Watching the Web authoring field change is like watching a volcano-studded island. Sure, you get a few months of calm, but then a spurt of new product releases wreaks havoc on the landscapeShow full article

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Watching the Web authoring field change is like watching a volcano-studded island. Sure, you get a few months of calm, but then a spurt of new product releases wreaks havoc on the landscape. TidBITS hasn't reviewed many Web authoring programs lately, and it's time to correct that lapse. In this multi-part series, I plan to discuss much of the Web authoring software that has come out recently, with a focus on products that I think are most notable.

Choose Your Poison -- In choosing software for making Web pages, you generally trade easy layout for precise control, and most products fit neatly in a range between those two ideals. When choosing software, it's important to match your requirements to that range.

Our Web site is a great example of one that leans toward precise control. Because our pages stick around for so long, we avoid newfangled techniques that look great in modern browsers but have a greater potential to break in the future. A Web authoring tool that creates HTML behind the scenes make us nervous, because we can't control what it's doing. Also, in our seven-year history, we've undergone two major conversions of back issues: HyperCard to setext, and then setext to HTML. This has taught us the value of uniform formatting - it's easier to run macros on uniformly formatted documents. We also don't have bosses breathing down our necks, so our site can evolve slowly.

<http://www.tidbits.com/>

In contrast, webmasters creating sites that must go up overnight or that will have short lives have neither time nor incentive to worry about perfect, uniform HTML. These people require quick, easy layout.

For instance, programs like NetObjects Fusion offers easy layout - page layout always occurs on a grid, and you can drag page elements to any location. The grid converts to an HTML table behind the scenes. You cannot edit HTML within Fusion, and you would not wish to - the table tags are extremely complex. (Although Fusion 2.0 ships with the free BBEdit Lite, BBEdit Lite is for use with "external pages," which cannot be edited in Fusion.) However, Fusion makes it easy to prototype and assemble a site rapidly.

<http://www.netobjects.com/>
<http://www.barebones.com/freeware.html>

Next come tools like Adobe PageMill. PageMill expects you to work in a view that works like a word processor - you can't drag stuff around willy-nilly as you can in Fusion. There is an HTML view for editing HTML directly, but you get the impression Adobe doesn't understand why you'd want to. The HTML from the likes of PageMill is usually human readable, though it tends to lack the uniformity required for automation.

<http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/pagemill/ main.html>

Finally, the spectrum ends with HTML editors like PageSpinner, where you work with HTML directly and see the visual results secondarily in a Web browser. Such an application makes it easy to create uniform, precise HTML, but you may have trouble visualizing what you are doing, and experimenting with layouts will be time consuming.

<http://www.algonet.se/~optima/pagespinner.html>

A program that spans the divide between easy layout and precise control is GoLive's CyberStudio Pro. CyberStudio Pro gives you an optional grid for drag-it-anywhere layouts, and it also provides quick access to the underlying HTML of any page.

<http://www.golive.com/>

Of course, there are other criteria for choosing Web authoring software, like whether you want to learn HTML, whether you tend to include a lot of plug-ins, whether you require site management features, and so on. Whatever your requirements, the rest of this installment will fill you in on PageSpinner 2.0.1 from Optima Systems and glance at cascading style sheets, a cool HTML specification.

A Great Value -- At $25, PageSpinner represents one of the best shareware values I've seen. At first glance, PageSpinner is deceptively simple. After launching, it displays a new document, populated by the HTML skeleton of a Web page. A simple toolbar holds basic options for tagging for the likes of bold text and horizontal rules, and a quick tour of the menus shows commands for styling text, setting up a table, and so on. A new user might read the fairly good Apple Guide-based description of how HTML works, and then plunge in using these immediately obvious options. Alert users will quickly identify modern features like an FTP upload (via a link to Fetch or Anarchie, though no download or integrated on-server editing), forms, and frames.

Options Galore -- PageSpinner's preferences offer a startling level of flexibility. For instance, if you don't want to see a new document when you start up, you can instead show an Open dialog, show a New dialog (which has extensive page setup features), or do nothing. Another notable setting is whether the bold and italic toolbar buttons set bold and italic tags, or strong and emphasis tags. In PageSpinner you can set whether Return or Command-Return automatically inserts a paragraph tag (you can use paragraph end-tags also, if you like). PageSpinner also has sensible keyboard shortcuts for inserting line breaks and horizontal rules.

Those who frequently work with upper-ASCII characters will love how PageSpinner treats these characters. One option keeps them in the document as they are typed on the Mac. Another converts them to the ISO 8859-1 character set, often used internationally. Save a file in either of these two formats, and the characters will look the same after the save. Finally, upper-ASCII characters can be converted to HTML entities, which, though correct, are awkward to read within an HTML document.

Another option that speaks to PageSpinner's flexibility is the User Tags feature, which enables users to create up to 18 tags of their own.

Just Kitting -- What makes PageSpinner a great value isn't its basic feature set, or even its flexibility. PageSpinner is less a program and more an HTML Assembly Kit - much like a Young Scientists' Chemistry Kit, with helpful instructions and easy projects for creating your very own quivering goo. It also has advanced projects, and those require exploration to find.

PageSpinner provides an HTML Assistant (accessed via a menu or you can just keep its window open), which has plenty of in-context help and gives working examples that you can paste into a document. Examples range from basic HTML (such as setting up links or headers) to advanced topics like JavaScript and frames. I've found the Assistant a great way to refresh my memory, and also a helpful stepping stone to learning new tags.

PageSpinner uses extensions (these work like plug-in modules, not system extensions) to add new features, and those who want to venture past the basic feature set will note an extension (plus help) for creating cascading style sheets (technically known as Cascading Style Sheets, Level 1, or CSS1). In its full implementation, CSS1 can flexibly specify fonts, sizes, position, blank space, colors, and more. Most measurements can be set specifically or generally (for instance, a font size could be 18 point or "extra large"). CSS1 is partially supported by Microsoft Internet Explorer and - in theory - will be robustly supported in Internet Explorer 4 and Netscape Communicator 4.

<http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/TR/REC-CSS1>

Style sheets have two compelling features. First, they work much like style sheets in a word processor - to change the look of every heading in a document, you change it once in the style sheet, not 50 times in the document. Style sheets can apply to a page section, an entire page, or even an entire site. Second, they separate structure from style, so pages can have simple HTML but still display in visually oriented glory in CSS1-savvy browsers (and, yes, at least in current examples and the spec, you can turn off style sheets in CSS1-savvy browsers, if you wish).

Other PageSpinner extensions help with creating JavaScripts, inserting Java applets, and handling Netscapisms like snaking columns and spacer tags.

PageSpinner unfolds further if you examine the files that come with it. I found directions for setting up "include" files (these are not server-side includes). An include file acts as a container for information referenced from within an HTML file. For example, if a group of Web pages all end with the same content, you could put that content in an include file. Then, on the Web pages, you'd simply add a pointer to the include file. Should you wish to change the content, you change only the include file and then update the entire group of pages, a much faster process than modifying each page by hand. Includes can also quickly update the time or date.

There's also a collection of sample AppleScripts that link PageSpinner to other applications. For example, one script turns the contents of a Eudora mailbox into a sensibly organized Web page (this works best for smaller mailboxes). More generally, sample scripts show how to create Web pages from FileMaker Pro, HyperCard, and 4D Server. I generally shy away from scripting; however, when exploring PageSpinner, I easily created my first JavaScript and modified the AppleScript that turns Eudora mailboxes into Web pages. I feel as though PageSpinner helped me wedge open a heavy door.

Team Player -- As icing on the cake of PageSpinner's you-can-do-it attitude, PageSpinner is a team player. For example, PageSpinner doesn't come with a spelling checker, but you can link its Check Spelling command to any clipboard-based spelling checker. More impressively, PageSpinner comes with a hierarchical Web Tools menu, loaded with commands that you configure to match popular non-commercial utilities that ably supplement PageSpinner's feature set.

But What About...? PageSpinner has a few problems that need fixing: drag & drop for words isn't smart about inserting an extra space to accommodate a dropped-in word, the Find and Replace feature can't search on "whole word only," (so a search for "test" also finds "testing"), and there are a few references to an Alt key in the dialog boxes. Perhaps my main criticism of PageSpinner is that its documentation is scattered among numerous documents - there's no uniform way to access the information.

In terms of price, PageSpinner's closest competitor is the shareware HTML Web Weaver Lite, from Miracle Software, which costs $25 ($15 educational). HTML Web Weaver Lite feels rougher than PageSpinner in overall use and lacks key features like tables, frames, and forms. You might also compare PageSpinner to the freeware BBEdit Lite 4.0.1 from Bare Bones Software, which - when supplemented with appropriate BBEdit extensions - is a serviceable HTML editor with a price that can't be beat.

