Stower, I'm looking for Website design software, too. Generally, "WYSIWYG" is an acronym which means "What You See Is What You Get," and may not be the name of a secondary program that KompoZer makes use of (or maybe it is, but I doubt it - does anybody know for sure?). This KompoZer tutorial (click) may give you an idea how it works. WYSIWYG functionality is very useful in Web Page design, since it allows you to easily see how the page is going to look. Has anybody here used Kompozer, and can you give us an evaluation of it? I'm looking for something that produces simple HTML. Most programs I've seen produce a page with a huge amount of garbage you don't need, like identical formatting commands for every line on the page instead of a single command for a whole section. So, I'm thinking you misunderstood the advice you got on WYSIWYG - I can't imagine why anybody wouldn't want to easily see how their end product will appear.

I maintain the Wellspring Women's Center Website (click), and I also use a lot of HTML at Mudcat and a couple of other Websites. The women's center Website was already in place when I took it over, and I simply made updates to most of the pages and preserved the existing format. Our development director sends me PDF files for posting, and I grudgingly accommodate her. I really don't like the idea of using PDF files so extensively, but it does get information posted in the format she wants. She's done some pages in Microsoft Publisher and saved them as HTML; but Publisher does a much better job of PDF, than it does of HTML. So, I'm looking for a program both she and I can use, that will create ungarbaged HTML pages that look good. The development director is fairly technically adept, but she isn't willing to learn HTML.

I use naked HTML in Notepad for designing Web pages, and that limits me to fairly simple designs. I use tables to locate text and images where I want them, and that works pretty well for me. I do wish I had a better understanding of the <div> command for locating things on a Web Page. That's my greatest shortcoming - learning how to put things where I want them on a page.

I'm tempted to get DreamWeaver, but I'm not sure of the legality of it all. I can get it at a very reasonable price for the Women's Center (it's actually a donation from Adobe with a processing fee from techsoup.com, but I do most of the Web Page work at home, on my own computer. So, if I get a software package as a donation to a nonprofit, is it legal to use it on my home computer? I think I'd have to hire a lawyer to study the user agreement to figure that one out. I suppose I could donate a laptop to the Women's Center and then put the donated software on it and use it just for the Women's Center, but it would be easier to just do it on my own computer.

-Joe-

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This page (click) on Web Page Authoring Tools looks interesting.
This Wikipedia page (HTML Editor) may also be helpful, and will clarify the issue of WYSIWYG editing.