Quanta Mechanics: Professional Web Page Editor

by Eric Foster-Johnson

August 8, 2002 —

Over the years, the lack of quality desktop applications represented one
of Linux's long-time drawbacks. As application after application has
matured, that myth has certainly changed over the last few years. In the
area of Web page editing, I recently came across a standout Web editor
called Quanta Plus.

Quanta Plus provides a professional-looking Web page editor for the K
Desktop Environment (KDE). It helps you edit the HTML tags used in most
Web pages and provides extensive features for working with PHP scripts.
PHP is one way to create dynamic Web pages and is used on many popular
Internet discussion sites.

Quanta Plus presents a good-looking user interface, but the default mode
allows you to edit the HTML tags directly. This differs from many other
Web editors that strive to hide complex HTML behind a
What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) interface. The problem with
WYSIWYG interfaces is that you often need to manipulate the HTML
directly to create the effects you want.

While Quanta Plus can display a preview of your Web site, most of the
editing shows you the HTML tags, making Quanta Plus more of a tool for
experienced Web page creators than novices.

Like a number of Web tools such as Adobe Go Live!, Quanta Plus supports
the idea of projects. You can treat all the files for a given site as a
project, allowing you to better manage the disparate files that go into
any modern Web site. The ability to work with projects is an essential
feature for Web site management.

Based at http://quanta.sourceforge.net/, Quanta Plus uses the KDE
libraries. Note that even though Quanta Plus was written for the KDE
desktop, you can run Quanta Plus under the GNOME desktop as well. (This
is really true of virtually all KDE and GNOME applications, which run
fine under any desktop, but worth repeating to avoid confusion.)

The designers of Quanta Plus also integrated the program with a number
of tools, such as wget to allow you to download a Web site for editing,
and weblint to check on the correctness of your HTML tags. The PHP
support is great.

If you work with a PHP-based site, I recommend Quanta Plus. And, even if
your don't use PHP, Quanta Plus is a great tool for HTML-savvy Web page
creators.

ITworld