Free Web Design Software

While Adobe Dreamweaver remains the standard bearer for creating and editing web design, there are open source (free) solutions that can do the job just as effectively for about 90% of typical web design tasks. The best solution I have found to date is KOMPOZER. While stiil in beta (not yet developed to be a final release) it is nonetheless a very effective tool for visual editing and design of html, dhtml, xml, and css web design.

Having worked with Adobe Dreamweaver for more than eight years, I found the interface of KOMPOZER immediately familiar and user-friendly. It has tabs that allow you to quickly go from code editing to visual previews and editing of your web design. The interface is clean, simple, and well organized.

KompoZer is based on Gecko, the layout engine inside Mozilla, and is maintained on a daily basis by a wide community of developers. Because of its Mozilla roots, it produces code that is optimized for Firefox, and the visual editor shows results that accurately preview how the web design will look in Firefox. Typically, web designers will design for Firefox and tweak to conform to Microsoft Explorer browsers.

This free software is so good that I can recommend it as an alternative to Dreamweaver. That's good news considering the money you save! There is one feature that KompoZer is missing that you really need for serious code editing. KompoZer does not yet have the ability to "Find and Replace" or "Search and Replace" code in multiple files in a folder at once. However, that feature is easily duplicated by a number of free plain text code editors.One I highly recommend is NOTEPAD++. Combined, these two free software apps will give you the power of Adobe Dreamweaver with none of the cost. Now, how cool is that!