<http://www.miracleinc.com/>
<http://www.barebones.com/freeware.html>

Feature-wise, PageSpinner compares most directly to BBEdit 4.0.4 and Miracle Software's commercial World Wide Web Weaver 2.1 (W4). Next week, we'll check out W4 in more detail (especially its cool auto-preview feature) and note some of BBEdit's key HTML features. (For a full review of BBEdit, see TidBITS-365.)

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Last week, in TidBITS-384, I wrote about PageSpinner, a $25 shareware HTML editor from Optima Systems. I portrayed PageSpinner as offering a robust range of tagging options in an uncommonly open, helpful settingShow full article

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Last week, in TidBITS-384, I wrote about PageSpinner, a $25 shareware HTML editor from Optima Systems. I portrayed PageSpinner as offering a robust range of tagging options in an uncommonly open, helpful setting. This week, I'll round out my discussion by comparing it to not only World Wide Web Weaver and BBEdit as promised, but also to Alpha.

<http://www.algonet.se/~optima/pagespinner.html>
<http://www.miracleinc.com/>
<http://www.barebones.com/>
<http://www.cs.umd.edu/~keleher/alpha.html>

W4 -- World Wide Web Weaver 2.1, also known as W4, comes from Miracle Software and costs between $39 and $89 depending on how you buy it. It requires a 68020-based Mac, System 7.0, and 5.5 MB application RAM (8 MB recommended). In contrast, PageSpinner wants a 68020-based Mac, System 7.0.1, a grayscale monitor, and 2-4 MB application RAM. W4 has matured past its shareware origins, but lacks the polish I expect in a top-notch commercial product. Even so, if PageSpinner's roll-your-own attitude feels overwhelming, W4 may fit the bill.

W4 doesn't have the range of esoteric tags found in PageSpinner, but it includes all the basics, plus frames, forms, and tables. W4 comes with a built-in spelling checker and an HTML validation checker, features that PageSpinner users must add by downloading and configuring additional software. Although PageSpinner takes the prize for flexibility in configuration, W4 is not entirely rigid. For instance, it lets you add new tags to the interface, and you can freely configure the style of tags and text as they appear in a W4 document.

An HTML document in W4 looks much like a document in any text-based editor, but a few of W4's dialog boxes take a visual approach. For example, W4 contains a visual image map editor, where you indicate which areas of a graphic should act as buttons linking to other parts of the Internet. The editor lacks the bells and whistles (such as a zoom) in visually oriented HTML editors like Adobe PageMill, but gets the job done. By comparison, PageSpinner expects you to set up image maps elsewhere.

More differences between the programs appear when comparing their Table features. When you set up a new table in W4's Table Editor, you see a rough mock-up of the table. From the mock-up, you can select any cell and then add text or apply cell-based formats (like background color). The formats won't show in the mock-up, but the text will. After exiting the Table Editor, you can modify the table by hand or select the entire table, choose the Re-Edit Tag command, and you'll be back in the Table Editor with the mock-up intact and ready for modification.

In contrast, making a table in PageSpinner is a one-time, text-only affair. You select or import tab-delimited text and then use the HTML Assistant to apply table tags to it quickly (though you cannot format individual cells in HTML Assistant). You can also insert table-related tags one by one. There's no Re-Edit Tag option, so changes take more time to implement.

W4's Re-Edit Tag feature also comes in handy when working with lists - lists can be re-edited and thus quickly converted between various types, and there's even a sorting feature inside the List Editor.

W4 has one hot feature that you won't find elsewhere - an auto-preview. When working in W4, I keep a Netscape Navigator/Communicator window open, and anything I do in W4 shows in the browser window a second or two later. What's so important about this feature is that I need not do anything to see the preview; most programs make you at least press a keyboard shortcut. This feature only works with Navigator/Communicator, and it worked fine for me in Navigator 3.01 and Communicator 4.0 PR 5.

In summary, W4 is a capable, text-based HTML editor. It lacks high-end features found in BBEdit and Alpha, but represents a finite environment worth considering for new computer users and those who occasionally work with HTML. Given its price and competition, W4 is in a tight spot - it just doesn't have the features to make it compelling to a large audience. W4's ace in the hole, however, may be its special relationship with Site Weaver, a site management tool from Miracle Software. I plan to look at Site Weaver later in this article series.

If PageSpinner's high-end features like scriptability and includes attract you, check out BBEdit and Alpha, two mature text editors that have HTML features.

BBEdit -- BBEdit, from Bare Bones Software, became a popular HTML editing tool before it had HTML features, in part because it is an excellent text editor, and in part because Carles Bellver and Lindsay Davies both released reasonably complete sets of BBEdit extensions for HTML (these extensions extend BBEdit only, and are not system extensions). Carles is no longer updating his extensions, though they are still available, but Lindsay's BBEdit HTML Tools now ship with BBEdit, and Bare Bones Software has added HTML features like an HTML-savvy spelling checker, an FTP feature that can open from and save directly to a remote server, and tag-styling options so tags look different from body text.

To apply HTML to text in BBEdit, you use a long drop down menu, keyboard shortcuts, or a palette. Using the triangle menu at the palette's upper left, you can adjust its size and set what commands appear on it. The palette would benefit from additional customization, especially the ability to add colors or graphics, since it's hard to pick out the right command quickly among the many black-text-on-gray buttons. BBEdit offers a reasonable amount of flexibility for customizing the interface, tag appearance, and so on, but is not as flexible as PageSpinner. (For example, PageSpinner can lock tags so others can edit a document without accidently changing the tags.)

BBEdit HTML Tools enables users to create not only new tags, but also macros that automate applying tag sequences. For instance, one of my macros places selected text inside an anchor tag, and fills in the anchor tag's URL from the clipboard.

What's compelling about BBEdit is the mix of a professional, serviceable interface with raw power. One key feature, grep-based, multi-file Find and Replace, enables sophisticated searches that leave PageSpinner gasping in the dust. Another major feature is synergy with UserLand Frontier's Web publishing options.

<http://www.scripting.com/frontier/>

As I explained last week, PageSpinner has includes, and it is possible to update the date and time when updating includes. BBEdit HTML Tools one-ups PageSpinner with a handier way to update includes (just click a button), plus more options for updating the date, time, and other bits of information. You can also employ "variables" that let individual documents dictate how information flows in from an include (for instance, an include might contain a tag for a graphic, but the variable on the page would specify the graphic's location).

With its mix of high-end features, HTML-specific features, and simple system requirements (a Mac Plus or better, 1 MB RAM, and System 7.0), it's not surprising that BBEdit has become a mainstream HTML editor for professionals and even some hobbyists. BBEdit costs $119 ($79 crossgrade). To learn more about BBEdit, see the review in TidBITS-365.

Alpha -- A few readers wrote in last week to note that I should look at Alpha 6.5.2, a $30 shareware program by Pete Keleher. In particular, Chris Ruebeck <ruebeck@jhu.edu> commented:

"A BBEdit-like program is Alpha, used by many programmers and TeX/LaTeX writers. It has an HTML mode in addition to the various programming languages and environments. What's nice about Alpha is that the pull-down menus function much like an assistant by pasting in templates, although not with the context-help that PageSpinner provides. But there is a good set of HTML documentation. Alpha integrates well into the Web environment, too, with Web links in its Help pages, and drag & drop editing."

Previously, I'd thought that Alpha was too much of a programmers' text editor for the likes of me, but I decided it wouldn't hurt to try it. After being initially flummoxed by the fact that the HTML commands don't show unless you are in HTML mode, I discovered a capable, likeable HTML editing environment. The HTML commands in Alpha (which can convert into a palette) come courtesy of an Alpha extension called HTML mode, which is postcardware written by Johan Linde.

Like BBEdit, it has a grep-based multi-file Find and Replace; like PageSpinner and BBEdit, it has includes; and like PageSpinner, W4, and BBEdit, it has syntax coloring (that is, it colors HTML tags), but it's the only one of the lot that can intelligently color JavaScript text.

Text boxes for entering JavaScript event handlers optionally appear in dialog boxes where you set tag attributes. Additional features that caught my eye include a Func pop-up menu listing headings in an HTML document (choose a heading and Alpha will move the cursor to it; BBEdit has a similar feature), conversion of high-ASCII characters to and from HTML entities, and the capability to add new tags complete with attribute options that will be available in the tag's optional dialog box.

Obviously, I haven't used Alpha for as long as I've used BBEdit, but it strikes me that if you know HTML and JavaScript, and need to work at a high level with them, Alpha may win your heart.

Still to Come -- Text-based HTML editors pack many great features and give authors a great deal of control, but they are lousy environments for trying different layouts and navigation systems. For these tasks, most people use software that hides the HTML and shows a WYSIWYG approximation of how a browser will interpret the page. Next week, we'll look at some of those programs.

