Web Design

This is the area of my site where my contributions to Web design reside. Navigate it using the menu on the left. Here I explain a little of how it came about.

KompoZer User Guide

This explains how to use KompoZer which is a development of the earlier Nvu web authoring package which itself was based on Mozilla Composer.

KompoZer is in active development and the User Guide reflects version 0.7.10 released at the end of August 2007. This package produces code which is highly compliant with W3C HTML4 and CSS2.1 standards and makes full use of Cascading Style Sheets through its recently improved editor.

Though section 4 of the User Guide explains Cascading Style Sheets the

Introduction to CSS

offers an alternative. It covers the fundamentals in better detail and has more examples of use. (This page is still in development.)

Absolute positioning

covers a subject which some designers find confusing. Read it to become familiar with the few basic principles involved and discover how to design pages that will work properly with all browsers likely to be encountered.

Character Encoding

is actually an appendix from the User Guide which covers a somewhat obscure but often misunderstood aspect of web design.

Making web pages printable

is also an appendix from the User Guide. It covers a subject often neglected by authors but which can improve the usability of a site if given attention.

Browser bugs

have been discussed on many sites. Here I cover only a few which I have not found reported elsewhere or which I may have been able to present in a new light.

KompoZer

While it was my 'Web sites' that got me involved with web authoring and are the main justification for the time I spend on the subject most of my time has actually been taken up with my User Guide, originally for the Nvu web authoring system now for KompoZer. If that's not recursive I'm not sure what is.

The time has not been taken just in authoring. Initially I had to spend time in working out what the product does. Later, when I started to write, I had to discover not only what constituted good practice but also how to achieve and recommend it. So I hope this site represents good practice—It is largely CSS based with just a little JavaScript. Hopefully it is cross-browser and small screen device compatible and prints reasonably well.

The original Nvu development was sponsored by Linspire of San Diego who sponsored Daniel Glazman to develop it. Improvements were later made by Kazé and the product renamed KompoZer. Linspire also originally hosted the files for the original Nvu User Guide.

My old site, which is not actively maintained, also has a table detailing bugs I found in Nvu.

Forum

If you are new here you may like to know that there is an active forum with many KompoZer users at WysiFree.