BlueGriffon is SELLING its user manual, & that’s bullshit

First there was Netscape Composer, a WYSIWYG for creating webpages that was part of the Netscape suite. It was never great, just OK. It faded into irrelevance.

Then it was followed by Nvu, an open fork of Composer that was slightly better but didn’t set the world on fire. It faded into irrelevance.

Then that was followed by KompoZer, a community-driven fork of Nvu that fixed a few things in Nvu but was still just fair to middling. It’s still around, but it’s not something I would recommend.

Now the latest on the scene is BlueGriffon, developed by the same guy who wrote Nvu. Like the others, it’s written with Mozilla & XUL. It, however, is the best of the bunch. That still doesn’t mean it’s great.

I know HTML & CSS quite well, so I don’t need a WYSIWYG, but I know WYSIWYGs for creating webpages—I have to in order to teach my courses at Washington University in St. Louis. The best WYSIWYG by far is Dreamweaver, which pains me to say since it is expensive & owned by Adobe, who like to exploit the users of their software to squeeze every penny. If, however, you just have no money at all, or you’ve a devotee of open source & refuse to use closed source software, or if you just need a WYSIWYG for a very specific purpose. In my case, I use BlueGriffon when I need to generate a big, confusing table. Sure, I could do it in HTML, but it’s a PITA, so instead I open BlueGriffon & use that.

I needed to create a table today, so I downloaded BlueGriffon. The software itself is free, as are several add-ons¹, but the other add-ons cost money. Want to edit CSS? 9.99€. Like to see a word count? 2.49€. Need templates? 9.99€. And so on.

Now, I have absolutely no problem with BlueGriffon charging money for add-ons. Developers have the right to make money from their software, & charging money for add-ons is time-tested method to do so (although I think some of those costs are excessive & would never pay them²).

But today I noticed a new add-on: a User’s Manual. It’s described thusly: “The missing Users’s Manual for BlueGriffon… We finally have one!” Yes, there has never been a manual for the software. And now there is one. And it costs 5€.

That is ridiculous. It’s one thing to charge for add-ons, but making users pay for the manual is unfair, uncool, & user-unfriendly. A manual is a service you provide your users so they can better use your software. You don’t make them pay extra for it. The fact that the price is only 5€ has nothing to do with it. It’s still not a good thing for users, and BlueGriffon should immediately release the manual as a free add-on.