Nvu

NvU is an Open Source Web editing application that allows WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editing and creation of web pages. The NvU website is at: http://www.nvu.com

While not quite as sophisticated as 'professional' commercial applications, NvU can be easier to learn to use. More importantly, it generates good clean HTML code.

About this tutorial

All the examples in this tutorial are based on running NvU under the Linux operating system. Fortunately, NvU operates pretty much the same regardless of which system it is running under. All the examples given will be equally applicable under OS X and Windows. In the event that there is a difference, separate instructions for each operating system will be provided. This tutorial is written for someone who has little or no previous experience creating web pages or working with HTML code, and are looking for a tool to quickly and easily get content ready to put on the web. It should also be useful to anyone who is used to other WYSIWYG web editing applications, and is looking to see what NvU has on offer. You will not need any knowledge of HTML to create a web page using this tutorial.

This tutorial will cover:

  • The anatomy of a website
  • How to enter text and images
  • How links work
  • Using styles to easily control the "look and feel" of your page
  • Using Cascading Style Sheets to easily manage the use of styles

By the time you complete this tutorial, you should be able to create your own complete and functional web page. You should also be able to styles to customise the look and feel of your site without affecting the content of the pages.

However, it beyond the scope of this tutorial to cover the details of getting your site published on the web or the inner workings of HTML code. So this tutorial makes a couple of assumptions about its readers:

  • You are familiar with the basics of your operating system (NvU works on OS X, Linux, and Windows) and you know how to install applications on your computer.
  • You are familiar with the basics of resizing and manipulating images using a program similar to the GIMP.
  • You have a hosting solution for your site, and have all the information needed to get the pages you create posted on the web.

The last assumption is not strictly required to use NvU or create web pages in general, but will be necessary if you want others to be able to see your site. See the links section if you need more information about how to get your site published on the web.

A quick note about instructions regarding menu navigation

NvU uses a system of drop - down menus to access most of the options the program offers. I'll use the following format to describe how to navigate the menus:

Menu > Submenu > Submenu

for example, to change to visibility of the formatting tool bar you would go to

View > Show/Hide > Customize Toolbar > Format toolbar

Which would look like this:

Menu example

Buttons

Whenever you need to click on a button on one of the NvU windows it will notated as follows:

"Button"

For example "link" would indicate this:

Now let get started...