As webdevelopers most of us have been born and bred on Adobe’s (formerly Macromedia’s) weapon of choice Dreamweaver. I have seen the various incarnations of the program through from version 3, to UltraDev (cutting my teeth with ASP), to the latest version CS3. However there are a couple of alternatives available on the market, which are well worth a look if you are on a budget, or are on an alternative platform. Dreamweaver has always been traditionally Windows based, and if you are looking to make the switch to Linux, you need to find yourself a solid alternative. If you are making the switch, have a browse over some of these badboys..
Kompozer
License GPL, cost Free. Platforms Win | Mac | Linux
Some of you will know kompozer as Nvu, which grew out of the Mozilla Composer WYSIWYG editor, as a result its rendering engine uses Mozilla Gecko, so you can pretty much expect to see the same things as the Firefox browser gives you, and for those of you who use CSS layouts when developing, this is an absolute Godsend. Develop for firefox, fix for I.E is the way to go. Kompozer also has built in support for FTP, similar to DW in that respect, the download is also surprisingly small for the capabilities of the program – a testament to how tight the codebase is. Simply download and extract and away you go. As well as a fully integrated site manager, Kompozer also shines with its CSS editor. Think of the way Dreamweaver handles its CSS, well Kompozer is alot cleaner, and gives access to a few more less known CSS attributes. There’s also a useful “HTML tags” window, which allows the same functionality as the Web Developer Toolbar for Firefox, outlining all your elements so you can see which part of your code relates to what. Problems I encountered were the support for server side languages. Kompozer doesn’t know how to handle include files, but if you are looking for a good static site editor, Kompozer fits the bill.
Amaya
http://www.w3.org/Amaya/User/BinDist.html
License: W3C, cost free. Platforms Win | Mac | Linux
Amaya 10 (released Feb 2008) is the latest incarnation of the web browser and authoring tool from the W3C. As you would expect from the W3C, it has a strong focus on standards, and new web technologies, including SVG image format..(although personally I find SVG as a format complete waste of time) . The download size comes in at around 7 MB, similar to Kompozer, although it extracts to a good bit bigger than that. As well as being a fully featured web page editor, it has the added bonus of being a web browser too, and the program allows you to switch between these “modes” if you want. I’d like to have seen either a site manager, or FTP support built into the editor, one of DW’s strengths is good site management as well as being a good code editor. That said, Amaya has a wealth of options including theming, quick tags and a good css designer.
Bluefish Editor
License: GPL, cost free. Platforms Mac | Linux | (Windows with CYGWIN)
Bluefish is one of the better text editors available for Linux, although it is not as focused on Web development exclusively than some of the other alternatives to dreamweaver listed here. If you are a code monkey on Linux, and need a stable and extremely fast editor, you wont go wrong with Bluefish. They state on their site that the program can open up to 500+ simulataneous documents without so much as a blink, and any of my tests on the program have more or less proven that statement. Not strictly a web editor, but good if you know what you are doing. Bluefish also has syntax support for a number of different programming languages, including the following..
C, Coldfusion, CSS, HTML, Java, Javascript, JSP, Perl, PHP, Python, SQL, XHTML, XML
Screem
License: GNU, cost free. Platforms Mac | Linux
Whilst Screem supports only POSIX based OS , it has all the features that you could want in a webpage WYSIWYG editor. It has site support / FTP access, built in HTML structure layouts, thanks to the developers of Bluefish, Screem also provides a complete PHP help reference. The find and replace also support RegEx’s which to those who know what they are doing is pretty neato.
Quanta Plus
License: GNU, cost free. Available for: linux (KDE).
Quanta Plus is steadily becoming a worthwhile competitor to the commercial web editors on the market, the project is steadily gaining a number of open source software developers. Certainly if you use PHP as your main development language it’s going to be very difficult to find a better tool than Quanta. Quanta Plus’s feature set includes multi-document interface, WYSIWYG editing and templates. Among the more advanced features your will find plug-in support and integrated PHP debugging. It also has third party support for revision control, and source control (with teams). It is part of KDE, a Linux distro, so for you Windows monkey’s out there it aint gonna fly.
