Online Tools - November '97

Philip Moore and Angela Booth provide tools to create and enhance your Web site.

Windows 95

Web Authoring and HTML Editors Graphics Tools Authoring Utilities Interactivity tools Windows 3.1 authoring tools

Web Authoring and HTML Editors
Net Objects Fusion
List price:
$795
From: Firmware Design (047) 21 7211. Publisher: www.netobjects.com
System requirements: 486/66 processor or better (Pentium recommended), Windows 95 or NT 3.51 or later, 10Mb free hard disk space (60Mb recommended), 16Mb RAM (24Mb recomended), CD-ROM drive, 32-bit ODBC drivers for external database connectivity.
Overall Value:

Trial version of this outstanding Web site designer. NetObjects Fusion has more in kin with a desktop publishing program than with an HTML editor and this approach has very distinct pros and cons.

On the plus side it is as easy to use as DTP application. You don't have to even think about HTML tags or tables or frames. You just drag pictures where you want them on the page, you type text in and move it exactly where you want it. It achieves this by working in its own internal format, saving your site to a Fusion .NOD file. This means that while you work in Fusion you are not restricted to of the normal HTML conventions.

Fusion works by offering a wide range of Style templates, complete with graphics for banners, buttons, bullets, lines and background. You can select from any of these or create your own Style with original graphics. These Styles give your site a cohesive overall look and feel and are configured with a banner at the top of the page and a menu down the left hand side. But you can easily alter this layout to add a right or bottom margin or remove these margins altogether. Margins can also be enabled as HTML frames.

You can have multiple such layouts defined for different section of your site. But no matter what structure you use they will all use the same Style you selected at the start. And you can change this style at any time and every page in the site will update to reflect the new graphics. You can give buttons and banners on each page different text and headings, although Fusion will create the appropriate text automatically for you based on the name of a new page or section.

You can preview your site in progress in either Netscape or Internet Explorer, at which point Fusion creates all the necessary HTML and loads it into the browser. All the graphics for the different buttons and banners you may have used are created on the fly, with the appropriate text added to the GIF file; and a complex table structure is created on the fly to make sure all the elements you have placed on your page remain exactly where you want them.

This is no mean feat. Netscape and IE handle tables, borders and other such elements slightly differently, it is impossible to create a Web page that looks identical in both browsers (let alone different versions of these programs or other less popular browsers). Fusion optomises its content for the selected browser so that it looks exactly the way you laid it out. To make this possible though you need to define the width of the pages in your site and this is set in stone. A standard 640 pixels is normal, though you can change this to any resolution you want.

You can also add rich media such as Java, Shockwave, sound and video via the tools palette, as well as draw shapes (rectangles, circles or polygons). There are some special Net Objects Fusion Java applets provided for adding animated buttons, timed images, tickertape, a site map, or message board; and creating a data lists or field objects is a simple click and drag operation with support for ODBC databases. At the end of the day once you have your site the way you want, you export it to a staging area where you can test it, or publish it directly to your server. This process creates all the HTML and graphics, file names and folder structure for you.

The flexibility of Fusion in creating a site from scratch and being able to easily update and change that site is very impressive. So what 'cons' could there possibly be?

Well, because Fusion works totally in its own environment you have no real control over how the HTML or its assets (graphics and media files) are created and organised. Provided your Web server supports the long file names created (and most would), and you intend to always edit the site using Fusion there is no great problem. However, from a purist HTML point of view, the number of files created, and the complex tables used in the HTML pages seems excessive -- especially if you choose to use frames. If the same site were created in a more HTML-oriented tool like MS FrontPage there would be considerably fewer files overall and it would probably run faster, but it would take much longer to create and require a bit more nouse.

The other downside to NetObjects 2.0 is its age - now about a year old - so it doesn't support the absolute latest Web features such as Dynamic HTML and `push' broadcasting.

This said Net Objects Fusion is an ideal tool for people who don't know and don't want to know the finer points HTML. It is the first true Web design program, taking care of all the technicalities and restrictions of HTML for you, so you can concentrate on the look and functionality. Designers and graphic artists will love Fusion, and that after all is who the program is intended for.

Philip Moore

 

Microsoft FrontPage 98 (Beta 2)
From:
Microsoft (02) 9870 2200, www.microsoft.com/frontpage/
List price: $169
System requirements: Windows 95 or NT 4.0, 486/66 processor or better, 16Mb RAM.
Value Rating:

This is a full version of the FrontPage 98 beta - so bear in mind this pre-release version may be unstable, missing features from the final release, and will expire at the end of December 1997.

FrontPage is one of the most popular tools around for creating Web sites; and justifiably so. OK, so it does come from Microsoft, and it does have its fair share of annoying quirks and inadequacies; but on balance, it is still one of the easiest to use and powerful HTML Editors around.

FrontPage 97 was a good evolutionary improvement over Version 1.1 of the program. But this new 98 version takes a much bigger leap in terms of features, functionality and pure power. And this is just on the strength of the Beta 2 version we reviewed.

New technologies supported by FrontPage 98 include Microsoft Internet Explorer 4's version of Dynamic HTML, including Cascading Style Sheets and Page Transitions, plus 'push' broadcasting (again only with IE 4's Channel Definition Format -- CDF).

