What Happened to KompoZer?
Sometimes our favorite Open Source Projects have issues, or get abandoned. One of my favorites was a WYSIWYG HTML Editor called “KompoZer.” It was based on Nvu, another editor I really liked, but KompoZer was a LOT better! The code is still available but the last version they put out does not support https (SSL) calls to embedded images. Pretty big issue! Anyway it is gone!
What Happened to KompoZer.net?
DropInBlog – “A recent study found that 48% of people base their impression of a business’s credibility on its website. However, not everyone is proficient in the complex skills of coding, which are often required for building websites. That’s where KompoZer.net came in. The HTML editor made it possible for people to design websites without the need to write code.
Even though some people were still recommending this website as recently as April 2018, it has not been actively developed for almost ten years, and the website has now gone dark. We took some time to follow the history of Kompozer.net to understand what happened to the site.
A Brief History of Kompozer.net
KompoZer was an open source HTML editor created in 2005 to fix bugs on a previous HTML editor, known as Nvu. Daniel Glazman developed Nvu. The lead developer of KompoZer.net was Fabien Cavanaze, who is also known as Kazé. KompoZer’s unique spelling might be linked to Kazé and Glazman’s names. However, the history record is not clear — it could simply have been an issue of failing to get a domain name where the word Composer could be used.
KompoZer was a form of WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get). As an open source HTML editor, KompoZer was a software application which allowed the user to create a webpage and make changes on it without having to use a code. Advanced users could also edit in code using the software.
Simple and Free
KompoZer’s primary appeal was its simplicity. It was not only easy to use, it was also free to use. WYSIWYG tools such as KompoZer.net also save users much time. For instance, there is no need to learn complex code to create structures such as tables. A simple push of the Table button can generate a table, and pushing the Source button displays the HTML code used to create the table.
KompoZer also made it possible for users to identify publishing errors quickly and provided ways to resolve them. The software was designed in such a way that files that failed to publish were not lost. You simply saved the file to a hard disk and tried again later (Source.)
KompoZer’s primary appeal was its simplicity. It was not only easy to use, it was also free to use. WYSIWYG tools such as KompoZer.net also save users much time. For instance, there is no need to learn complex code to create structures such as tables. A simple push of the Table button can generate a table, and pushing the Source button displays the HTML code used to create the table.
KompoZer also made it possible for users to identify publishing errors quickly and provided ways to resolve them. The software was designed in such a way that files that failed to publish were not lost. You simply saved the file to a hard disk and tried again later (Source.)
KompoZer’s Top Features
An HTML open source editor like KompoZer.net ensures that there is no need for hand coding when creating or editing a website’s content. The editor automates the process. For example, to insert a page title, you would simply type.
KompoZer was compatible with operating systems like Windows and Linux. It also incorporated the HTML editor with CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), a markup system that separated the look and feel from a page from the logic that controlled its functionality. The CSS editor helped users see changes made to a website instantly; giving them complete control over their web design.
KompoZer could also run multiple sites simultaneously, allowing users to multitask. It also had file management through FTP (File Transfer Protocol). This software enabled users to move between WYSIWYG and HTML.
The Glazbugs insult
In 2005, Daniel Glazman stopped development on Nvu to focus on other projects. In the interim, KompoZer.net was developed by Kazé. After identifying several bugs on the system, Kazé named these glitches ‘Glazbugs.’ Glazman was not amused. He confronted Kazé and accused him of failing to contact Linspire before starting work on KompoZer (Source). Linspire helped develop and sponsored Nvu.
The feud would escalate with Kazé saying that he had proposed several suggestions to Glazmen ‘but never got any reply.’ He continues, ‘So I don’t see the harm in bug fixing a free, open-source, unsupported app.’
Glazman would eventually relent but not without a warning: “I am glad to leave Nvu 1.0 codebase to Kazé who started integrating bug fixes, but I remind him that Nvu is a trademark by Linspire Inc…” (Source.)
Too busy to work on KompoZer
The last KompoZer update users report seeing is in 2010. In 2011, Kazé said in a blog post: ‘The KompoZer project is stalled at the moment since I am the only regular developer, and I am too busy.’ There seems to have been no more updates by Kazé after this statement. Even though there is no official information about the end of KompoZer.net, we believe that the resource was abandoned when no one could work on it.”