Open Source E-Learning 4: KompoZer Web Editor
E-learning is intimately bound to IT networks and to the World Wide Web. At their heart, many e-learning courses are just specialized websites, and most are created with some input from a website authoring tool. Website authoring tools are applications to build and link individual web pages to create a website.
Website authoring tools are not stand-alone applications; their purpose is to create design content to be distributed to learners via web servers. Website authoring tools are also reliant on media editors for the graphics, animations, audio, video and other media integrated into courseware.
Today’s open source e-learning toolkit component is a website authoring tool called KompoZer.
KompoZer is a complete web authoring system that combines web file management and easy-to-use WYSIWYG web page editing capabilities found in Microsoft FrontPage, Adobe DreamWeaver and other high end programs. The application is designed to be extremely easy to use, making it ideal for non-specialist users who just want to create an attractive professional-looking website without needing to know HTML or web coding (see Figure 1).
Figure 1. KompoZer User Interface
[Click to Enlarge]
According to KompoZer’s developers, the application supports:
- WYSIWYG editing of pages, making web creation as easy as typing a letter with your word processor.
- Integrated file management via FTP. Simply login to your website and navigate through your files, editing web pages on the fly, directly from your site.
- Reliable HTML code creation that will work with all of today’s most popular browsers.
- Navigate between WYSIWYG Editing Mode and HTML using tabs.
- Tabbed editing to make working on multiple pages a snap.
- Powerful support for forms, tables, and templates.
- An easy-to-use, web authoring system for Linux, Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh.
| Key Features and Capabilities | |
| FTP site manager | All the sites you specify in your Publishing Settings become navigable in a sidebar. KompoZer supports an MS Explorer-style site tree view, or a directory-only view. It is also possible to filter / show all files, HTML documents only, or image files only. |
| Color Picker | KompoZer has an extended color picker. Colors can be set from the RGB, hue, saturation, and brightness choosers. |
| Tabs | Have one window only on your screen and edit several documents at once, each document having its own Undo/Redo stack! Just glance at the tabs to know if a document needs to be saved or not. |
| CSS Editor | Create style sheets easily and manage the styles attached to your documents. You can see your style settings applied ‘”live” to the document you’re editing. |
| Styles Properties | KompoZer allows you to right-click on any element in the hierarchical toolbar at the bottom of the window and directly set its style properties. |
| Customizable Toolbars | Customize your toolbar and show only the buttons you want/need. |
| Forms | Use a XUL-based UI to edit all your forms, and edit all your form elements. |
| Cleaner Markup | KompoZer contains functionality to clean up redundant tags and to call W3C’s HTML validator from within KompoZer. |
| XFN | When you create a new link to an external resource, or when you edit an existing link, you can now add XHTML Friends Network information to say that the owner of that resource is someone you know and trust. |
| Visible Editing/Layout Marks | In a complex page layout, you often need to see visible carriage returns and block borders. KompoZer can now do that for you. And of course, everything is controlled by a CSS style sheet so you can customize those marks and replace them with your own. |
| Table/Cell Resizing Rulers | Enable you to adjust the size of rows and columns in any table in the web page you design. |
| Automated Spellchecker | The integrated in-line spellchecker will underline all misspelled words as you type to ensure correct spelling throughout the entire web page. |
Click here to download KompoZer.
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October 12 2009 03:30 pm | e-learning
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