvu for Mac1.0PR

Fine HTML editor

The Nvu project is dead. It's been replaced by KompoZer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KompoZer http://www.kompozer.net

Beware using Nvu to edit pages originally created with MS Pubisher - it destroyed the link between page and page files within their relative folders. Have spent hours trying to manually edit the corrupted image pathways - but Nvu just wont publish the corrections. What should have taken 5 minutes in MS Publisher, has wasted 5 hours of my time so far. I bought a Mac because I was tired of having to become a computer engineer just to get my equipment to do "what it says on the box" - I guess Nvu users are of a different mentality.

Well my first reaction is very negative. Running the program sends it into a never ending loop of starting up and crashing. I can't even kill the stupid thing from Activity Monitor! The only way out of it is to log out of my machine. Yes, the readme warns against running it from the disk image. But this is a mac, we expect software to "just work"! If the program can't run from a locked disk image then either fix it or don't ship it on a locked disk image! Rubbish.

It looks good at first, however there's no preview function. Oh sure there's a tab that 'says' preview but it ignores any javascript and flash components and renders the pages horrendously for some reason. This is definately NOT wysiwyg! I find this strange considering other ultra-simple wysiwyg html editors such as WebMinimalist has this simple necessity. I find it a shame 'cause this app has some really handy features but I think I'll stick to Taco at the moment which seems to be the only TRUE, free wysiwyg html editor for OSX, and judging by it's 4.5 star rating I'm not the only one who thinks so.

I find this app. makes a great companion to RapidWeaver when you need to do a little more html.

A follow-up to my last comment which probably sounds a bit too negative: Of course, people who do professional web design should be able to afford a commercial product and not have to rely on a free and open-source app. BUT, while they are at it, why not turn Nvu into a really excellent, state-of-the-art editor that can kick GoLive's and Dreamweaver's b*tt? Like many reviewers before me, I am very excited about this app and I'm sure it will become as great as, say, Firefox. I really hope so, because I don't like GoLive, nor Dreamweaver. So, thumbs up to the Nvu developers, keep going, I'll buy all of you a large mug of coffee.

Sigh... Nvu (1.0 final release, not PR!) is a good start: not because it's a good WYSIWYG html editor, but because it's the ONLY free WYSIWYG html editor available for Mac OS X. Sadly. The work that has been put into this software is very highly respected, and things can only get better from here on. I'm sure Nvu is great if you just want to hack up a couple of simple pages without needing to know about HTML. However, if you do professional web design, you can safely forget about Nvu at this stage. There are just too many inconsistencies and bugs if you really need to rely on the details and focus on high-quality, elegant code. You can only switch between HTML 4 and XHTML 1 and between transitional and strict DTDs, and that is not honored correctly (if set to XHTML, an HTML 4 header is inserted anyway). It does the most vile thing a web editor can possibly do: it automatically reformats and changes your existing code, even if you tell it in the preferences not to. If you use inline CSS formatting, it inserts a huge bunch of completely unnecessary CSS formatting statements. This is about as bad as it can get; a regression to the bad, dark, old world of the web-editing stone age à la Claris HomePage (1997). Not good! To sum it up, if you're still stuck in the HTML 4 era (1997-2000), and don't care about what's happening in the background (i.e. code), Nvu will be quite a useful piece of software. If you're going to do state of the art web development (using XHTML 1 and CSS), Nvu will not work for, but against you. It's more fun developing with a standard text editor (as before) than wasting time editing out the bad stuff Nvu automagically puts into your code. The interface looks very promising but needs a lot of polish. There are some nasty bugs that absolutely shouldn't be in a 1.0 final release, like if you close the last document window, the menu functions for creating or opening a new document no longer work; the only way to get out of this is to quit and re-launch Nvu and then open a file from within the document window that's created on startup. So -- looking forward to a hopefully bright future viz. open source WYSIWYG web editing on Mac OS X, and may the force be with all developers working on such a project.

for some reason my last comment was cut short. should have said calls to "basic-bongo.dawber.dreamhost.com"

would be interested to know if it calls home? certainly it calls to

This may sound stupid, but how do I get the main window back after I closed it? I've tried everything, but nothing works. I'm using Mac OS X 10.4.1

Excellent little HTML editor. Simple and powerful that even the big boys fail to do.

Great little app- runs fine on my iBook+10.3

NVU 1.0 runs on TIGER just great. Good job!

