Give Caesar What Belongs to Caesar
By glazou on Thursday 3 June 2004, 23:31 - Nvu - Permalink
BlockNote.net is...uhhh.. an HTML editor. Yes, one could say a competitor to Nvu 
It's a commercial product. It's really for beginners and it's quite weak but it has a fast rendering/editing engine and a few remarkable UI stuff that need to be quoted as such:
- the table insertion dialog; I really like it
- the table manipulation UI; I love it. I am really jealous here, BlockNote.net's author has used a superb metaphor, and I find it better than my inline table editing thingies
Comments
>>the table manipulation UI.
But then I can wait until around version 1.0 one day if that is to happen.
I can't live without it too.
Just copy it !!!
May want to take a look at Claris Home Page 3.0. IMHO one of the best, especially with tables.
But it's code was terrible (even for it's time), and it's terribly outdated now.
But a great UI.
Quoting from the features page: "Tables are essential in shaping and defining the layout of HTML documents." I doubt Daniel shares _this_ point of view
Thanks Daniel, for your comments about the Blocknote.
Indeed, fast rendering and tables were highest priorities at design time.
And about "Tables are essential in shaping...".
1) They provide layout facilities which cannot be reproduced so far by CSS and any other HTML element.
(e.g. see discussion about %% units here lists.w3.org/Archives/Pub... )
2) They really essential for non-experienced WYSIWYG user. I did not find a proper metaphor to deal with e.g. display:block-inline style using only WYSIWYG tools. Tables are too easy to use for non-experienced user. And such users are the target auditorium for WYSIWYG HTML editing applications.
Andrew Fedoniouk.
Ricky: you don't know my thoughts. And my thoughts are quite far from what you think they are.
Daniel: I'd love to hear your thoughts on table-based layout, since you appear not to partake in the general tables-for-layout-are-evil mass. Also, would you happen to have a couple screenshots of this table UI you enjoy so much in action? I confess I do not feel like downloading and installing it on the off chance that I'll get just what you mean.
I have no idea what in particular Daniel found "exciting" in BlockNote tables but this feature www.blocknote.net/info/ru...
is definitely unique and handy.
One more "non-standard" feature is how BlockNote handles table insertions. There is special positions of caret before and after the row. Placing caret there and pressing CTRL-V you can insert e.g. blocks of rows (from clipboard) before or after the row. You can insert there even other tables - they will be inserted "inline" and not as separate table. If you will press Enter at that position, BlockNote will just insert empty row there.
PS: I could share the code of these rulers implementation (nothing spectacular there though) but they so deeply integrated with my HTML renderer that it is merely useless in Gecko.
The idea of an HTML editor that can be used like a simple word processor is very good. More and more people want to create documents for E-mail and maybe for the Web, but not so much for the printer.
I'd love to see Nvu have a 'word-processing mode'.
Amaya demonstrates some features that could be used to take this idea even further.
I agree that tables are important in this context.