-66

I've switched over to Linux, but I'm currently stuck using MS Frontpage for my web editing because I don't find any of the few Linux WYSIWYG web editors like Kompozer as feature-rich as FP and I'm too much of a beginner to use advanced Linux web editors like Bluefish.

I think Frontpage was popular because it looks like it was based off of MS Word making it easy for beginners and gave it all the convenient word processing features in Word.

If KOffice had a web editor based off of KWord, I think it would be a real hit, especially in the Linux world.

Call it something like:
KWeb
KPage


***Edit:
Was thinking last night after posting this that I made it sound like I was asking for two things; for KOffice to develop a web editor for their suite and for it to be based off of KWord. I didn't necessarily mean to have it based off KWord. I just mentioned that because I was thinking of how my favorite and the very popular web editor Frontpage was based off MSWord.

My main idea was for KOffice to include a WYSIWYG web editor for their suite. Having it based off of KWord was just a suggestion if KOffice thought including a web editor was a good idea.

I also forgot to mention that I found OpenOffice's Web/Writer the most like Frontpage in terms of formatting features, but OO wasn't interested in developing a full-on web editor for their suite when I suggested the idea to them. Since no other office suite has a web editor included like MS Office does/did, I would think and open source suite like KOffice could really benefit from capitalizing on this. Again, I not necessarily suggesting it be based off of KWord.

Like the not-yet-completely-ported-to-KDE4 Quanta?

I think quanta is a better match. And actually webkit get very good editing support nowdays. I am also skeptical about using a word processor as basis for editing website. Anyone think about MS Word export to html

Although a valid idea, I am 100% _against_ this. As any decent webdeveloper would tell you, a word-processor based website maker is a recipe for failure - a terrible website, terrible coding behind it, and will only lead to more problems in the future. Maybe there is a good reason a word-processor based editor doesn't exist - because it's a bad idea.

As others said before, I think Quanta is the perfect tool for editing web pages, and has got enough WYSIWYG. Waiting and/or helping at its port to KDE4 is the good way to go.
An editor in Koffice, like M$ Word does for windows, would indeed be a bad idea.

cyrille wrote:I think quanta is a better match. And actually webkit get very good editing support nowdays. I am also skeptical about using a word processor as basis for editing website. Anyone think about MS Word export to html

Quanta is not a true WYSIWYG.

I edited my OP to clarify that I didn't necessarily mean that if KOffice decided to include a web editor for its suite that it be based on KWord. That was just a thought.

Moult wrote:Although a valid idea, I am 100% _against_ this. As any decent webdeveloper would tell you, a word-processor based website maker is a recipe for failure - a terrible website, terrible coding behind it, and will only lead to more problems in the future. Maybe there is a good reason a word-processor based editor doesn't exist - because it's a bad idea.

Which other web editor besides Frontpage was based off of a word processor?

Emeric wrote:An editor in Koffice, like M$ Word does for windows, would indeed be a bad idea.

Why??? To me, that's like saying an office suite having a spreadsheet or a powerpoint is a bad idea!

bluebayou wrote:

cyrille wrote:I think quanta is a better match. And actually webkit get very good editing support nowdays. I am also skeptical about using a word processor as basis for editing website. Anyone think about MS Word export to html

Quanta is not a true WYSIWYG.

Quanta is plugin-based, so (I think) it would be entirely possible to implemente true WYSIWYG support as a plugin.

The question is: Why would this be needed?

For simple structuring/formatting of stand-alone html pages, using OpenOffice Writer/Web should suffice.

The more complex features provided by Frontpage are actually much better handled by a proper content management system (like Joomla, Drupal, Plone, ...) - which is how most websites do it nowadays.

I therefore assume it's rather unlikely that the KOffice developers will find the motivation to provide some sort of Frontpage equivalent.

You might have more luck if you ask for specific features that you were used to from Frontpage to be implemented in Quanta.
(But be sure to explain exactly why each requested feature is still useful nowadays that web pages are almost always styled with CSS themes and structured with PHP, Perl, Python or ASP content management systems!)

smls,

You make a lot of great points and maybe you are right about the web building technology has surpassed what I was envisioning, but the things you describe sound like methods preferred by pro web builders. I was envisioning a web editor app more geared towards beginners to novices, something you'd expect a web editor in an office suite to be geared towards.

As for Quanta, are they even active anymore? If they are, that's a good idea to suggest to them, hope they would be interested. OpenOffice and Kompozer were not.

As for OOweb/write, that's only good for very small websites. My site (not currently up) is pretty large and I would need a web editor with a file manager like Kompozer.

Since OO and Kompozer weren't interested and Quanta looked stalled, I figured I'd suggest my idea to the KOffice crew.

bluebayou wrote:smls,

You make a lot of great points and maybe you are right about the web building technology has surpassed what I was envisioning, but the things you describe sound like methods preferred by pro web builders. I was envisioning a web editor app more geared towards beginners to novices, something you'd expect a web editor in an office suite to be geared towards.

Some CMS's, such as Joomla, do focus on newbie-friendliness.

In fact most of them have web-based graphical user interfaces (usually called "backend" or "admin area") for managing pages/file/menus/etc. which are just (or almost) as simple to use as the graphical user interface of an office application.

bluebayou wrote:As for Quanta, are they even active anymore?

It seems to be moving along slowly.

This summer there was a GSoC project for reviving Quanta for KDE 4.

Here's a blog post that explains the general direction which the GSoC developer was taking with Quanta 4: http://milianw.de/blog/quanta-gsoc-midterm-evaluation

Quanta seems to be moving quickly, but I do not think they are interested in a WYSIWYG-editor.
You may want to try NVU, but I still think that all those WYSIWYG-web-editors are bad. Instead of that Quanta wants to be a good IDE for HTML/PHP/XML-development.

The User wrote:Quanta seems to be moving quickly, but I do not think they are interested in a WYSIWYG-editor.
You may want to try NVU, but I still think that all those WYSIWYG-web-editors are bad. Instead of that Quanta wants to be a good IDE for HTML/PHP/XML-development.

NVU has been defunct for years not. Kompozer took it over.

WYSIWYG's may not be as "good" at producing code, but I never had a problem with Frontpage.

I'd just like to see a beginner/novice-oriented WYSIWYG web editor for Linux that is a more feature-rich than Kompozer.

Linux has enough good advanced web editors. Why not a good one for noobs?

Because honestly programs like Quanta are newbie-friendly enough. We don't need anything even lower than that. There is a reason people realise it's a bad idea to simplify webdevelopment down to this level - because it _can't_ be done. Web development is no longer the script kiddy lump of invalidated html and islands of PHP floating around the place.

I _had_ problems with Frontpage-generated code.