WYSIWYG Editor???? -Reply

[John R. Little]

I'll put in a plug for AOLpress 
<http://www.aolpress.com/>, a freeware WYSIWYG editor that 
runs on Mac, Windows (3.1 & 95/NT), and UNIX. The 
documentation claims to support "HTML 3.2 and Netscape 
Extensions:  AOLpress also lets you create and display 
pages that use a number of other Netscape extensions and 
HTML 3.2 in it's WYSIWYG authoring environment."  I think 
this is a very nice tool and given that it is freeware 
I'm surprised the software is not more popular. 

Among its features are a customizable tool bar, the ability 
to edit in WYSIWYG-mode, the ability to edit the HTML 
source, and the ability to save your files directly to the 
server if used in companion with the freeware AOLserver (the
saving feature is via an HTTP put rather than FTP). As with 
all WYSIWYG web authoring tools, I think this one has a few 
kinks to work out.  But, for the most part it's pretty good 
and it's free and easy to distribute throughout the 
organization. The biggest flaw I see is that it's not a 
great browser but I use Nestcape and MIE for browsing.  
Then I use AOLpress for the bulk of my authoring. 

It is also interesting that, although free, it received an 
Editor's Choice honorable mention in a back issue of _PC 
Magazine_.  Within the last six months there was an article 
devoted to rating web authoring tools and HTML editors. 
AOLpress is really quite good albeit a little slow on some 
older machines.  The 32-bit version is hard to beat.  

Just one more comment and in reference to Jennifer Heise's 
original post: AOLpress does stick in the nonbreaking space 
entity code "&nbsp;" but that is legal code. My Lynx 
browser is compatible with that code, anyway.


--John
------------------------------------------------------
  John R. Little       Web Developer/Systems Librarian 
  Perkins Library * Duke University * Durham, NC       
  VOICE: (919) 660-5932            Email: jrl at duke.edu 
              http://www.duke.edu/~jrl/