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The first two parts of this series looked at text-based HTML editors, programs that offer a great deal of control over the final product. Such editors force you to deal with HTML tags, a process that bores some, intimidates others, and generally falls outside the Macintosh tradition - most Mac users who monkey with HTML tags take about ten minutes to ask for a program that handles HTML behind the scenesShow full article

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The first two parts of this series looked at text-based HTML editors, programs that offer a great deal of control over the final product. Such editors force you to deal with HTML tags, a process that bores some, intimidates others, and generally falls outside the Macintosh tradition - most Mac users who monkey with HTML tags take about ten minutes to ask for a program that handles HTML behind the scenes. The first of this type of program was Adobe PageMill (most recently reviewed in TidBITS-356), and PageMill has currently has two direct competitors: Home Page 2.0 from Claris, and Visual Page 1.0 from Symantec. This article contrasts these three programs, and notes a few free alternatives.

<http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/pagemill/>
<http://www.claris.com/products/claris/ clarispage/>
<http://www.symantec.com/vpagemac/>

All of these programs function like low-end word processors: they lack sophisticated text editing options, and you can't drag & drop objects freely on the page as you could in a desktop publishing program (or a high-end HTML editor like Golive CyberStudio Pro or NetObjects Fusion). Further, they take a page-oriented perspective that frustrates people creating large sites. Each program has an Edit view that attempts to offer a WYSIWYG display (though perhaps WYSIWYS - "what you see is what you see" - would be a more appropriate term), plus an HTML view for working with HTML tags and a Preview that tries to approximate how a browser will display the page, with operational internal links. Annoyingly, the programs' HTML views can't access the styling commands available in the Edit views, so everything must be hand tagged in the HTML views.

All three programs work well for experimenting with layouts and creating some Web pages. However, in many real-life instances these programs are awkward to work with in some important way that ultimately means that - in a perfect world - their HTML needs final tweaking in a text environment. Still, not all pages need perfect HTML to serve their purposes or their creators' time constraints. Recent experiences in helping new computer users have reminded me that creating a Web page using graphical software would be a worthy accomplishment for some, one not to be marred by tagging issues.

You won't go seriously wrong with PageMill, Home Page, or Visual Page, but differences do exist.

Tut, Tut, It Looks Like Text -- For serious composition, these three programs are uniformly mediocre and lack sophisticated options available in a modern word processor. Even so, they all have a basic Find and Replace option and support basic Macintosh editing conventions, though Visual Page and PageMill both fail to insert an extra space if you drag & drop text between two words. PageMill and Home Page both also have spelling checkers, though PageMill's is nothing to write home about. Home Page uses the standard Claris spelling engine and dictionaries and has a more mature look and feel. Home Page also takes honors as the only program where you can change the default font and size - an important feature for folks who cannot compose in the annoyingly tiny Times 12 point default font that all three programs share. For all these reasons, Home Page gets the nod as a writing tool. Still, this category of software works best for poster- or brochure-like pages.

For placing large documents on the Web, you'd be better off using an HTML converter such as Myrmidon 1.2 by Terry Morse Software, which deserves more space than I'm giving it here; RTFtoHTML 3.6 ($29 shareware from Chris Hector); Microsoft's Internet Assistant 2.0 for Word 6.0.1; or Astrobyte's BeyondPress 3.0, a QuarkXPress XTension with zillions of hot features, including support for cascading style sheets (Extensis sells a light version called CyberPress).

<http://www.terrymorse.com/>
<http://www.sunpack.com/RTF/>
<http://www.microsoft.com/word/internet/ia/>
<http://www.astrobyte.com/>
<http://www.extensis.com/products/CyberPress/>

Or, you'd be better off using a word processor such as Nisus Writer 5.0.4 that comes with decent HTML conversion options (I'm not impressed with WordPerfect's HTML features). Another possibility would be Akimbo's Globetrotter (reviewed in TidBITS-374).

<http://www.nisus-soft.com/nisus_writer.html>
<http://www.akimbo.com/>

Tables and Frames -- Tables and frames are particularly tedious to build from scratch in HTML, so Web publishers are likely to turn to these programs for help with them. In the frames arena, Home Page isn't as good a choice, because it cannot display pages within a frameset. PageMill and Visual Page both offer this feature.

When it comes to tables, all three programs use toolbars and palettes for applying table formats, so you need not repeatedly open and close dialog boxes as you set up a table. Even so, Home Page takes low ratings in this area, primarily because you must apply cell and text formats one cell at a time, making mass formatting tedious.

PageMill is slightly better - you can apply some cell formats to multiple cells, but you cannot apply text-oriented formats, such as the strong tag. I dislike working with tables in PageMill because I have trouble remembering the techniques for selecting within a table (you might want to select the entire table, a cell, or text within a cell). If you use PageMill frequently, you'll have no problem, but occasional users may share my frustration. Also, PageMill's toolbar has minuscule buttons, and I have trouble identifying them quickly. Working with PageMill tables doesn't feel fluid to me.

Visual Page does the best job with HTML tables that I've seen in this software category. The table feature is easy to learn and offers more options than Home Page or PageMill (for example, in PageMill you can only size cells vertically by dragging them; in Visual Page, you can type a measurement, and that measurement can apply to any selection of cells). Most importantly, Visual Page can format text within multiple table cells all at once, plus apply a full range of cell formats to multiple cells.

Graphics & Image Maps -- Given Adobe's emphasis on graphics, it's not surprising that PageMill's graphics handling features stand out. It's not so much that PageMill has more features, but it puts more care into their implementation. For example, Visual Page can resize graphics (either visually by way of dragging or numerically by way of typing measurements), but it can't resize them proportionally. Home Page can resize proportionally, but only when you drag, not when you type. PageMill can resize proportionally whether you type or drag, though it lacks snazzy options like resizing proportionally to fit inside a box. If your interest in graphics can be satisfied by placing images that have been modified in other applications, any of these programs will work, but if you are big on graphics, PageMill will suit you best. A big minus for Home Page is that it cannot display graphics aligned left or right of text (though they'll display that way in a Web browser).

The Media Drag Bag -- These three programs accept a grab bag of file formats. For instance, they all handle PICT, GIF, and JPEG images. In most cases, you just drag a file onto the document window, and the file joins the page, usually as a graphic or embedded object which can then be configured in a dialog box. Sometimes, though, the program simply creates a link to the file in question. For example, Visual Page treats sounds as embedded objects, but Home Page creates clickable links leading to the sound files. These programs display dragged-in objects differently, and the differences are particularly apparent in Preview mode. Adobe made sure that PDFs (Portable Document Format files) work well, and Symantec paid special attention to Java applets.

Personally, I find Preview modes bogus, because I preview pages in a browser, but I can imagine scenarios where Preview mode becomes important - users might not have enough RAM to also launch a browser, or be so inexperienced that switching applications posed an unreasonable challenge. The table below summarizes how these programs display different types of dragged-in files. ("Object" means a generic embedded object; "link" means the program linked to the dragged-in file instead of incorporating it on the page.)

File Format &     Home Page     PageMill      Visual Page
   Mode           displays:     displays:     displays:
   ------------------------------------------------------
Animated GIF
   Edit Mode      first frame   first frame   first frame
   Preview Mode   first frame   plays         first frame
QuickTime
   Edit Mode      first frame   first frame   plays
   Preview Mode   first frame   plays         plays
AIFF
   Edit Mode      link          object        object
   Display Mode   link          object        object
au/WAV
   Edit Mode      link          link          object
   Display Mode   link          link          object
Java applet
   Edit Mode      Java object   Java object   Java object
   Display Mode   Java object   Java object   plays
PDF
   Edit Mode      link          first page    object
   Preview Mode   link          first page    object
   ------------------------------------------------------

Killer Features -- Each of the programs has at least one killer feature that differentiates it. PageMill has a color palette that stores any set of colors, making it easy to apply a consistent palette. Visual Page enables you to work with HTML and Edit mode showing at once. Home Page is the easiest to learn.

Who Should Use What? I tend to recommend PageMill to design professionals, particularly those who use other Adobe products. Now that PageMill ships with SiteMill, it may well be the best value of the lot, and we'll look at SiteMill later in this series. Visual Page wraps a lot of features into a reasonably good interface, and I think it's best for somewhat experienced Macintosh users or for serious Web publishers and those who don't like PageMill or are outside the Adobe milieu. Home Page feels more like a hobbyist or home business tool: it's the easiest to learn, especially if you've used other Claris software and you realize that Control-clicking things brings up a handy menu.

Price? Visual Page and Home Page have official estimated street prices of $99.95 and $99 respectively; PageMill's suggested retail price is $149, but you should be able to find it for under $100. If you're buying, look for the new version that includes SiteMill 2.0. Also, check for deals - for instance, there's a $20 discount on Visual Page for owners of other Symantec development tools and owners of Home Page 1.0 can upgrade for free.

For those who like their software free, possibilities include AOLpress 2.0 and the Composer module in the newly released Communicator 4.01 from Netscape Communications (though Communicator isn't free to business and government users after a 90-day trial period). In my opinion, neither of these programs are in the same ballpark as their fully commercial counterparts.

