A DECADE AGO, PageMaker sparked a revolution by bringing paper-publishing tools to the masses. Now Adobe and Netscape Communications are following in Aldus' footsteps, with products that may make creating sites on the World Wide Web as easy as editing a word-processing document.
Until now, putting material on the Web has meant dealing with the codes and tags of HTML (HyperText Markup Language). True, there have been utilities to make creating Web pages easier -- but all of them still required knowledge of HTML. Now, Netscape Navigator Gold ($79) and Adobe's PageMill ($195) give users WYSIWYG Web tools that let them type or paste text into a window and apply styles to it without seeing one or tag.
Netscape Navigator Gold. Incorporating all the new features of Netscape Navigator 2.0 (see related story), Netscape Navigator Gold allows you to edit HTML documents in the same window you use in order to surf the Web. You can drag and drop images, QuickTime movies, and other items into the Navigator Gold window. Essentially, if you can view something in Netscape Navigator 2.0, you can create it by using Netscape Navigator Gold.
PageMill. Acquired by Adobe from Ceneca Communications, PageMill doesn't support all the HTML bells and whistles that are supported by Netscape Navigator 2.0, but it makes creating pages easy: You can drag and drop images into a PageMill window, and they're automatically converted into Web-standard GIF files. Clicking on buttons in PageMill's tool bar lets you create interactive forms in seconds. Double-clicking on an image lets you set its transparency color and even create a clickable image map.
SiteMill. Navigator Gold and PageMill allow you to edit only one Web page at a time. Adobe's SiteMill ($795) lets you administer all the text and image files that make up a Web site. In addition to incorporating all the page-editing functionality of PageMill, SiteMill lets you view which files a given page links to and which pages link to that page and highlights incorrect links in red. And if you move or rename a file or discover that one of your external links has changed, SiteMill will automatically update every link in your site so it points to the correct URL.
Netscape plans to offer a similar tool, called Site Manager, that will be available only as a part of its LiveWire server package ($500) for Windows and UNIX, ceding the Mac site-administration game to Adobe -- at least for the time being. Adobe, 415-842-6810. Netscape, 415-528-2555; info@netscape.com.
PageMill lets you edit Web pages as they appear, with no arcane HTML codes.