Nvu seems to be on the right track as FireFox was about 2 years ago. Its just been ported to Mac - and it shows. User interface is Windows like and not very friendly. On my Pismo G3 400 - it crawls and is almost unusable - but thats even acceptable for now as Apple is selling far more new computers. However, having said all the negatives above - this has GREAT potential. It could be the Firefox of web editors. The site management layout is good and the multiple tabbed interface is a great idea. I suggest Mac users with G4 or faster computers use Nvu and help in giving enough feedback so that the developers can work on making this better.

This program gets better and better. It now edits CSS in external style sheets. It's available for Windows, Mac, and Unix systems. You can manage many websites, each having many pages. Works with file system access or ftp. Downsides? Of course. The style sheet editing isn't obvious. There are some hiccups in the user interface. But consider the price. And it is possible to report bugs. I like it.

This release is a joke. Nothing seems to work: Font menu is not available under Format (or anywhere else), text would not align, a scroll-down button is missing in the Help window, columns in a table disappear in an instant after a click (?!) ... This is an affront! DO NOT INSTALL THIS VERSION!!

Nvu is coming of age nicely. It's a great tool I recommend to all newbie web developers who can't afford Dreamweaver or GoLive, but want to learn the ins-n-outs of WYSIWYG and code-based web development.

With each new upgrade, NVU just keeps getting better and better! - Russell G4 (Digital Audio O/S 10.3.6 Sonnet 1GHz w/Level 3 Cache 1Gb Ram

Ever since I switched to the Mac in 1998, I have been looking for my "FrontPage Express" replacement, and Nvu is finally it. Essentially Mozilla Composer with a site manager, this app is the real deal. We should all use this app, support the author with feedback, tell everyone about it and help improve it. I am absolutely astonished that Apple doesn't offer a webpage making program for the consumer (the .Mac stuff aside.) Go NVU!

It's nice that it's free, but it feels clumsy to use. It's not very Mac-ish, and it doesn't support a lot of Mac keyboard shortcuts. It feels more like a Linux port.

This is an incredible program, especially for being free. That said, there needs to be a little more work on the Site section of the program. Accessing files off the network would be cool, as well as relative links. CSS support seems good, but then again, I've manage to learn what i would consider ideal CSS practices, so hopefully if people aren't CSS coders, this would encourage proper style-coding. I'll be watching this app for sure! GO MOZILLA, GO!

I was trying to make a cell span over the rows below, but Nvu freaked out - it created an extra column, and when I managed to fix that the second column would not be even with the second... then I tried Mozilla's Composer and noticed this same bug is there. Oh well. Back to good old Claris Home Page...

The anchor problem that I had mentioned in my previous review turned out to be my fault, and NOT the fault of NVU - Russell

This version of NVU (Ver.0.80/Beta) is a whole lot better than the previous version. It seems alot snappier (quicker), less buggy, and definately more keyboard command friendly (i.e. - copy/paste keyboard commands). Having only briefly tried it so far, the only thing can fault it for was I had some mystery anchors appear at the bottom of my page which were all duplicates of the very last anchor that I made. I had to use the Netscape Composer to finally get rid of them. As far as IMPROVEMENTS that are needed - when you use the OPEN or SAVE AS options and the "WINDOW with the COLUMNS" appears for you to make your choice as to where to OPEN or to SAVE the document you want - it would be nice to be able to manually adjust the with of those COLUMNS [which by the way, is a STANDARD CAPABILITY of most OS-X software programs]. Other than that, NVU is starting to look good, really good! This developer is definately headed in the right direction with this program. - Russell

The icons are really nice. Possibly the best since Safari Aqua Blue came out in SafarIcon.

The world does need a wysiwyg Web authoring app. that is cheaper and has an easier learning curve than Dreamweaver or Go Live. I'm amazed that so far Composer (and this) is the only alternative. Composer (and presumably this) has some annoying features, for inst. that with it link-to-inserted-anchor is way too hard to do, and it lacks any documentation (you may want to have a look at http://eee.uci.edu/help/composer-mozilla/, but it also has some good points, such its ability to handle Unicode and the fact that it writes fairly decent and clean code (something Claris Home Page does NOT do, it introduced far too much proprietary code). And all, the Mac community really needs a decent low end app., and for the moment Composer / Nvu is all we have. So let's treat it with a little respect.