<http://www.aolpress.com/press/>
<http://www.netscape.com/flash1/comprod/products /communicator/>

AOLpress -- On first glance, AOLpress has an impressive feature set: tables, frames, and forms; a customizable toolbar; a nifty, online workbook tutorial; and a site-oriented perspective that includes external link checking, multi-file find and replace, and multi-file spell checking. It is primarily intended for AOL customers, and can open and save files directly from a server running AOLserver or the Web hosting area on AOL. All this sounds great, but the software needs a serious makeover.

There's no drag & drop from the Finder, no Balloon Help, and the program shuns the Mac Help menu in favor of its own. AOLpress uses paths in the Open and Save dialogs, and doesn't resize properly on a second monitor. Besides these obvious issues for Mac users, the program has numerous disappointments: a Form palette that disappears behind document windows, the multi-file Find and Replace cannot replace single items in multiple documents (instead it can only replace all), and table edges cannot be resized by dragging. The menus and dialog boxes are arranged so you spend lots of time mousing around in hierarchical menus, and dialog boxes lack Apply buttons that would hasten experimentation with different formats. The worst flaws, at least for me, are that AOLpress crashes frequently and runs sluggishly on my Power Mac 7600.

Composer -- To be honest, I haven't spent much time in this newly shipping version of Composer, and - in fact - was so unimpressed with its predecessor, the HTML editor in Netscape Navigator Gold, that I ignored it until just now, when I decided that this article wouldn't be complete without noting it. A brief tour of the program reveals a more attractive, Mac-like version than its predecessor. I actually like the toolbar, which consists of two rows of colorful icons, with no button edges showing. If you mouse over a particular icon, it pops up inside a beveled square.

Netscape has honed Composer into a simple tool for making basic pages. If Composer has support for forms or frames, I can't locate it. Table editing has improved enormously, and you can apply text formats to multiple cells, though you can't resize cells by dragging their borders. I implied earlier in this article that all programs noted here have HTML views; Composer does not, but it does supply a command for quickly viewing HTML in the text editor of your choice. For making basic pages with a cheap tool, I recommend trying Composer. Composer performed well on my 7600, but there may be configuration issues that I'm not yet aware of, and - as with any product these days - Communicator's recommended hardware requirements (16 MB RAM and a 68030-based Mac, plus System 7.5) may need to be taken with a grain of salt.

Summing Up -- Although I may have left out your pet peeve or favorite feature, I hope you have a good idea of the major software options available for visual HTML editing. Next week we'll look at Golive's CyberStudio Pro, which offers optional drag & drop placement of objects (like a desktop publishing program) and a rich collection of high-end features.

DealBITS -- Cyberian Outpost is selling Home Page and Visual Page for $84.95 each to TidBITS readers who purchase through these URLs. This price represents an $8 discount off Cyberian's regular price. Unfortunately, we were unable to get a deal for the SiteMill-enhanced version of PageMill before this issue went to press (see the MailBIT in TidBITS-385 for more information).

<http://www.tidbits.com/products/home-page.html>
<http://www.tidbits.com/products/visual- page.html>

Adobe Systems -- 800/411-8657 -- 408/536-6000
America Online -- 800/879-6882 -- 703/448-8700
Claris Corporation -- 800/544-8554 -- 408/727-8227
800/800-8954 (fax) -- <info@claris.com>
Netscape Communications -- 800/638-7483 -- 415/937-3777
415/528-4124 (fax) -- <info@netscape.com>
Symantec Corporation -- 800/441-7234 -- 541/334-6054
541/334-7474 (fax) -- <cafe@symantec.com>

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If you read earlier sections of this series (which began in TidBITS-384), you know the ins and outs of text-oriented Web publishing tools as well as low-end visual tools that work much like simple word processorsShow full article

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If you read earlier sections of this series (which began in TidBITS-384), you know the ins and outs of text-oriented Web publishing tools as well as low-end visual tools that work much like simple word processors. Both types work well for certain tasks, but neither type is the cat's pajamas for Web publishing. Today we'll look at CyberStudio 1.1 from GoLive Systems, a hot new release that draws its strengths from the text and the visual camps, plus adds high-end features.

<http://www.golive.com/>

Puppy Love -- Here at TidBITS, we sometimes use the phrase "demos well." That means a product sounds wonderful and looks great initially, but may have flaws that reveal themselves once we try it at home. With its elegant, attractive interface and multiplicity of key features, CyberStudio decidedly demos well.

CyberStudio also makes a great first impression. The ReadMe file says where, exactly, all parts of CyberStudio will end up when installed. The printed manual is attractive and professional, unlike most cobbled-together manuals found in this hurry-up-and-ship era. The section that covers CyberStudio's color palettes (RGB, Apple, CMYK, 216-Web-safe, and more) is printed in color on glossy paper, and the shipping package includes a card noting major incompatibilities. (Irv at CyberStudio tech support said some people run RAM Doubler without problems, but others must turn it off to use CyberStudio. Running CyberStudio with Adobe Type Reunion results in CyberStudio pop-up menus appearing with many garbage characters.)

Launching CyberStudio brings up a tabbed document window with the Layout tab active. In the lower right corner, there's a pop-up menu for matching the window size to a few common browser widths. Other tabs switch the window to other views. Above the document window sits a closable basic toolbar. A tabbed palette (called Palette) holds icons representing items you might want to add to a page or site, such as a table or META tag. There's also an Inspector palette, which is used to customize items dragged in from the Palette.

Two problems with the interface may trouble you. CyberStudio has a profusion of windows and palettes, and I found that my two-monitor setup was none too large. The program would function more fluidly with palette and window management options. Second, CyberStudio takes drag & drop to an extreme that makes for extra dragging, something RSI-prone people will want to avoid. For example, items on the Palette cannot be clicked for insertion at the insertion point or added by way of a keyboard shortcut; they must be physically dragged onto the page.

Viewing the HTML -- There's nothing like real-world projects to reveal flaws in any product, and importing a page from the upcoming redesign of the TidBITS Web site brought out a big one: we've designed our site with paired paragraph tags; that is, each paragraph begins with a <P> tag and ends with a </P>. CyberStudio only uses the start <P> tag and modifies imported HTML documents accordingly, and thus slightly changes the vertical spacing in some instances.

CyberStudio's Source tab most directly imitates the HTML views in software we looked at last week; it uses syntax coloring to distinguish tags from text, and the font and style is somewhat customizable. Previous visual editors that we've looked at require users to type almost every tag from scratch in HTML view. CyberStudio doesn't suffer from this limitation; anything it has a command for in the Layout tab also works in the Source tab. For example, to insert a Submit button in Source view, you just drag in the Submit Button item from the Palette. CyberStudio responds by inserting the appropriate HTML. Unfortunately, the Source display cannot wrap text, so long paragraphs expand well past the right edge of the window.

If working in the Source tab isn't structured enough, you can also work in the Outline tab, which displays HTML in a collapsible outline, with tags displayed as tiles containing pop-up menus. These menus enable you to add attributes (like the size of a table border), which then also display in the tiles. The Outline tab works with a customizable database, and you can add tags to the database, plus customize attributes.

CyberStudio also comes with a built-in JavaScript editor, complete with syntax coloring and a script library.

To Pixel or Not To Pixel -- At first glance, the Layout tab works much like the Edit views in the lower-end visual tools. You can type text and insert media elements like graphics and movies, but you can't drag items around freely. This makes for human-readable HTML, a concern I noted in the first article of this series. However, if pixel-perfect placement overwhelms concerns about comprehensible HTML, you can drag in a layout grid from the Palette. The grid can be all or only part of a page, and items can be dragged about freely on the grid, much as they would in a desktop publishing program. By giving users a choice about using or not using a desktop publishing metaphor, CyberStudio accommodates a wide range of users and tasks.

Although the grid provides pixel-perfect placement, it doesn't replace tables for some pages - if you need a 5 by 5 table with specific cell dimensions, a table will be faster, since the grid doesn't easily give location information as you position objects (I would like the grid to work with a ruler or a status bar showing location coordinates). You can get around this to some degree by placing layout grids inside table cells - you use the table to set a skeleton of known dimension and then do visually oriented layouts within the skeleton.

Given the grid's inability to show exactly where items are placed, it's disappointing that CyberStudio doesn't top some of its low-end competitors when it comes to regular table making. On the plus side, you can Option-drag cell borders to resize the table, and the tabling commands are not buried in a modal dialog box, so formatting goes reasonably quickly. On the minus side, for the most part, cells must be formatted individually, as must the text within each cell. For intense table work, Symantec Visual Page is a better product.

