WITH THE ATTENTION the World Wide Web has been getting recently, it's not surprising to see the development of authoring packages designed to help users generate HTML (HyperText Markup Language, the Web's language) quickly. One of the latest contenders in this field is Astrobyte's BeyondPress QuarkXPress XTension, which turns QuarkXPress layouts into Web pages.
Easy Translation
BeyondPress' major strength is that it lets you generate basic HTML code with minimal effort. With BeyondPress, you can integrate any or all of the elements in your QuarkXPress layout into a list of HTML elements and create a basic, modifiable Web page, which BeyondPress calls an article. You can preview your articles, using your favorite Web browser. HTML tags (such as for line breaks and horizontal rules) can be inserted into articles without having an effect on the original QuarkXPress layout; in fact, manipulating any HTML element doesn't alter the QuarkXPress layout. Type styles set in QuarkXPress translate into HTML automatically, and BeyondPress lets you map QuarkXPress style sheets to HTML styles. We did notice, however, that BeyondPress doesn't generate the cleanest, most efficient HTML code we've seen, which means you should expect to spend some time tweaking the output yourself for maximum efficiency.
Tinkering Required. BeyondPress is especially problematic with graphics. It sets up HTML code for graphics placement and linking, takes a graphic from QuarkXPress (in TIFF, PICT or EPS format), and turns it into a JPEG or GIF file. The compression, transparency, and interlacing controls are adequate, if not as thorough as we'd like. All images are dithered to the 8-bit Mac color palette, whether you want that palette or not and regardless of the image's previous format and color depth.
Also lacking is support for some of the more colorful HTML 3.0 commands (such as those for creating customized backgrounds and color text). Designers will usually have to wind up reworking graphics outside BeyondPress by using image-translation and image-editing programs and relinking them to the Web page. In addition, with the growing number of commercial HTML-authoring options, we think BeyondPress' $595 price is too high.
BeyondPress is a solid program for using QuarkXPress as a template tool for generating basic HTML code, but it's almost impossible to use without resorting to a word processor to further refine the code. BeyondPress may provide a good start for creating well-designed, attractive Web sites, but it isn't a one-stop application. / David Biedny and Nathan Moody