Nvu is now stable enough to be usable. I support the developer's effort to make a stand alone version of Composer necause : 1) Mozilla developers roadmap shows Composer will be unbundled & left to die in the future. 2) Most folks want a simple to use wysiwyg html editor as they only have modest needs. If you get PAID to develop in html that s nice for you but who else wants to learn a language just to knock up or edit the odd page NOT ME! It's a bit like back in the 80's when creating a text document required you to remember all the arcane coed of Wordstar AND embed printer control codes as well - idiocy! Long live wysiwyg!!!!

Yes, the COMPOSER is also built into the Netscape 7.2 Browser as well.

Stop the Presses! There appears to be a more advanced version of NVU. It's a WYSIWYG-HTML Web Editor called COMPOSER and its built into Web Browser Mozilla 1.7.5. Somehow Mozilla must be connected the NVU project? because they look alike. The difference is COMPOSER seems to be more advanced (more stable, less buggy). Check it out at http://www.mozilla.org/products/mozilla1.x/sysreq.html

Until NVU is ready to accept the standard "command c" (copy) and "command v" (paste) keyboard commands [ESPECIALLY in the LINK window] I'm not ready to give up on my ancient OS-9 Claris Homepage yet. NVU is still in its infancy, BUT, the potential of this program becoming an awesome WYSIWYG - HTML editor definately exist. Had Claris Homepage continued to exist (in a OS-X format) my guess is it would have take the form of where NVU is heading today!

Since NVU isn't even a ver. 1.0 yet, I think any harsh critism should be with held (personal opinion). I just downloaded loaded it today (01/15/05) and I like what I see. It reminds me of the same ease and simplicity of Claris Homepage. It your going to issue harsh critism wait until the software has had a chance to make it to the development stage of v2.0 - 4.0, geez, give the developer a chance to develope! - Russell

Stoopid reviews... In fact NVU is unfinished BUT it is a work in progress. It is free. It is open source. It will be good. Just let things appen. Look at Mozilla, Firefox, MPlayer, VLC, OpenOffice, etc. They were simple, unpolished, unusable applications. Now they are great free, rock solid apps that can compete with Internet Explorer, Media Player, Quicktime, Microsoft Office. Look at the Gimp, what it was, what it is (and what it will be, improving, coming close to Photoshop). One day we will have a free Dreamweaver like application. Thanks to open source, free software and projects like this one.

The program encourages writing code at the same level as Microsoft word export, which is not standards compliant This program belongs to the 90s Wysiwyg editing is very limited, and I recommend another free HTML editor with realtime preview in safari, like subEthaEdit or Smultron (which is free for non-commercial users)

How can it be that an HTML editor needs a 12 Mb download? I can't imagine that it is smaller once you unpack it. Offering an app like this is like asking you take a bus to get through the checkout line at a supermarket.

I've read a lot of glowing comments about this software both here and in forums around the web. Features are barely more advanced than 90s OS 9 versions of Adobe PageMill and Claris Homepage. There is absolutely no comparison to Golive and Dreamweaver. WYSIWYG is used somewhat loosely here. The results are only slightly better than an HTML export from either MS Word or Appleworks. Again, no comparisons to Golive or Dreamweaver. Ease of Use is worse than Pagemill and Homepage... but the GUI and buttons are pretty... Obviously the value is incredible, and the app appears stable after an hour of evaluation. The big question is... what is NVU trying to be? If the goal is an entry-level website design app, the software needs better WYSIWYG and improved ease of use.

Yo. Same issues persist in this release when it comes to: 1. Open With... 2. Drag & Drop I love Linux more than most Mac-folk, but if I wanted to use Linux, I'd be usin' it, wouldn't I? This is OS X bay-bee. :) Props for making an icon that sticks with the .app, but I'd prefer the above things to work before I take Nvu into my warm digital embrace. Until then, it's got nothin' on Mozilla 1.7.3's Composer.

Tip to developer: get Claris Home Page 3, then try to copy as much of its interface as possible! ~_^

There are two things this app has to do before I'll trade it in for the two-step annoyance of opening a page in Mozilla 1.8, then hitting Cmd-E to get the opened doc to appear in Composer: 1. Act like any other OS X app: ability to drag-n-drop an HTML doc onto it and have it open that doc. 2. Act like any other OS X app: appear in the list of available apps when ctrl-clicking and viewing Open With... Until then, this isn't an OS X app, but rather a clumsy, bloated adaptation of an Darwin/X11 app. While the new icon is pretty, it doesn't even copy over with the app to my Applications folder. Sheesh.

