kompozer

Featured Freeware: KompoZer

If you dislike that achy, bloated feeling that other HTML editors can give your computer, KompoZer and its portable edition might be the freeware cure you're looking for. An open-source Web-development tool built on the NVU architecture, KompoZer aims to improve upon the NVU's bugginess.

It does a fairly admirable job of that, while not being bloatware. Major editing buttons live on the top three-tier toolbar, including a one-click Publishing icon as well as one-clicks for Image insertion and Table and Form creation. Font tweaks like Size and Style live in toolbars just below that, making for easy … Read more

Roll your own Adobe CS3 for free

So, you need to finish up a design project that requires the image-editing capabilities of Photoshop along with the vectorized lines of Illustrator, and it needs to be animated in Flash with documentation in a PDF. However, you blew your budget on bling and a sweet alpaca-skin bongo set.

Take your head out of the microwave. There is indeed a way to save your project and your wallet from the $2,500 price tag of Adobe Creative Suite 3. You just have to be a bit...creative.

Photoshop is arguably the most powerful and certainly the most well-known of the Adobe set. Heck, the term "photoshop" is now a slang verb that describes altering an image. The program's popularity is well-deserved, with an array of features that is mind-boggling. Unfortunately, that incredible feature set comes with associated bloat, and Photoshop is quickly becoming the military tank of image editors: yes, it gets the job done, but no, the job description should not include cruising down Highway 101.… Read more