CyberStudio's Frame tab is easy to use, and there's even a whole tab on the Palette for dragging in different frameset configurations. Visual Page and Adobe PageMill stand up well to CyberStudio in the framing arena; they both display frames within the frameset, a feature that CyberStudio lacks. That is, in CyberStudio (much as in Claris Home Page), you can see the skeleton of a frameset, but cannot see pages that should show in the frames. You can try a frameset by switching out to the browser preview, which has a default browser option or can switch to any browser installed on your computer.

Live Media -- You can include any plug-in file on a page created in CyberStudio, and you can preview it live if you place its plug-in application in CyberStudio's Plug-ins folder (though the release notes discourage use of the Shockwave plug-in). In this respect, CyberStudio resembles PageMill 2.0, and in a previous article in this series I overlooked this fact. CyberStudio can also play Java applets.

Gobs of Features -- I haven't nearly covered every CyberStudio feature. Two others of particular note are support for AppleScript (complete with printed documentation) and for WorldScript. One feature that's lacking is a spelling checker. In a feature checklist war, CyberStudio generally dominates the products I've highlighted in this series. However, CyberStudio isn't really in the same sandbox with these products. It doesn't work on 68K Macs and costs a few hundred dollars more. Plus, it has extensive visual site management features that move it into the arena of site-oriented software like Adobe SiteMill (which now ships with PageMill), NetObjects Fusion, and Microsoft FrontPage. Text-oriented site-focused tools also exist, most notably Userland Frontier. I'll look at all this software, plus the site management portion of CyberStudio starting in the next installment of this series.

<http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/pagemill/ siteben.html>
<http://www.netobjects.com/html/macprod.html>
<http://www.microsoft.com/frontpage/>
<http://www.scripting.com/frontier/>

More on the Cost -- CyberStudio Pro has a suggested retail price of $349, and the street price appears to be just under $300. (Academic pricing is set at $149.) Those who purchase between 17-Jun-97 and 30-Jul-97 will receive a coupon for a $100 cross-grade rebate, available to owners of Adobe PageMill or SiteMill, NetObjects Fusion, Symantec Visual Page, Claris Home Page, and Microsoft Front Page. If you registered a copy of golive Pro 1.x, you can also take advantage of a $20 "loyalty" rebate.

Overall, despite the weaknesses I've noted, CyberStudio does a fabulous job of combining many oft-requested features in a pleasant working environment. You can give it a test run by downloading a 3.7 MB 30-day trial version from the GoLive Web site.

CyberStudio requires a PowerPC-based Macintosh running System 7.5.5 or later and 8 MB free application RAM, with 12 MB or 16 MB recommended, depending on which GoLive documentation you happen to be reading.

GoLive Systems -- 800/554-6638 -- 415/463-1580 -- <info@golive.com>

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In recent TidBITS issues, I've been sharing my world view about software that makes Web pages. I started with text editors in TidBITS-384 and continued with visual editors in TidBITS-386Show full article

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In recent TidBITS issues, I've been sharing my world view about software that makes Web pages. I started with text editors in TidBITS-384 and continued with visual editors in TidBITS-386. In TidBITS-387, I looked at GoLive's CyberStudio from the page building angle, but CyberStudio also includes site management features, and I promised to cover them soon in tandem with other competitors. First, however, it's time to check out Frontier, which offers a unique environment for Web publishing.

<http://www.scripting.com/frontier/>

Understanding Frontier -- Frontier 4.2.3 is a free, smart database. The software is free because UserLand Software founder Dave Winer decided to release it that way (see TidBITS-279); it's smart because it uses Apple events and a built-in scripting language (UserTalk) to control most anything; and it's a database because it stores information. Frontier is widely used in the Macintosh scripting community, and its users are often passionate about its merits, which include the ability to store components of a Web site and convert them into a complex, automated Web site.

<http://www.scripting.com/frontier/snippets/ features.html>

Exploring Frontier -- You begin exploring Frontier by opening its main table (called the "root"). The root contains entries, each having a kind and a value. For example, one such entry, named "readme," is of the kind "wp text" (word processing text), and if you double-click it, a window opens showing the text and a WP menu appears offering a few word processing commands. Web publishers using Frontier may create and store HTML in wp text entries elsewhere in the database.

Another category in the root, called "user", is of the kind "table" and double-clicking it opens another table filled with user-related items. For instance, one such entry, "organization," took on the value "TidBITS" when I personalized Frontier. Similar entries in other locations let you set how Frontier will publish Web pages. You can navigate Frontier by working through a large hierarchy of tables, or through an outline that reveals and hides different portions of the database.

The Key to the Treasure -- Table entries can also be "verbs," commands that are "called" in Frontier scripts. Using Frontier scripts, a capable scripter can automate most anything on a Macintosh, including other applications. Scripts can be run in different ways: from menus, by opening them in Frontier and clicking the Run button, or by typing their names into Frontier's Quick Script window. Or - to jump ahead of myself slightly - you can call them as you "render" a Web page.

Matt Neuburg, TidBITS Contributing Editor and experienced Frontier user, has commented that "Frontier is the command line to your Macintosh." The following four points are from his comments:

• Frontier can drive the System and Finder. It can create, read, copy and delete files, set their types and creators, find out what time it is on your clock, read the clipboard, and more.

• Frontier's functionality is available everywhere. It can put menus into other programs, and it can even make double-clickable pseudo-programs.

• Frontier talks Apple events much faster than AppleScript does. If an application is scriptable, Frontier can drive it and ask it questions.

• Frontier can receive Apple events, which means you can drive Frontier from other applications. Webmasters can use Frontier to process form requests sent in from people browsing Web sites. For instance, one of the top entries in the TidBITS search engine contest (see TidBITS-380) worked this way: Someone searching the TidBITS Web site clicks the search button, WebSTAR (the server software) talks to Frontier, Frontier consults a FileMaker database containing TidBITS issues, and - based what it finds in FileMaker - constructs a new Web page, which it gives to WebSTAR. WebSTAR then sends the page back to the browser.

Frontier's ability to automate most everything, combined with the hierarchical nature of its database, makes it a unique tool for Web publishing. If you use Frontier as a site management tool, you can work from the inside or the outside.

Working from the Outside -- Working from the outside is easier, because you don't have learn to become a competent Frontier user. To work from the outside, you use BBEdit (from Bare Bones Software) to create pages, but you employ the Frontier-created Sites menu in BBEdit to "render" the final site from the raw HTML created in BBEdit.

<http://www.barebones.com/bbedit.html>

It won't take long to learn the basics of rendering. When Frontier renders a raw HTML page (or group of pages) into a site, it employs a complex series of processes and filters that make (optional) changes such as:

• Uniform top and bottom matter appears on each page.

• Entities replace upper-ASCII characters in the raw HTML (a useful feature especially for people who write in languages like French).

• Macros that call Frontier scripts are replaced by their results. (For instance {clock.now()} returns the current date as a result, and there's a script that inserts image tags with automatically generated height and width attributes.)

• Email addresses and URLs convert to links.

• Quoted text is replaced by an item in a Frontier glossary (yet another Frontier table). For instance, I might want "TidBITS" to be replaced by a link to the TidBITS home page.

If you work in BBEdit, you need not ever explore Frontier, and these features are readily available. If you choose to work inside Frontier, after you get set up, you probably could mostly work from BBEdit as well.

Working from the Inside -- You can use any software you like to create the raw HTML pages stored in Frontier, and then switch to Frontier to take advantage of Frontier's hierarchical approach. Frontier stores each HTML page as a table entry. When you render a site, those entries become separate Web pages, organized in a folder structure that mirrors the structure used in Frontier.

(I've simplified a lot in the paragraph above- rendered pages can be constructed from scripts, or from "outlines." Scripts can assemble pages from most anything you've created or scripted, and outlines have many uses, but I'm not going to delve into them in this article.)

However, using Frontier's hierarchy goes much deeper. For instance, you can have more than one Frontier glossary, and Frontier replaces quoted text based on the glossary located closest to the raw HTML file. (If the glossary isn't in the same table as the raw file, Frontier looks up one level, and keeps looking up one level until it finds a glossary.)

Hierarchies also play a big roll when you use "directives." A directive is a table entry that notes how you want to handle a general aspect of a group of Web pages, such as the background color. A directive can also be placed directly in a raw HTML file. When a raw HTML page renders, directives defined inside it always take precedence. But, if a directive is not defined, the page looks in and up the hierarchy for a definition. Using directives, it's easy to give one branch of a site an orange background and another a green one.

My brain starts to hurt at this point, so rest assured that I've but rippled the surface here. I haven't mentioned templates, the ability to include one file inside another, or the ability to create an HTML-ized site outline. Templates are an especially key feature, and I leave them as an exercise to interested readers.

Rendering -- When a page renders, several filters and processes take place, including running any macros that you've stuck inside it (or its template). This has millions of uses.

