Sticking to standards can therefore lead to issues with certain web browsers, which lack support for the latest tags or render pages wrong.

The W3C therefore has its own web browser and editor which adheres to standards more than many browsers and supports certain new technologies others don’t, such as RDF annotation. This browser is Amaya, an open-source and cross-platform browser.

Amaya can handle a wide-range of open file formats, including HTML, CSS, XHTML, SVG and MathML.

The software integrates the browser and web editor: when you go to a web page, it can be edited inside the browser. It also instantly displays syntactic errors.

It also integrates the mark-up languages. For example, in a web page, one can write formulae utilising MathML or add SVG shapes inside the software.

Amaya is a reasonable WYSIWYG editor and a good web browser for developmental purposes. It is also good to produce rich web-pages, which include other pieces of mark-up than HTML.

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Whilst KompoZer has not been updated since 2007, the major mark-up languages haven’t changed since then so it should still work. KompoZer is based on Gecko, the rendering engine which Mozilla amongst others utilise, and is a fork of Nvu (another WYSIWYG editor which is now not developed), itself a fork of Mozilla Composer!

KompoZer has all the obvious features of a WYSIWYG web editor: HTML and CSS can be edited; FTP support; tables; and tabs to navigate between pages and views. Some nicer features include an integrated W3 validator and support for XFN.

Binaries are available for Win32, PPC Macs (which will run on Intel-based ones) and Linux. Source is also available so it can be compiled for other operating systems.

Like Nvu, the application can be used from a USB pen.

I personally use KompoZer if I quickly need to whip up a webpage and I don’t have the patience to code it in Textmate. It’s certainly usable, produces relatively clean code and it’s £500 cheaper than Dreamweaver!

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