Web pages don't begin life as the formatted, graphics-rich documents you see in your browser. They're just plain-text documents written up in HTML, which uses special commands to represent styles, hypertext links, and graphics. But some Web authoring tools try to display your pages as a Web browser would
Tonya Engst
These graphical tools let you edit a fully formatted page, which is transformed into HTML code behind the scenes. Although a WYSIWYG page editor can help you see how your page will look on the Web, it's important to remember that such editors offer only an approximation of the final Web page; every Web browser displays HTML differently, so there's no guarantee that a finely aligned graphic in your HTML page editor will be equally aligned when it's displayed in Browser X.
Perhaps the best-known Web authoring tool is Adobe PageMill 1.0. Web authors who know nothing abut HTML can use PageMill's completely visual approach to design Web pages. Even veteran HTML jockeys will find that PageMill is great for quickly designing pages with drag-and-drop techniques instead of by tediously typing or inserting HTML tags.
PageMill feels a lot like a primitive version of PageMaker -- you create text and graphic elements in other programs and then assemble those elements in PageMill. You can also type directly into a PageMill document. Once text is in PageMill, you can apply formats that correspond to HTML tags. Making hypertext links is childishly simple: Select the text you want to be linked, type Enter, and then type or paste in the destination address in URL format. PageMill also easily handles the GIF and JPEG image formats common on the Web, automatically converting images saved in PICT format into GIFs. You can make sections of GIF images transparent within PageMill and can create image-map files as well, although setting up those files on a Web server is still a complicated process.
PageMill supports the creation of fill-in forms via a simple interface that's a big improvement on creating them by hand. The program supports many common HTML tags but only a few of the "extended" tags popularized by Netscape Navigator. It doesn't yet support wrapping text around images, nor does it support tables, which limits its utility.
PageMill is a great layout-prototyping tool, but it falls short in most other departments. It offers no find-and-replace command, and the HTML it generates contains enough idiosyncrasies that many Web authors will want to tweak the HTML code before they post it.
Despite these drawbacks, PageMill is one of the few Web authoring programs we can actually describe as fun. You can get the hang of PageMill in much less time than it takes to learn HTML. PageMill 2.0, which arrives later this year (see "Adobe Responds to PageMill's Critics," July '96, page 28), will correct many of the original's limitations: It will support more HTML, including tables, and will have more sophisticated text-editing commands.
Concept 1's Tapestry 1.0 is another WYSIWYG HTML editor with an easy, elegant interface. We like how Tapestry offers drag-and-drop and dialog-box options for adding internal links and graphics to a page. Tapestry's external-linking feature also works well -- you can optionally set up external links by dragging them from your browser's window to Tapestry's. Unfortunately, you cannot drag and drop text or graphics once they are placed in a document.
That's the good news. The bad news is that Tapestry is so seriously limited in functionality that is useless for most Web authoring. The program supports only a small subset of commonly accepted HTML tags, leaving out even basic tags such as headings and lists. To make matters worse, there's no way to type additional tags into a Tapestry document. And Tapestry doesn't offer a spelling checker or the ability to preview your HTML files in a Web browser.
In its current incarnation, Tapestry would be a good choice for users who can't contend with HTML tags and will only be authoring a simple home page.
GNN Hosting's GNNPress 1.1 (formerly NaviPress) contains a gold mine of features and offers support for an extensive set of HTML tags, but it's held back by a bad interface and documentation written for the Windows version of the software.
GNNPress has one of the best graphical table editors around, and we like its Show HTML view, which lets you type in tags by hand or modify them via a search-and-replace command. We were also intrigued by GNNPress' implementation of style sheets, an advanced HTML feature most Web browsers do not currently support.
One of the most notable attributes of GNNPress is that it's actually a functional (if slow) Web browser -- you can use it to view any Web page on the Net and then edit that page. If your Web server is running GNN Hosting's server application (which isn't available for the Macintosh), you can save edited pages directly to the Web site. It's a great feature, but since it's limited to GNN Hosting's own server software, few people will get a chance to use it.
However, the game will heat up for PageMill, Tapestry, and GNNPress later on this year when Netscape ships Netscape Navigator Gold for the Macintosh, a version of its popular Web browser that will serve as both a browser and a Web authoring tool. Features we expect to see (and are looking forward to) include drag-and-drop support for adding graphics and links, easy editing of pages already posted on the Web, multiple undos, and extensive support for a variety of HTML tags.
Adobe PageMill 1.0
An authoring tool that's actually fun to use, PageMill is great for prototyping Web pages.
GNNPress 1.1
A gold mine of useful features that's held back by a bad interface and worse documentation.