As an example, take the new TidBITS home page, which regenerates every hour. Each time the page regenerates, it gets a new, automatically assembled graphic. The new graphic has one of several slogans and a callout to an especially interesting article (or group of articles) that you might want to read. The graphic uses a client-side image map, so new HTML must be created for each new version of the page. Although Geoff Duncan did the work in AppleScript and HyperCard, Frontier could also do the job.

As another example, consider this note from Pam McAllister <pmcallister@pugetsound.org>:

I started using Frontier a few months ago. It took several days to learn the system and import my sites, but now I can handle updates and additions in a fraction of the time it took before. I've added many features, such as indexes of parts of the site, that I would never have time to do manually. I also wrote a Frontier script that puts all the pages into a FileMaker database, which is then searchable on the Web site (using Lasso). Even as a novice scripter, that project took only a few hours. [Check out the SoundWeb site for an example of what Pam has been working on.]

<http://www.pugetsound.org/>
<http://www.blueworld.com/lasso/>

Complexity -- Learning Frontier reminded me of the Far Side cartoon where a student asks to be excused from class, saying that his "brain is full." My ascent up the learning curve was facilitated by an online tutorial created by Matt Neuburg.

<http://www.scripting.com/matt/webtutorial/>

(Matt is currently under contract with O'Reilly Associates to write the first book about Frontier. The book should come out in tandem with the upcoming release of Frontier 5.)

Is It for You? To summarize, Frontier's structure makes it easy to organize HTML pages created in other programs (or in Frontier, though the tools are limited). Once your site lives in Frontier - if you set things up correctly - it's easy to move pages or other resources within the database and to change elements that appear on multiple pages. It's also possible to create Next and Previous links throughout a collection of pages that will be navigated serially. Sites can be rendered to a local folder or via FTP to a remote site. You can render by page, by table, or by what's changed since you last rendered. Frontier is a natural at page rendering that requires automation, especially if multiple applications must work together.

Frontier is pleasant enough to work in, but whether it's worth the time investment to learn depends on the nature of the site. About halfway through my research for this article, I thought Frontier's seemingly boggling array of tables needed an nice user interface badly. A day later, though, it seems accessible and useful. However, if I hadn't already had a good understanding of hierarchies, HTML, macros, and general scripting terms, I would have given up. Further, it's difficult to remember how to use Frontier for running a Web site because the commands aren't obvious on the menus and in the dialog boxes.

You can import a existing site into Frontier, but you must recreate a lot of work by hand to take advantage of Frontier features. Frontier also lacks a few features that you might require. There's no visual view that shows how pages and resources relate to one another, using a spider's web or organizational chart analogy. There's no tracking mechanism for noting which pages are done or who's working on them. Creating unbreakable relative links in Frontier requires working with macros, whereas in other programs, you just drag a picture representing the link destination to the link source. Frontier also lacks a site-wide Find-and-Replace command and spelling checker, as well as a link checker and an HTML checker/validator, though I'm confident that knowledgeable Frontier users can work around those limitations by integrating Frontier with other applications.

Next time, I'll return to the site management features in CyberStudio and also look at other site management software.

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This ever-lengthening article series should be giving you a broad view of what's available for Web publishing tasks. In previous issues, I toured the world of Web publishing from a page-centric viewShow full article

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This ever-lengthening article series should be giving you a broad view of what's available for Web publishing tasks. In previous issues, I toured the world of Web publishing from a page-centric view. Last week, in TidBITS-389, I switched to a site-centric approach and examined UserLand Frontier. This week, we move from Frontier's complexity to look at a few simpler options: SiteWeaver by Miracle Software, SiteMill by Adobe Systems, and CyberStudio by GoLive Systems.

<http://www.miracleinc.com/>
<http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/pagemill/ siteben.html>
<http://www.golive.com/>

SiteWeaver -- SiteWeaver takes a bare bones approach to site management. Instead of providing a kitchen sink of tools for cleaning up a site, it sticks to the singular task of moving items within a Web site without breaking relative links. The software minimally requires a 68020-based Macintosh running System 7 or later with about 5 MB of free RAM.

SiteWeaver's main window, called Current Web Site, enables you to move files around the site and acts as a jumping-off point for working on site elements. The window displays items in an outline format, with different levels corresponding to different folders. Unfortunately, there's no way to expand or contract the outline, so if you have a big site you'll be doing a lot of scrolling. Once you locate an item in the outline, you can open it by double-clicking it, or load it in Netscape Navigator by Option-clicking it.

SiteWeaver is handy for setting up a site's structure from scratch. You can add new folders or pages to the outline at any time; the pages can be blank or based on templates; and pages can come from any program you like. If you work in new pages, however, you must be careful to close them, because if they remain open while you move other items, links to those items are not modified, and SiteWeaver does not notify you of the problem.

SiteWeaver can identify existing bad relative links in a site and provides an easy way to fix them. It has no features for working with external links (usually links to other Web sites). It can create reports that summarize all links in a site, list bad relative links, and note orphaned items that have no links leading to them.

In summary, SiteWeaver provides a simple set of handy features, and it does not lock you into using any particular HTML editor. (As you'll see, many of the more sophisticated packages lock you into - or at least strongly encourage you to use - a particular editor.) Regrettably, though, Miracle Software is charging too much for SiteWeaver. If you own World Wide Web Weaver (reviewed in TidBITS-385), SiteWeaver costs $59. If you don't, prices range from $109 to $139. For those prices, I'd expect more features for manipulating the site outline, professionally edited documentation and dialog boxes, and more features (such as FTP or remote link checking). Miracle Software plans to release SiteWeaver upgrades; perhaps Miracle will price these versions more appropriately, given the competition.

SiteMill -- In terms of features, Adobe SiteMill 2.0 picks up where SiteWeaver leaves off, though it lacks the ability to create new pages, so you cannot quickly build a site's skeleton in SiteMill. Like SiteWeaver, SiteMill displays a site in a Finder-like outline view. Unlike SiteWeaver, SiteMill offers conveniences for working with the outline: the outline can expand or contract to reveal and hide folder contents; items can be sorted by name, kind, date, and so on; and - if you sort by name - you can quickly move to items beginning with a certain letter by typing that letter. As in SiteWeaver, you can open a file by double-clicking it, and you can Option-click to open a file in your preferred Web browser (SiteWeaver is limited to Netscape Navigator).

Along with the Site view window, SiteMill also offers an External URLs window that lists all external URLs. There's a command for verifying them (thankfully in the background), and you can update a changed external link once and then SiteMill will change it throughout the site. SiteMill can also identify problematic relative links in a site and help you fix them.

SiteMill can operate as an FTP client, making it possible to upload a completed site to a remote Web server. You must set up your exact path in SiteMill's preferences - there's no way to first connect to the server, see where you are, and then upload. This streamlines operations once everything is set up and working correctly, but it's hard to troubleshoot and options like Synchronize are a little scary. (Synchronize modifies a directory on a server so that it exactly matches a folder on your desktop, complete with deleting files that don't match those in the folder.) There's an option for uploading only files that have changed, but there is no download option. In my testing, I've been unable to make SiteMill upload to any of three different server programs. Given the troubleshooting and testing I've done, I suspect the problem may be local to my machine, but I suggest making sure SiteMill works with your FTP server before buying, especially if your server is not mainstream.

Unless you upgrade from SiteMill 1.0 (a free upgrade) the only way to get SiteMill is as a component of the PageMill 2.01 package. Not surprisingly, SiteMill picks PageMill as its HTML editor of choice. For example, SiteMill automatically incorporates changes made to PageMill documents, but changes made in other HTML editors require that you reload the site, a process that would grow tedious if done frequently. As another example of SiteMill's synergy with PageMill, dragging an item from SiteMill's Site view window to a PageMill document creates a link from the document to the item. If you use PageMill for basic layout, but then tweak files elsewhere, you must tread carefully in SiteMill, because some actions will trigger PageMill to examine and potentially alter the HTML in those files.

Adobe continues to emphasize Adobe Acrobat's PDF as a file format - SiteMill lists Acrobat files as site resources and can work with links in Acrobat documents. Adobe recommends optimizing Acrobat 3.0 files after working with them in SiteMill; SiteMill cannot perform this function automatically.

SiteMill's Find and Replace, though functional, is limited. It lacks wild card options, and doesn't offer a technique for replacing in only a portion of a site or to approve individual replacements.

SiteMill requires (minimally) a 68020-based Mac running System 7.1 with at least 2.5 MB free RAM and a 4-bit monitor. For "best performance" the requirements increase to 68040-based Mac running System 7.5 with 3.5 MB free RAM.

Although my impression of SiteMill is mixed - for every new good feature, I've thought of at least one way it could be better - the fact remains that PageMill users should find SiteMill a handy way to manage their sites, certainly better than SiteMill 1.x or managing them by hand. However, If you already use other site management tools, I'm not convinced that the PageMill/SiteMill package represents a compelling solution. If you can't decide between PageMill and its closest pre-SiteMill 2.0 competitors (Claris Home Page and Symantec Visual Page; see TidBITS-386), or if you are teetering between PageMill and other software that includes site management options (such as CyberStudio), the fact that PageMill 2.01 lists for $149, but is commonly available for under $100, may tip the scales in PageMill's favor.

