Dreamweaver Alternatives

Aptana is free and pretty robust, however it doesn't have one thing, wysiwyg editing. What I mean is you can't edit the page like a Word document, a very nice feature of DW. You can configure it to view your work in multiple browsers, but all editing is in code. The built-in FTP work very nice, maybe better than DW. The interface is confusing at first. I deleted most of the panels in the workspace. You can add them back as you get more comfortable.


SeaMonkey is an updated version of the old Netscape Suite. It offers wysiwyg editing, but the FTP features are very weak. It's upload only. Although you could use separate software for ftp'ing. It's not as nice a workflow. With every change to a page, means you have to upload a file in a separate program. The interface is easier than Aptana and it seems very stable.

KompoZer is the best of both worlds. It's built on the same codebase as SeaMonkey's web editor and the Nvu program, but it's much better than both. The Ftp features are faster and more stable than in Nvu. The KompoZer development group really just took over for Nvu community. It is for this reason that I would use this software for teaching any sort of basic web development.

An important selection criteria for me in evaluating free and open-source software (FOSS), is to read up on the development community's support of the project. Without their continual efforts, exposed bugs will never get fixed. In my field, I'm often evaluating the viability of software for students to learn in order to get work done. Taking this user-centered approach to product evaluation, I need to make sure that the interface is easy for a beginner to figure out, and that the necessary features are present. Buggy software is just not a good teaching situation, students get frustrated because they have not learned to discriminate errors of their own from errors of the software.