BlueGriffon is a feature-rich tabbed WYSIWYG content editor for the Web with formatting, spell-check and keyboard shortcuts. Powered by the rendering engine behind Firefox, it's a modern and robust solution to edit HTML in conformance to the latest standards, including HTML 4, XHTML 1 and HTML 5 documents. Includes the popular vector graphics editor SVG Edit and HTML files can be viewed in a rendered or a source-only mode that supports themes.
Note: Some features are for-pay including editing style sheets (thanks IanFromBarrie) and Full Screen view, but the program also supports many free add-ons similar to Firefox.
Cross-platform and intended to replace NVU, a tool written by the same author.
Category: | |
Runs on: | Win7 / Win8 / Win10 |
Writes settings to: | Application folder |
Stealth: ? | No. %APPDATA%\Mozilla |
Unicode support: | Yes |
Path portability: | No |
License: | Freemium (installer version is adware). Source code is MPL/GPL/LGPL. |
How to extract: | Download the ZIP package and extract to a folder of your choice. Launch bluegriffon.exe. |
Similar/alternative apps: | KompoZer Portable, NVU Portable |
What's new? |
See: https://github.com/therealglazou/bluegriffon/releases |
osirisgothra: Every WYSIWYG editor I've worked with requires that I go back at some point and fix something in the code that the macro editor side broke. In my experience so far, BlueGriffon does some things better, some things worse. As to the CSS and rigidity, I agree, but the truth is that this is the direction Adobe went with Dreamweaver and I think BlueGriffin is trying to be an OSS alternative to that program rather than a normal WYSIWYG.
v1.7.2
and a quick FYI about the comment on not having to pay for CSS editing, the "free one' in the program seems to be somewhat of a bad joke. It is a beat-around-the bush feature that lets you do something you wouldnt expect it to, and other features are just plain missing.. they may be there buried somewhere, but to a user who just installed it and is testing it out, it isn't very convincing, I did manage to find some of the features after an hour, and you shouldn't have to go into code to correct something that the editor did wrong. The spell checker seems like instead of correcting words it replaces the word and leaves the misspelled word right next to it. Like I said, maybe there is some option buried but to the new user of the product, it just doesn't do it. I ended up just writing my own simple WYSIWYG webpage editor in a few days and have the functionality i need... sheesh
v1.7.2
This is probably the worst WYSIWYG editor of all time, its ugly, its rigid, CSS functionality is crap because CSS isnt supposed to be a 'separate thing' anymore. Most every page out there uses CSS, it is pretty much a standard part of editing a web page. This is like getting a word processor and having them charge you to select fonts or change the font's color... sheesh it will take some MAJOR renovations to make me ever try this product again.
v1.7.2
BlueGriffon 1.7.1 failed to start for me because of a XML parsing error. The author is aware of the problem and recommends deleting the entire profile (which you can do by deleting the "data" directory).
I dug a bit deeper and found that it's enough if you
* delete the directory data\extensions, and
* delete all preferences that start with "extensions" from the file data\prefs.js.
v1.7.1
The workaround mentioned by SYSTEM also applies when you get the the same error in Firefox.
V1.5
A workaround in case BlueGriffon 1.5 fails to start due to a XML parsing error.
Open the file data\prefs.js with any text editor (Notepad is fine).
Search for the text "general.useragent.locale".
If you find that string, replace the line with
user_pref("general.useragent.locale", "en_US");
Otherwise insert that line anywhere in the file.
That change forces the application to the English language, regardless of your system locale.
V1.5
Chacoo, thanks for pointing out that creating new external style sheets is possible with the Plus icon. I missed that.
I don't understand what it is you're referring to about the CSS editor when you mention "all its CSS3 capability". Unlessi I'm missing another icon there is NO CSS capability in the editor.
By that I mean that the CSS editor I see in the portable version is a plain vanilla editor, with absolutely none of the CSS-specific code completion, point-and-shoot and syntax checking that a CSS editor has.
Sure, I can write CSS3 by hand with this editor ... but the whole point of this sort of tool is to not have to write code by hand, is it not?
V1.4
I find this discussion somewhat confused. I had expected it to be about the ‘Portable’ version of BlueGriffon, instead some of the comments seem to be about the basic product and I am not sure what refers to what.
Referring to Ian’s last post. As he says, basic BlueGriffon can create styles in a linked sheet if there is one already. What he misses is that you can easily create one by clicking the Plus icon at the bottom of the Stylesheets panel. Once you have the stylesheet in place the built in (free) CSS editor with all it’s CSS3 capability is fully available for use.
The ‘Plain vanilla’ editing that Ian refers to will be considered a boon by many but you don’t have to used it just use the style properties panel to do the heavy lifting.
These comments apply to the standard product I haven’t tested the portable version but assume it can do the same.
The limitation is that, if there are several stylesheets, the basic product, i.e. without the CSS Pro Editor, always creates new styles in the last listed stylesheet though it can still edit styles if the corresponding selector exists in another stylesheet. Not bad at all?
V1.4
The included HTML editor is excellent; automatically and instantly checks code for possible discrepancies and errors, highlighting their location on the horrizontal/vertical axis along the sides of the screen. Very helpful.
V1.4
extracting the installer works with Universal Extractor (last version: 1.6.1), when updating bin/innounp.exe to latest version.
v1.8