CyberStudio -- That said, it's time to revisit CyberStudio. The $349/$149 (suggested retail price/academic) CyberStudio integrates text-based and visually oriented tools for composing Web pages with site management tools (for a look at its page composition features, see TidBITS-387). Like SiteMill, which prefers that you use PageMill, you wouldn't buy CyberStudio for site management alone - you'd buy it if you plan to use CyberStudio for the majority of your page development.

CyberStudio forces you to surrender control over the directory structure of the final site. When CyberStudio "renders" a site, it creates a site folder containing a default page, plus a Pages folder for other pages and a Media folder for other site resources.

CyberStudio displays a site in several views; the one that best parallels the view in SiteMill is the tabbed Project View, which has different tabs for different resource types: pages, media, URLs, and so on. You can group items in mock folders in these views (which expand and contract, much like Finder outlines), and items can be renamed without harming relative links. The URL view stores full URLs, and if you modify a URL stored there, all such URLs in the site can update automatically. Unfortunately, CyberStudio lacks a feature for checking external links. Further, although CyberStudio can import a site, the process for adding external URLs to the URLs tab is cumbersome and by no means automatic. Other views offer a look at a site's hierarchy, with the ability to drill down on any one page and look in detail at resources linking to and from it.

CyberStudio has a built-in FTP feature, and though it didn't work with NetPresenz (an FTP server from Stairways Software), it did work generally for me, and let me move around in a server's directory structure as well as download files. CyberStudio lacks automation for uploading only changed files or for synchronizing directories - in fact, to upload, you must drag in items from the Finder, a fact that renders the FTP feature more show than substance.

Like SiteMill, CyberStudio has a site-wide Find-and-Replace that misses the boat. In CyberStudio's case, the feature runs extremely slowly on my Power Mac 7600 and lacks wildcard searching. Another feature found in CyberStudio (and one that PageMill lacks) is the ability to label files (for example, you might label them to indicate if they're ready to be published).

Summing Up -- In the end, SiteMill brings to PageMill a stronger set of site management features than CyberStudio offers, but neither program's site management features are must-haves. SiteMill works best in conjunction with PageMill (which isn't my favorite HTML editor) and CyberStudio's site-related features need fleshing out. Even so, both these products have much to offer. As I noted earlier in this series, if you live in the Adobe milieu, you'll find PageMill especially easy to work with, and now that it includes SiteMill you get a lot of bang for the buck. If CyberStudio's marriage of text and visual tools appeals to you, you'll find plenty of useful features, with the bonus of some help with site organization, help that - if you wish - you can easily work around, thus maintaining a site's structure independently from what CyberStudio thinks is happening. Next week, space permitting, I'll examine a few more applications that fall under the umbrella of site management, and then we'll take a few weeks off to make room for Macworld Expo coverage before finishing with a look at handy Web publishing utilities.

DealBITS Discount -- We've arranged for Cyberian Outpost to offer TidBITS readers PageMill 2.01 (which includes SiteMill 2.0) for $97.95, a $2 discount off Cyberian's regular $99.95 price. We've also negotiated a $295.95 price for CyberStudio, $2 off Cyberian's regular $297.95 price.

<http://www.tidbits.com/products/page-mill.html>
<http://www.tidbits.com/products/ cyberstudio.html>

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Have you ever encountered a Sesame Street book about Grover? The story concerns Grover (a blue-furred monster) who doesn't want you to turn the page, because there is a "monster at the end of the book." Well, we've almost reached the end of this series, and though there's no monster, there are two programs remaining - including one of woolly mammoth proportions. First, a correctionShow full article

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Have you ever encountered a Sesame Street book about Grover? The story concerns Grover (a blue-furred monster) who doesn't want you to turn the page, because there is a "monster at the end of the book." Well, we've almost reached the end of this series, and though there's no monster, there are two programs remaining - including one of woolly mammoth proportions.

First, a correction. Gordon Meyer <grmeyer@ricochet.net>, wrote about CyberStudio (reviewed in TidBITS-387 and TidBITS-390) and noted: "Checking external links is available, and it works well. A nice feature is that when you add a new external link, CyberStudio can automatically verify it. If it's bad, you get a green bug icon in the Project window."

This article looks at Microsoft FrontPage 1.0 and NetObjects Fusion 2.0. Feature-wise, FrontPage is most appropriately compared to Adobe PageMill/SiteMill, and at its $149 list price (with a $40 rebate to owners of various Microsoft or Adobe products), it's in the same price category. Fusion (the woolly mammoth program) is more costly at $495.

<http://www.microsoft.com/frontpage/>
<http://www.netobjects.com/>

Installing FrontPage -- FrontPage is allergic to my Mac. After my first installation, I couldn't access the online help; for sites published locally, all body text was stripped out or garbage text appeared in the file; and I couldn't connect to my FTP server (this seems to be a common problem with NetPresenz, despite its position as probably the most common Macintosh FTP server).

A call to Microsoft technical support revealed that my experience is atypical and yielded a series of steps for removing and re-installing the software (about fifteen items had to be plucked from the System Folder). After re-installing, my Mac and FrontPage still have serious differences, though the problems have changed slightly. Given my deadline, I've decided to patch together a review, but I'm hobbled by FrontPage not working correctly.

Beyond my personal negative experience, FrontPage suffers two general problems that limit its utility. First, on my 604-based Power Mac 7600, it plods along, with delays bordering on the unacceptable. Microsoft's FrontPage press release says it is "optimized for" any PowerPC-based Macintosh running System 7.5.3 or later with 16 MB free RAM (but 24 recommended), 30 MB disk space, and a CD-ROM drive.

Second, for best results, a server running FrontPage server extensions must host your site. These features are much of what might make FrontPage attractive. They center around live editing like that offered by AOLpress (see TidBITS-386); flexible uploads that only upload the changed portion of a site; the ability for a group to work on a Web site, complete with permissions for different pages and a shared To Do list; and the use of some of FrontPage's WebBots (also called "bots"), which handle backend processing for features like forms as well as page elements that only appear for a scheduled time period. (Not all bots require FrontPage server extensions: important goodies like automatically generated tables of contents and includes [where repeating site elements need only be changed once instead of in multiple locations] work locally.)

Unfortunately, Microsoft has not released FrontPage server extensions for any Mac servers, and, if your ISP runs Windows or Unix boxes, you'll want to confirm that it has installed the FrontPage server extensions. I asked Microsoft to set me up with a temporary account on a server running FrontPage extensions, but they were unable to do so in time.

Exploring FrontPage -- Like Adobe's PageMill/SiteMill combo, FrontPage includes two applications: Editor and Explorer. Explorer controls sites and offers a Folder view with similar features to the site outline view in SiteMill. A Hyperlink view lets you click a file in a site outline at the left and then - at the right - see a visual representation of what files link to and from that file (though my Mac only shows links from the file as does the screenshot in the printed manual). GoLive's CyberStudio has a similar view, but in CyberStudio you can click any file showing in the visual representation to make it the focus and in this way move through a site. FrontPage can check and repair relative and external links, and its external link checker works nicely in the background.

Explorer also has a multi-file spelling checker and basic multi-file Find. (Editor has a Replace command.) Both work by running through the entire site (or portion) and then - from a list of pages with a typo or found text - let you add pages to the To Do list or correct them individually. The file-by-file technique for making corrections goes terribly slowly.

A Plain Jane Editor -- Editor most closely compares to popular visual editors such as Home Page, PageMill, and Visual Page (see TidBITS-386). However, these three programs are much more like one another than like FrontPage. FrontPage does most formatting in modal dialog boxes instead of via palettes or "Inspector" windoids. This annoyance is increased by FrontPage's tortoise-like pace. FrontPage also lacks drag & drop features: table elements can't be sized by dragging and it cannot accept files dropped in from the Finder (it can accept files from Explorer, but slowly). FrontPage lacks an internal preview, and its HTML view is the most mediocre of the lot.

Given Microsoft's years of experience with Word, I was disappointed that the Editor lacks many common keyboard shortcuts for moving the insertion point and cannot intelligently insert an extra space if you drop a word between two other words. (Visual Page and PageMill share the drag & drop problem.) On the plus side, Editor has multiple undos

Microsoft's experience with tables does come through, however. It's easy to add and delete any number of rows or columns from any portion of the table, and it takes just a flick of the wrist to select a row or column quickly. It's possible to apply text formats like strong (the Bold command automatically applies a strong HTML tag!) and cell formats (like background color) to some (but not any imaginable) contiguous groups of cells. (This key feature is available in Visual Page and to some degree in PageMill, but only slightly in CyberStudio and not at all in Home Page.) Working with tables would be nearly perfect if you could use drag & drop to size table elements and the table-related dialog boxes were modeless. FrontPage also supports image maps and frames. You add a frameset through a flexible wizard, though I can't determine if you can view pages within their frames in a frameset.

