NVu A Good Start for Scouters

With the death of Front Page, I have started searching for reasonable replacements for the average scouter. Scouting websites are usually designed by individual with a limited personal budget to invest.

Today, I downloaded and installed NuV (pronounced N-view). This software has been around for almost two years. The software has it's roots in Mozilla Composer. The website claims that this new product rivals MS Front Page and Adobe Dreamweaver. Here is what I found:

• The price is right $0.
• Versions are available for the Mac, Lynix and Windows systems.
• The installation was quick and easy from www.nvu.com. Without reading the documentation, I was able to connect to a test website. A novice will need to read the documentation.
  This software gives you WISIWIG with very clean code.
• Management of your website is very easy. I was able to add, edit and delete for the file window. The software uses an FTP connection.
• The table making functions are teriffic. These functions are as strong as FrontPage and in my humble opinion superior to Dreamweaver. Plus, the final code is much cleaner than either of these programs. I wish Microsoft would take note of this!!!
• Text & image editing were also more than adequate with a spell checker included.
  If you are starting with a template for your scouting unit, such as the ones you can find at escouting.net, then you can get your website up and operational very quickly with a very small learning curve.

A good evaluation includes the negatives:

• You cannot directly edit a css page.
• There are no extras with this software. Additional features such as a java button, a navigation component would be nice to have.
• Some features css were not well supported such as columns.
• You cannot place an image anywhere on the document. This is the bigest difficency of NVu.
• This version does not support PHP or ASP. This is the one area where NVu is significantly behind the commersial packages. In addition, the software changed hand coded software. I hope this will be fixed in the future. For more advanced webmasters, this is a very big negative.
• NVu 1.0 website development software is a good entry level website management software. As for the claim of rival for Dreamweaver, it is still premature. I look forward to the next version of this well designed software.
  

Summary of NVu 1.0
I will keep this on my system for future use. I will be using the table making functions of this program. I do recommend the software to scouters who are just starting out.

Over all I give this software a 7 out of 10.

This software is Open Source. It would be nice if one of the scouters out there could develop a scouting version!!!

--Happy Scouting