Adobe has announced dramatic re-pricing of its SiteMill web
management package.

Introduced at $595 US in February, Adobe PageMill's big
brother, SiteMill, will now be available for a suggested
retail price of $279 with upgrades for registered PageMill owners
set at only $99 US.

Current SiteMill owners who paid the higher price will receive a free copy of SiteMill 2.0 when it ships this summer.

SiteMill software makes creating and maintaining a Web site more efficient through an easy drag and drop interface. When SiteMill users paste links, rename files, or move files, the software automatically updates all links. Adobe SiteMill also scans the existing Web site for errors, flagging unreachable or unused links and automatically correcting them. In addition, Adobe SiteMill includes all the Web page authoring features found in Adobe PageMill, including what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) page editing and integrated image manipulation and format conversion.

SiteMill 1.0.2 is available for download from Adobe's Web site now for $199 US at: http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/sitemill/main.html  
— Alex Narvey

  
Claris is jumping into the Internet sweepstakes in a big 
way with the just- announced acquisition of a web page 
creation tool to be called Claris Home Page (previously 
code-named "Loma Prieta"from San Andreas Systems of Los Altos, California.).

Claris Home Page, a Macintosh and Windows web authoring software product, will be made available in beta format later this month.

The company is claiming "breakthrough ease-of-use" for its new web page creator.

"The Claris obsession with creating 'simply powerful' productivity software has made us the leader in customer satisfaction, and we bring that same philosophy to Internet software," said Guerrino De Luca, president of Claris Corp. 

Claris Home Page is a cross-platform web authoring application that will run on Mac OS (System 7.1 or later, 680X0 and PowerPC-based Macintosh and compatibles) systems, Windows 95, and Windows NT. It will offer WYSIWYG page creation and will automate many of the time-consuming tasks involved in building web pages.

For users new to web authoring, Claris Home Page hides the complexity of HTML code generation, and automatically generates HTML code simply by entering text similar to a word processor and selecting items from pull-down menus or the Tool bar. 

For more advanced users who want the ability to edit their HTML code for more sophisticated authoring, Claris Home Page will offer this capability and much more. Advanced users can also develop dynamic, interactive sites that call applets (using Java or JavaScript) and CGI applications.

Claris Home Page will also offer the creation of frames, a library to store frequently used templates, and a tables editor.

Pricing for Claris Home Page has not been set. The product is scheduled for release by the end of the summer. The beta should be online at www.claris.com by the end June.

— Alex Narvey

  
Now that URLs have become almost as common-
place as 1-800 numbers, having a Web page has 
gone from being cutting-edge to cool to a necessity. 
And with the explosion of personal as well as busi- 
ness-oriented pages, it was inevitable that web 
pages could be created without the designers 
knowing the first thing about the theory behind 
the fact.

If you don't believe web page designers never had it so good, just check out our companion story "Adobe slashes prices on SiteMill". But Adobe's PageMill/SiteMill combination is not the only player in this game. We've put together some info on a variety of interesting web page tools (complete with links, of course), for you to check out.

 
TableWorks (http://www.tableworks.com) is  a WYSIWYG HTML editor specializing in the manipulation of tables. The HTML tag  allows you to insert a paragraph of text between two pictures and vice versa. And you can do it without understanding "colspan" and "rowspan".  
With TableWorks you can create standard web pages,  catalog items and photo albums, or simply pages that you often did with DTP software.

The web site gives excellent examples of what can be accomplished with the program.

 
PageSpinner 1.1, a shareware HTML editor for the Macintosh, supports HTML 2.0, parts of HTML 3.0, plus several Netscape extensions. Information is at:  http://www.algonet.se/~optima/pagespinner.html  
PageSpinner, released in May, requires MacOS version 7.0 or later (System 7.5 recommended for AppleGuide and drag and drop use);  2.5MB of disk space;  1800KB minimum of free RAM; at least a 68020 CPU (68040 or PowerPC recommended when editing large files); color or greyscale capable monitor, 640 x 400 pixels or larger. 

 
Another Web page aid which bypasses the need to know HTML programming is Go Live, so named, its developers say, because it helps people to go live into the World Wide Web.

Go Live can be downloaded at http://www.gonet.de  
It requires, at a minimum, a Macintosh with a 68040 or PowerPC processor, version 7.5 or later,  a 4-bit greyscale monitor or 8-bit color monitor. Minimum memory requirements are 4-5MB but 8MB is recommended. 

The current Go Live version does not support tables in WYSIWYG mode but the company promises the next version will accomplish that. Frequently used functions are supported by a toolbar, including drag and drop, frames, Netscape plug-ins, text formatting and a place to store frequently used files. 

 
Also new is HTML Web Weaver Lite 3.0, the upgrade of the shareware version of Macintosh’s World Wide Web Weaver, and the shareware is all you need, developers say. Upgrades are available by emailing Miracle@northnet.org. 

 
While developers of HTML creation tools are touting the ease of use, word comes that the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science, and INRIA have reached an agreement on the release of HTML 3.2. The new HTML specifications will add widely deployed features such as tables, applets and text flow around images, while providing backwards compatibility with the existing standard HTML 2.0. 

Further information on the World Wide Web Consortium is available at http://www.w3.org/  
— Elizabeth Martin