Forge Ahead with Fusion -- Like FrontPage, Fusion requires a PowerPC-based Mac. It requires at least System 7.1.2, 16 MB free RAM, 20 MB free disk space (80 MB recommended), an 8-bit color monitor with 800 by 600 pixels, and a CD-ROM drive. Fusion is also available for Windows, which shows in some interface aspects, though the program's interface is fairly unique. Of the programs I've looked at so far, with the possible exception of Frontier, Fusion was the hardest to learn.

Fusion has several modules that you switch among by way of buttons in a common toolbar. Site creation happens in Fusion's Site module. As you might expect, it has an outline view that works like those in SiteMill and FrontPage. It also offers an organization-chart like view. You use these views to create dummy pages for an entire site rapidly. There's also a separate Publish module for uploading a completed site.

The Page module has page creation features ranging from mediocre to average but for a few unique and awesome capabilities. In particular, Fusion's killer feature is its pixel-perfect layout. Using the pixel-perfect layout, you can drag page elements about to any page location, much as you would in a desktop publishing program. Oddly, you cannot drag items in from the Finder. Some designers will see pixel-perfect layout as the coolest thing since sliced bread (in flying toasters); others will find it a show-stopper, since it's not optional (as it is in CyberStudio) and it turns Web pages into masses of table tags.

The Master Border is another unique feature. When you begin a Web site, each page has one Master Border encompassing its entire outside edge. If you change anything in the border on any page, that change appears in all pages. Or, you can create a new Master Border, associate it with only some pages, and only those pages will change in tandem. You can easily insert navigation bars into Master Borders. These bars are a wonderful timesaver, but are difficult to create if links don't follow the logical hierarchy set in the Site module or make unexpected jumps within a site.

Combine Master Borders and the automatic navigation bars with the AutoFrames feature and you reach webmaster nirvana - AutoFrames instantly converts the site (or site portion) into a frameset with the central layout areas (the parts inside the borders) and the page sides (optionally) becoming separate framed pages.

Fusion lacks features for combining the efforts of multiple webmasters, but has important features like a remote link checker, a spelling checker, and extras like JavaScripts that insert buttons that highlight when a mouse waves over them.

If you must whip up a large site in just a few days and lack time to learn HTML, Fusion is worth consideration. It also looks like a good tool for quickly experimenting with site layouts (you can rapidly switch among some 50 provided site styles, modify an existing style, or create your own). I see it as a wonderful program for a design firm that must pitch mocked up sites to clients and then quickly make changes as requested.

DealBITS Discount -- Cyberian Outpost is selling FrontPage to TidBITS readers at $134.95, a $5 discount from Cyberian's regular price of $139.95, and Fusion for $469.95, an $8 discount from Cyberian's regular price of $477.95.

<http://www.tidbits.com/products/front-page.html>
<http://www.tidbits.com/products/fusion.html>

Recommendations and Favorites -- I particularly like PageSpinner, BBEdit, Visual Page, and CyberStudio. Frontier represents a key choice for those who require sophistication and flexibility, though it's worth noting that - for those with the right technical knowledge - similarly powerful systems can be set up using software like HyperCard and SuperCard. PageSpinner and Home Page stand out as winners for novices, and PageMill is looking increasingly good, particularly for those who use Adobe products or for anyone looking for site management at a low price. FrontPage is unreasonably slow, but, should a faster version come out, I'd recommend it to those who enjoy using Microsoft products. Fusion costs a bundle but serves a unique audience that - for the most part - will gladly pay for the feature set.

What to Make of It -- No one Web publishing program suits everyone. Sites like TidBITS that keep some pages around for years require radically different software from sites whose pages are discarded after a few months. Further, as sites expand, they often require automation or database interactions, and this may require that your Web publishing software be scriptable.

The best solutions often remain those cobbled together from a combination of text and visual editors, plus a few utilities and converters. I believe an opportunity exists for the first company to ship a scriptable site management program that works well with most HTML editors, only messes with text when it runs a spell check or updates links, and has oodles of carefully conceived features for uploading, downloading, multiple authors, and site synchronization.

We've seen desktop applications expand into feature-laden dinosaurs. I believe this happens because the bulk of the profits comes from site licenses made to large organizations. A large organization will often sacrifice excellence for a feature list that tries to accommodate different types of users. This encourages mediocre programs because there's no time to both make them great and add lots of features. Whether all Web publishing software will go that way remains to be seen, but the idea that one program could accommodate most sites is ridiculous. I hope the future will bring us carefully designed applications that - though they may try to solve every Web publishing problem for some market segment - will also play nicely with other programs so that we can mix and match software as needed.

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The Web has become a fad that just won't stop. And, as the Web recedes into the assumed background of how capable computer users manage and locate information, the tools for creating Web pages continue to diversifyShow full article

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The Web has become a fad that just won't stop. And, as the Web recedes into the assumed background of how capable computer users manage and locate information, the tools for creating Web pages continue to diversify. We've reached the point where it would be almost impossible to mention every program in one article. This article makes no attempt to do so; instead it builds on my earlier multi-part article series about Web publishing software and looks at a clump of recent releases (not betas, but actual shipping software). I'm hoping to alert you to new trends in what software is available and to new releases that might be relevant to the Web publishing that you do.

<http://db.tidbits.com/series/1010>

Let the Good Times Roll -- First up is Myrmidon 2.0.1, by Terry Morse Software. Version 2.0 came out a few weeks ago; the 2.0.1 update appeared today and provides important bug fixes. Myrmidon, a Chooser extension, "prints" HTML files from most applications, and is a great choice for quickly turning regular documents into useful Web pages. When queried, Terry Morse noted many new features in 2.0, including optional use of tables and spacer tags for improved fidelity between the original document and the resulting Web page; more graphics conversion options (previously Myrmidon only converted bitmaps to GIFs); selectable color palettes and dithering; and the capability to render numerous Web pages from one "printed" document, complete with navigation buttons. The new version is also PowerPC native. The demo, a 450K download, offers 25 tries with which to tweak the extensive settings to see if Myrmidon is right for your project. The suggested retail price is $99; purchasing direct from the Web costs $69. Upgrades from version 1.x are free.

<http://www.terrymorse.com/>

Just What I Needed -- A wonderful program for those looking to work directly with HTML in an environment that promotes ease and learning, the $25 shareware PageSpinner 2.0.1 (reviewed in TidBITS-384), is always worth a look, even more so now that Optima System has released a PageSpinner Extension Pack. The new pack slices and dices HTML in numerous new ways; a few examples include integration with clip2gif (a freeware graphics conversion utility) and integration with Apple's new Internet Address Detectors so selected URLs can be added to PageSpinner documents quickly. Also included are more JavaScript options and canned AppleScripts. The Extension Pack is free to registered users.

<http://www.algonet.se/~optima/ps_news.html>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/02195>

Baby You Can Drive My Car -- The next new kid on the block, the $299 Freeway 1.0 from SoftPress, takes a different approach to Web publishing, and I recommend checking it out if you need a great deal of layout flexibility and control and want to leverage desktop publishing skills learned in programs like Adobe Photoshop and QuarkXPress. (On the other hand, if you like to putter in your HTML, you'll shy away from Freeway's table-based HTML.) Freeway uses a page and pasteboard metaphor to create Web sites. Items on pages come from master pages or are inserted into special boxes, such as GIF boxes or HTML boxes. Freeway competes primarily with NetObjects Fusion, which also renders layouts in HTML via extensive table tagging. I spent hours working with Fusion for a review in TidBITS-391; having spent only a preliminary half-hour with Freeway, I already feel more comfortable with it than with Fusion. Freeway requires at least a 68040-based Mac and 5 to 9 MB RAM, depending on your processor. A 30-day demo is available as a 5 MB download.

<http://www.softpress.com/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/04086>

Shake It Up -- Finally, those who wish to create cascading style sheets but don't want to type them in might check out Cascade Light from Media Design in-Progress. Cascade Light is a free, feature-reduced version of the $69 Cascade. Using a dialog box, you can match HTML tags (known as "selectors") with formats such as font size, background color, and border width. You can then save these matches as a style sheet or apply them to an existing HTML document. Cascade won't turn a novice into a style sheet wizard, but if you have already made a few style sheets by hand and have a feeling for which style sheet tricks work in which browsers, Cascade will speed up future efforts. The software still has a raw feel; interface improvements, a fancier preview, and a sprinkling of balloon help would be most welcome. (A growing number of Web publishing applications support style sheets; PageSpinner and Astrobyte's BeyondPress come to mind as examples).

<http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS1>
<http://interaction.in-progress.com/cascade/>
<http://www.astrobyte.com/BeyondPress/Overview/ BeyondPress30.html>

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