i am doing a lot of php scripting and i am using frontpage on a windows machine to do a lot of the html coding. i was wondering if anyone knows a good WYSIWYG (visual based) editor for linux. I don't need it to be too fancy, just good enough for creating forms and basic tables and such.

For a quick review, look at
http://www.maximumlinux.com/howtos/howto/2001-01-26/

Other thoughts - Coffeecup, a q+d html editor on the Windows platform is also available for Linux, is free, but not open source.

Bluefish has fans, appears capable, is WYSIWYN, the N being Need, but I think I determine what I need better than they do...

Webhand (see the review) is probably best described as beta, but looks interesting.

Web Designer has promise but is not WYSIWIG

Ashe looks like what I'd try first, if I were you. From the RPI guys, looks powerful with a "double decker" approach (write code in upper window, see results in lower window).
http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~puninj/TALK/head.html

Or, of course, use Star office and publish your page created in any app to HTML.