Aptana Studio
http://www.aptana.com/studio/download/
License: Closed Source Cost Free. Win | Mac OSX 10.4+ | Linux (with GTK)
Aptana’s business model is to release the community version for free, then get you hooked into the pro version, however the program itself is a robust environment for building web pages and applications supporting JavaScript, Ruby on Rails, and PHP development. It has great Ajax, DOM, HTML and CSS support and plug-ins for Adobe AIR and Apple iPhone development. Think of Aptana Studio as the Web 2.0 of free web development tools, their site also gives the impression that this is a super slick tool. It has more of focus on people developing for Rails, but is equal as useful for PHP developers.
The community edition of Aptana is open source and licensed under GPL.
Nicolas Nierenberg
I have a different opinion about SVG, see http://steltenpower.com/livreSVGeng.html
stelt
i think html kit should be mentioned http://www.chami.com/html-kit/ i like it more than kompozer – but that is a personal choice of course.
Jens
Amaya is actually quite nice, Microsoft has Visual Studio Express which is available legally for free, it’s a stripped down basic code html/php/javascript/asp/etc editor – so it’s not WYSIWYG but it’s quite a good alternative. There’s also 1stcup
FreeTube
I’ve had some terrible experiences with Komposer switching between editing code and the WYSIWYG mode — it actively changes my HTML… but also screws it up, perhaps trying to “fix” problems, but that code is buggy and destructive.
I don’t know if there’s still development happening — no updates since last August — but that made it unusable for me.
Rob W
I personally use Zend Studio, free if you change your system clock forward a few years before installing the 30 day trial :-D
Smith
Your comments on SVG seem ignorant.. On a page where you promote “free” software, you ‘dis SVG? That’s senseless!
What free, common, useful vector graphics format do you propose we use instead?
Stephen Waits
@Stephen – perhaps. I hold my hands up, Ive not used it. Maybe thats because just not seen it in use..or indeed used in the same applications as PNG or Flash.
Have you any examples online with graphics exclusively SVG?
Or am i missing the point?
admin
Kompozer is the best that I have used. I have now replaced Frontpage with Kompozer.
kaushik
I have been using N-Vu/Kompozer for a little while now to do bits of coding for my website.
Something that I did find frustrating was that it is not possible to simply drag and drop page elements where ever you want them on the web page.
After a bit of exploring on the net I found More Motion Web Express available at http://www.moremotion.com/ . This does have that particular feature and does seem to be more functional that Kompozer.
David Ballantyne
How about Netbeans and Visual Web Developer?
I also had some thoughts about this today: http://symbioxys.blogspot.com/2008/08/so-you-cant-afford-dreamweaver.html
Xander
I have to agree with Rob W, Kompozer does have a tendency to be destructive. Also a bit buggy when connecting through the FTP.
However given that it can be switched to portable mode, meaning it can be taken on an USB I have no complaint.
I would like to see patches being made to kompozer but it seems development has sort of stopped. Sad.
Aric
Aric H
For Mac, Coda (http://www.panic.com/coda/) is really the only game in town.
Notepad++ is decent on the win32 environment. And loads fast which is a huge plus for me.
Adam
I’ve been using Aptana Studio for a while now. First started using it for development at work, as my employer wouldnt stump up for the Dreamweaver license fee, so had to find something either free or within my own budget, which is when I came accross Aptana Studio. I’ve been using it ever since, and have been extremely happy…so much so, that I weened myself off Dreamweaver altogether. Have even shared similar opinions on my own blog (http://www.vincecutting.co.uk/aptana-studio-better-than-dreamweaver-and-free.html).
Vince
Vince
I find Iceape Composer to be easier for WYSIWYG editing.
Gary Efron
Nice resources for Dreamweaver alternative, if you have any open source software about photoshop please post it.
