New KompoZer Development in 2009

KompoZer development, whether there is any development, the direction of development and when we can expect to see a new release of KompoZer, is a major topic of interest. I have reported what I know about KompoZer development several times but not recently in any detail. There is clearly development activity underway and I have now a hint of the features to be offered.

The Gecko Engine

The basic engine for KompoZer is the Gecko engine of Firefox 1. Having that old code base has created problems so Kazé has been working on an update. Here's part of what the developer said on the Open Discussion Forum on SourceForge:

"Most of the important work (i.e. porting KompoZer to Gecko 1.8.1) has been finished. The new code base is rock-solid: nobody in the test team has been able to crash or freeze the latest snapshots. I guess most of the critical bugs will be corrected with the upcoming version.

I’m rushing to publish a new official version before the FOSDEM (Brussels, 2009-02-08). "

The target for this development to be complete is less than a week from now. Lets hope nothing gets in his way.

What's Next?

Kazé has provided a screen shot of where his development is going. Looking at the picture I see something that resembles my screen when I'm using Firebug or Web Developer to examine a page. I'm comfortable with that after two or three years of playing with KompoZer but I wonder if I would have downloaded N|vu if it looked that complicated.

My interpretation of that screenshot is we will be able to edit CSS and HTML while looking at real time output. That can be done with the CSS editor now. Switching from a page of source code to normal view after making chenges in the code has often given me a surprise or two. Maybe seeing the changes in real time will be helpful.

Kazé is serious about page coding. I think he prefers more capability in an editor than the original intent of N|vu. Nothing wrong with that as long as web authors with no technical background are not scared away.

GeckoZone Chatter

There are lots of searches for "KompoZer Development" or "KompoZer Status" but everything about development is pretty much in the open. The developer gets busy at times, focused on KompoZer development or maybe on his day job, and disappears for a while. It takes a lot of effort to keep up with forums so he prefers to spend time on building KompoZer rather than engaging in discussions. But, I mentioned the discussion at SourceForge and if your French is good you can read GeckoZone . That forum is always pretty active with KompoZer development comments.

If your French is not so good you can translate GeckoZone with Goggle or go to the English-speaking forum. Kazé does keep that community updated from time to time. I seldom understand the technical part of the discussions but can see that a lot of work is taking place to move KompoZer forward.

So my bottom line is this: KompoZer is pretty darn good the way it is at 0.7.10 on my XP machine. (I understand new Linux releases are having problems and that is one driver for the new engine.) If nothing else changes I'm satisfied that KompoZer is good for novice web authoring and a great learning tool.

Wysi

; .