Excellent! Nvu no longer quits on Mac OS X 10.2.8 . With regards to the tools/functions, so far so good. One small glitch, when you quit Nvu, it seems to hang/spin. I have to select quit, again, from menu, in order for it to completely quit. I really like it. Looking forward to version 1.0 . Keeping my fingers crossed. Thanks to the development team.

For a complete novice/amateur like me this is ideal. I've used software that's clunkier at version 1.0 than what this is at 0.5.

0.5 is much better that 0.4x. it hasnt crashed yet (although im sure it will in near future - but thats much better than 0.4x which crashed every minute). it has a site manager now that works great... its getting better with every version!

Still pretty buggy and I'll certainly never use it professionally for design (I prefer XHTML coding), but once it's more stable it could be something I'd use with my students. Great effort thus far! Thanks for keeping it truly cross-platform!

still very buggy. i couldnt work with it... its always crashing... anyway a great project. im looking forward for a stable version!

i am really happy they ported this for OS X - it reminds me of a modern version of Claris Home Page there are quite a few bugs though that make it hard to use - sometimes the keyboard shortcuts don't work at all sometimes with "CTRL" instead of "Command". then it is hard to select text - and I would be happy to be able to modify links without pressing OK for everyone. I would like a button to preview the page in different browsers - anyway - I wonder if it is going to be seriously developed for Mac OS X or it will be just a stepchild of the Linux version. it fills a gap in the applications for OS X. there should be for real a decent free WYSIWYG HTML editor. I cant believe this is the only one - maybe Mozilla Composer does not have these bugs - but will it be developed for OS X once the Mozilla suite will be split in different components? fix the bugs and i would give 4 stars. and 5 star value.

Great to see it ported to MacOS X ! Thank you !

The guy who ported this maintains a blog concerning development at http://webperso.easyconnect.fr/danielglazman/weblog/dotclear/index.php?Nvu He compiled 0.41 under 10.3.5 and it appears to only work on 10.3+ due to a compilation issue. I imagine the next version will address this.

I just spent time at the product forum. It looks as though this requires 10.3.x rather than 10.1.x. Can someone verify this for us poor saps stuck in 10.2.8? I still have hight hopes! Thanks to all and to all a good night! Roo

Quits on launch. (Mac OS X 10.2.8) I have hopes for this product. It's greatly needed.

It is now Claris Home Page. Pros: It is free, works with latest image formats and it is much needed. Cons: 30MB is a bit big. Doesn't understand frames, close x's should be right on the tabs if we must use tabs. Misuse of sheets--have a hard time editing properties of objects when the sheet covers over the object, should be a palette. Can't drag-n-drop html pages on application icon. Profile creation is bizarre with the horizontal scrollbar to move about 4 pixels of dialog text. Undo and Redo command keys don't work until the menubar is clicked... It goes on and on. Summary: This application is under development and it shows mostly in acting like a foreigner to the Mac. I thank all who are working on this and wish them the best of luck with it.

Looks promising! It'll be nice to have a free, quickie WYSIWYG editor. It's no Dreamweaver or GoLive, but it'll fill a much needed niche.

I've been waiting for someone to rip this out. I'm so excited.

When I try to quit Nvu sometimes I get an error that says Nvu-bin unexpectedly quit. Other time I have trouble getting Nvu to quit it takes at least 2 tries sometimes. I have no problems getting Nvu to start. (10.3.5)

I think it's great that we finally get something that can rival the established DreamWeaver and GoLive. I've only used Nvu for a little while but so far I'm impressed. Yes the icon is butt-ugly but Nvu is fast, and hasn't crashed for me yet :-) I have great hopes for this - one is that I can finally throw out the bloated and slooooow DW.

Nvu is a wonderful WYSIWYG html editor. It has ftp support for publishing work. It also has a built-in preview mode along with the code, tag, and WYSIWYG modes. It has many of the features of Dreamweaver but its free. I will be using Nvu along with Dreamweaver from now on in my web-design business AKUTECH.com. -Alex

really nice!works for me on 10.3.3 but icon is very bad

Me too. I am so jonsin' for this program. It launches and tries to run ". . .migration. . ." and crashes. Suggestions? TiBook 10.2.8

Can't get iprogram to launch. Nvu "unexpectedly quits" while trying to open (OS X 10.2.8)

That must have been on the wishlist of many. Finally someone with some coding skills made the effort. Thanks a lot to the developer! Okay, so the icon sucks (wink) and the preview requires switching to another tab (I would prefer an extra window), But this is about it. Dramatically better than the Netscape composer it is (or was?) based upon. And it's free, so grab it.