 Its simple, smooth and fast. Sometimes you just need to create simple web pages without any fancy stuff and without having to use advanced programs like NVU or Kompozer. This is where BlockNote shines! It is pure graphical design without any writing of code. Its small - only 2mb disc space needed! And it is freeware!
Of course, if you are designing a full site you need access to the code so you can add "meta tags" for the title and keywords etc, and NVU is more suited to full site design. But there are occasions where a very simple designer can be a real time-saver. Two examples are:
a) When designing a "newsletter" type email. In this case you definitely do NOT want any fancy extra stuff, and simplicity is a real must.
b) To design pages for an HTML Help File (chm). Again the pages need to be kept simple - headers are a waste of space. BlockNote looks very similar to NVU initially, but you'll notice there are no tabs for "code" or "preview". You design your pages by drag'n'drop or menu, and type text at the keyboard. To preview it you simply need to save the file then open it in your web browser (this is actually preferable to an internal preview anyway, because internals are often inaccurate). And if you need to add anything to the header section that BlockNote cannot do, simply open the file with notepad and do it manually. All the commonly used functions are available - tables, pictures, text formatting, and alignments of objects. But there's more... - BlockNote can print its pages, properly formatted without anything cut off. It also has a print preview. In fact it could easily be used as a very efficient word processor. Special page breaks can also be inserted just for printing.
- It has a built-in spell checker.
- It can open multiple files for working on simultaneously.
- As well as opening html files, it can open eml files. For those who don't know, an eml file is the raw file format that all emails are sent as. If you've ever been sent one of these as an attachment you'll know how fiddly it is to extract or view it. But if you open it in BlockNote, the html section will be displayed perfectly - even with any embedded images!
- BlockNote can also create eml files, although I have not yet found a use for this.
- And best of all - BlockNote has a built-in good quality PDF creator!
- BlockNote can send an opened html page to OutLook Express. This is quite a rare thing. Most programs that have a "send by email" function actually send the file to OutLook only, which not everybody uses. So sending it to Outlook Express is unusual but very handy! You could design a newsletter, then choose "send by email" from the menu, and it will open OE with the email ready to send, complete with images embedded for you. You could then select a group of addresses to send to.
BlockNote is a little freeware gem that is well worth having. BLOCKNOTE WEBSITE AND DOWNLOAD |