[idiot trying to spam - i nofollow]
I’m giving this advice with a pinch of salt, considering your comment looks like spam. But for other visitors, a good photoshop alternative is the Gimp.
The Gimp
Paul Anthony
You Paul, are God-sent. I had been looking for free dreamweaver alternatives and you not only offer one, but six. I will definitely install one of them.
Oluniyi David Ajao
@David – ahh your too kind. Thanks for the feedback, keeps me right!
Paul Anthony
Not sure I would be prepared to give-up the image round-trip editing between Dreamweaver and Phothosop/Fireworks.
Hey, as a Dreamweaver trainer, I guess I have to stand up for Dreamweaver. LOL.
Billy Gee
p.s. do any of these programs above come with built in FTP?
Billy – Training Connection
Thank you for posting alternatives to Dreamweaver. I am just beginning to develop my own web site. Although I did create one a few years ago using the free Yahoo program, it takes hours for up images (many) to upload. So, I need a better program. I do appreciate your recommendations here, but I’m afraid the jargon is a bit over my head. Could you recommend a program for a beginner with lots of photos to upload? Thanks again.
Paula
Hi Paula,
You’ll need a good image resizing program firstly, IrFanView is free, and good at image resizing if thats all you need to do. After that, an FTP program such as FileZilla provides a bulk way to get image up to the web. Hope that helps,
Regards,
Paul.
Paul Anthony
Nice list! Thank you!
Yigit Ozdamar
+1 for bluefish. (bcoz I’m c0der :D)
M.S. Babaei
I’ve been using Kompozer for about six months now and the only time I’ve had any problem was when I put an iframe in the page that I was working on. When I reopened it do some more work it said for an unknown reason the page could not be edited but switching between preview mode and normal mode cleared the problem and I was able to work with the page.
Cheers,
Mark
Mark
Which one of the six is the best for somebody who is going to design a basic html site then hand it over to a PHP coder to build a backend to it? I like less html coding- I prefer having something code for me while I use the tools of the software- then bounce in to clean up the basics. I am looking for the idiot version I guess that is really user friendly.
James
I downloaded this KompoZer for windows, and I try to use the color tool for the background, and there are no colors to choose from.
James
I’ve been looking for something that my daughter can use to create a basic website with. I’ve used Dreamweaver commercially for years, but was unwilling to pay its price-tag for software which may only be used a couple of times on a single project. We’re going to give Kompozer a go, so thank you very much for your roundup :)
Bones
Hi there Bones- no worries, glad it helped a bit! Oh – and thanks for the Twitter follow!
Paul Anthony
I abandoned Windows last Oct, for Linux Kubuntu, I finished developeing my whole website with Quanta plus for code and GIMP for graphics.
Thanks for the list, I’ll try them all.
Viva Linux ;)
Wesam Alalem
I have been using DW for years and have DW8 working v well. Have now just had to upgrade to new computer due to failing hardware. New box is Win7! Reinstalled DW but not working well – not at all really! Been through the 8.0.2 patch routine with Adobe’s most *unhelpful* wizard – which also crashed. So after almost 10 years of being a DW fan (fanatic) I am fed up with being forced to pay for upgrades just because I move platforms. Adobe must be trying to force me into CS4. I am going to try Open Source first – so thank you for the list. And thank you to all the contributors who have made constructive comments.
Roger Hallett
Okay, after downloading nearly every one of these programs, here’s my comment and I think the developers should be listening closely …. The company that comes out with a software like this that is user friendly and EASY is going to be a very successful company. Not one of these programs was easy. Not one of them made it easy to simple get started nor was the help or tutorial readily available. Wake up guys, everyone’s not a geek nor does everyone want to be one.
Jason
An excellent blogpost. Thank you.
I have heard that Aptana Studio is in excess of 200MB in comparison to Kompozers 20MB, and that it can be buggy on a mac, and therefore have opted for Kompzer.
Thanks
Bill Ambrose