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Why I love Namo WebEditor
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A Little Buggy, but Still OK Namo WebEditor used to be perfect, but the last couple of versions have been a little buggy. Until I figured out how to avoid most of the problems, I hated Namo WebEditor sometimes. I used the hate constructively and took the extra boost of hate energy to figure out how to use Namo WebEditor without making it crash so many times. Now that I know what to do and what not to do, it hardly ever crashes. Even with the bugs, it's under $100, so it's still worth it. I haven't used anything in a similar price range that was any better. The split screen that shows an HTML and a WYSIWYG view is extremely helpful. Once you learn to work around the main bug that can cause the program to crash, it's not as frustrating to use.
The main bug that Namo WebEditor 2006 has is related to UNDO and REDO when using the split screen. Just using UNDO/REDO in split screen mode can crash the program once in a while. The program can also crash in split screen mode if you save a page while there are things in the UNDO list. To avoid crashing the program, I try not to use UNDO or REDO while using the split screen. And before I save a page, I click in the other split screen that I'm not using and that deactivates UNDO. Once the UNDO/REDO icons have a faded look, meaning you can't undo or redo anything, it's safe to save your page.
I also have no problems if I remember to stay in the full HTML editor to save my page after using the Clean Up HTML feature. If I switch to the split screen after cleaning up the code and then try to save the page, the program will crash.
Even after all of that bad stuff, I'm glad that I had Namo WebEditor in March of 2006. I renamed and moved most of my web pages and when I thought I had everything perfect, I ran the built-in broken link checker and discovered that around 5 pages had broken links. I might hate Namo WebEditor sometimes, but it's still nice to have around. And it's still easier to use than other web editing software that I have tried.
Fast and Affordable I love Namo WebEditor because it's fast (version 5.5 worked smoothly on my old 233 MHz computer), it's easy to use, it's affordable, and it has many useful features (far beyond my expectations). I used versions 5.0, 5.5, 6.0 and now Namo WebEditor 2006. Version 6.0 brought some great changes, but it was also buggy. The 2006 version seems to have fewer bugs, but it can crash often if you don't know how to avoid the problems and it will mess up your code if you leave "Soft-wrap lines" turned on.
A Better Copy and Paste When I copy and paste text using Namo WebEditor, it remembers everything: style, font, color, links, and so on; so I can copy or cut a chunk of text and move it 'as is' to a different place on a page or to another page. What a huge change from other WYSIWYG editors I've tried that only copy the plain text (stripped of everything including links). Namo WebEditor also lets you copy and paste character attributes, paragraph style, font color, background color, table properties, cell properties, and more to existing text. Very cool.
Simultaneous Source View 
Namo WebEditor is great if you don't know HTML, but if you want to edit the code, you have instant access to it (you can instantly flip back and forth between the WYSIWYG editor and the HTML editor). No matter where the cursor is in the WYSIWYG editor, it stays in the same place when you look at the HTML (so you don't have to hunt down the spot you want to examine or change). Even people who know HTML would like the HTML editor since everything is color coded and easier to read. Here's more great news. If you use version 6.0 and beyond, there is a tab that lets you see the WYSIWYG editor and the HTML editor on the screen at the same time!
Flipping back and forth was great, but this split screen is even better if you like to use both editors a lot. It's also adjustable so you can have either view as large or as small as you want.
Must-Have Tools Namo WebEditor has a built-in spell checker, multiple undo/redo, case changer (upper case, lower case, sentence case, and more), HTML verification, and it will also clean up the HTML for you if you want. Instantly know how large your page is and approximately how fast it will take to load, search for orphaned files, find broken links, and so on. You might expect Namo WebEditor to have Find & Replace, but it also has global Find & Replace. Search a folder or search your whole web site and you can do in seconds what might have taken you days to do using another web editor or Notepad. For example, you could quickly change the copyright date on all of your pages. Global Find & Replace is a powerful feature, so your search should be specific and be sure to make a backup copy of your web site before using it. I haven't messed up yet, but people could end up replacing things they didn't count on if they are careless.
Before You Buy If you're thinking about buying Namo WebEditor, you might want to know that I do not use the local site feature and the site tree. I created a plain HTML page, fixed it up the way I wanted using the WYSIWYG editor and then made copies of it as a kind of template for each new page. That way every page still has all of the important stuff in the same place, but I don't have to deal with the weirdness of Namo's local site feature. It's just too complicated and goofy for me to mess with. You might have better luck with it, but I don't like it.
I know a little more HTML than I used to, so I use the split screen and make most changes in the HTML section and mostly use the WYSIWYG section to see how it's looking and to quickly place the flashing cursor where I want it.
I have mentioned some of my favorite things about Namo WebEditor on this page, but don't think that's everything. It would take too long for me to mention it all. You can try Namo WebEditor for free at Namo.com.
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Namo WebEditor Tips Time Saver If you work on normal HTML pages and you want to save a little time, instead of opening a page by clicking on Open under the File menu, just keep the Publish Window open and double click on a local file there. That way the file will already be highlighted and ready to upload when you are finished editing it. When you're done, just connect, highlight the correct remote site folder, right click on the highlighted local file and select Upload. I also do this for opening multiple files by using the mouse and Shift key to highlight files that are in a row or the mouse and Ctrl key for scattered files. Using the Publish Window for opening and uploading files has saved me a lot of time and extra clicking.
Bye Bye SPAN Many WYSIWYG editors stuff unnecessary SPAN code into web pages. If you have SPAN infested pages from another editor, you can clean them up in two easy ways. One powerful choice is to left click on the HTML editor tab, right click on your code and select Clean Up HTML. That allows you to instantly remove specific tags, including SPAN. I don't recommend doing that unless you are sure you want to remove every bit of SPAN code. A safer way is to left click on the WYSIWYG Editor tab, highlight the text you want to strip and click on the Clear Character Format button (looks like the letter A with an eraser sticking out of it). That will also take out bold, italics, and so on, so you'll have to pay attention. Goodbye Homestead I used Homestead's "what you see is what you get," drag & drop editor called SiteBuilder Classic since February of 2000 which made me dependant on Homestead. I didn't like being dependant on a host that seemed shaky at various times over the years, but I was afraid to leave. I couldn't leave Homestead since I'm incapable of learning enough HTML to write my own code, and I couldn't find an alternative editor that was as easy to use as SiteBuilder Classic.
A member at the Homestead forums posted a thread about Namo WebEditor in January of 2003, so I downloaded the fully functional demo and I loved it. My fear was gone. I could finally leave Homestead and sign up with any host I wanted to without worrying. It was also nice to know that I didn't need a separate FTP program to upload my files to a new host because Namo WebEditor has that ability built right in.
When I used SiteBuilder Classic, I had to keep moving things up or down the page any time I deleted text or added text. But now I use tables with Namo WebEditor, so I can mess with the text as much as I want or add images and everything automatically adjusts for me. That's a huge time saver.
Back when I was looking for an alternative to SiteBuilder, one of the programs I tried was called Cool Page. Although it was similar to SiteBuilder, it wasn't as good, it was harder to use, and you couldn't use keyboard shortcuts. Besides that, Cool Page suffered from many of the same problems SiteBuilder had. You couldn't add things to a page without manually moving things up or down. A big time waster and just too much trouble. |
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Disclaimer View this page and any external web sites at your own risk. I am not responsible for any possible spiritual, emotional, physical, financial or any other damage to you, your friends, family, ancestors, or descendants in the past, present, or future, living or dead, in this dimension or any other.
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