KompoZer

Web design tools may seem a dime a dozen these days, and that's because they are. Rapid advances in technology have allowed individuals to largely automate the process of writing HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code, and the market is flush with all in one design tools that allow you to put together an attractive and responsive website even if you possess no experience whatsoever. KompoZer offers a What You See is What You Get drag and drop interface for the ease of inexperienced coders, but it also offers advanced functionalities that allow the software to grow with you as you learn more about markup language and style sheets. It may not be on the level of professionalism as more serious industry programs like Adobe Dreamweaver and Microsoft FrontPage, but at the irresistible price point of free, it's a hard option to pass up, especially if you're dipping your toes into the world of web design for the first time. KompoZer also comes with a publishing system so that you won't have to use an outside tool to load it up to your website. New users will probably lean in hard to the WYSIWYG editor, and while there are a number of cool features here, they're surprisingly intuitive to learn. Tabbed editing lets you work on multiple pages all at once and sift between them easily, while a color picker automatically converts any of the colors you're working with directly into hex. The CSS editor sits alongside the traditional viewing panel, allowing you to see all of your changes in real time, a great option when you're trying to test out a variety of color schemes or other design fundamentals. You can rest easy knowing that even if you built your website completely with the web editor, it will be compliant with modern standards. KompoZer prescribes to the W3C web standards, the recognized state of consistency in the business. These standards are accomplished through an automated checker, so even if you write bits of code by hand, you won't have to worry about sloppy code that doesn't follow the proper etiquette. That means that whatever you create using the software, any future developers or designers can step right in and get a clear understanding of the sensibilities behind your design. While the default uses HTML 4.01 and CSS, you can adjust the settings to be compatible with older versions of language like XHTML and the outdated font tag based styling. For users getting back into HTML for the first time in years, this could serve as a more comfortable method for getting acquainted with the basics. KompoZer is a surprisingly powerful and dynamic tool, and while it likely won't be a full replacement for anyone using a dedicated content management system, it does enough right to make it a useful tool for inexperienced and low need users.