Major improvements include the ability to now draw tables and cells directly onto a page, a better structured Explorer for managing your Web as it grows, a built-in version of Internet Explorer for preview purposes, and easier Web publishing. There are also much better tools for creating a Web that uses frames and simplified forms creation.

Two of the biggest new additions are Themes and Shared Borders. Themes are pre-defined banners, buttons, bullets and lines that remain consistent throughout your site. Select a theme from over 50 ready-made templates and most of the visual design and layout is done for you. Shared Border means that a Header or Footer, for example, can be the same throughout your site and updated easily. These are great additions, though they're not innovations -- NetObjects Fusion was first to bring out these features, and still does them better. For example, FrontPage - at least in this beta version - does not support the creation of new Themes. For this, Microsoft says, you'll need the FrontPage 98 Software Development Kit (SDK) when it is available -- and SDKs, being designed for professional developers, are usually beyond the scope of many Web authors.

Also 'borrowed' from Fusion is the Navigation view where you get an overview of your site and can easily move pages around and with this the use of Navigation Bars that can be used throughout your site and updated easily. In one sense these could be seen a simply a refinement of the existing Include Bot function. This is something we here at PC User have certainly found a great time saver when designing our Offline CD and Web site. FrontPage does not integrate these design aids as well as Net Objects Fusion, but then one big advantage to FrontPage, at least for some people, is it still an HTML editor at heart; which does have its advantages over an authoring program that effectively converts to HTML at the end.

Another very cool new feature is the ability to type text overlays over images. This combines the image and text as a new image file when you save, so you can use any font you want - very nice, and a great way to create buttons with text on the fly. There is also now several very useful image editing tools such as flip and rotate, contrast and brightness controls. You can crop a picture, add a beveled edge, and resampled to a new size, as well automatically have a thumbnail created for large images. All great time saving tools.

One odd anomaly we discovered was that .JPG images were not displaying. In the previous version of the program progressive JPEGs likewise would not display properly. This version is said to now support progressive JPEG images - but as of this beta no form of JPG image appeared to be working. GIFs however were fine.

Other great little improvements include a hit counter, the ability to save form results directly to an email address, 'hover' buttons which are actually little Java applets for animated rollover effects on button graphics, and a menu feature to convert text directly into table form and vice versa (thank you!). There is a Banner Ad manager which allows you to load a series of banner images and set a timer between them so they are constantly cycling. An important improvement for commercial sites.

But wait, there's more! Suffice to say this is a big improvement to what was already a great program, even if they have pinched quite a few ideas from another leader in Web design tools.

Philip Moore

 

Claris HomePage 2.0
List Price: $119
From: Claris (02) 452 8585, http://www.claris.com.au
System requirements: Windows 95, 486, 8Mb RAM.
Value rating:

For sheer speed and ease of use, Claris HomePage 2.0 is hard to beat as a Web design package. Similar to a word processor, it sports drag and drop functionality and advanced features available through menus and dialogue boxes.
HomePage supports tables for ensuring control over layout as well as formatting columns of data, frames and most importantly the ability to edit HTML source directly. It runs out of puff, however, when you want to introduce interactive features such as forms, search engines, and counters.

You will need to search for common gateway interface scripts that handle these operations at the net server level. While this is not hard if this is something you want to include in your web site, be aware you will have to seek assistance elsewhere at this point.

Its strong point is its intuitive interface, supply of clip art and ability to generate smart looking pages with links and fancy doodads in a remarkably short time. For many teachers and students that may suffice. Another plus is that HomePage runs fairly well on modest hardware.

 

WebExpress
Registered Price: $100
Rating:
URL: www.mvd.com

This program is a complete Web-authoring tool, but as easy to use as your word processor. Its focus is on your complete Web site, rather than on individual pages. Features include: visually tracks pages in your site, and how they are linked, just double-click, and you can open the page for editing; Web project management-the program remembers which site you worked on last, and which files were open and closed; it even includes Web site image maps. It has all the latest features, you can create frames, and forms, and you can even edit JavaScript and VBScript from within the program.

Angela Booth

 

HotDog Pro 4.0
URL: www.sausage.com.au
Registered Price: $US130

Trial version of one of the original favourites, HotDog Pro, now a fully featured HTML editor. It includes support for Internet Explorer 4, Netscape Communicator, WebTV, Dynamic HTML, Cascading Style Sheets and HTML 4. It also includes `wizards' to make Web site creation easier, although it's not really in the same league as the likes of FrontPage.

 

HotDog Express
URL: www.sausage.com.au
Registered Price: $US50

Trial version of this primer for HotDog Pro, which is a basic, drag-and-drop editor that makes it easier for non-HTML programmers to create Web pages.

 

Arachnophilia
URL: http://www.arachnoid.com
List price: Free

Fast freeware HTML editor that automatically converts RTF documents and tables from most Windows 95 applications into HTML. Arachnophilia includes an intelligent FTP utility, user-defined templates, tutorials on HTML and JavaScript, and more.

 

Graphics Tools
Picture Publisher 7
List Price: $245 (as part of Webtricity suite)
From: Micrografx (02) 9415 2642, www.micrografx.com
System requirements: Windows 95 or Windows NT 3.51 or later, 486DX, 16 MB RAM, 50MB hard disk space.
Value rating:

This is a trial version of Picture Publisher 7 -- a fully fledged paint program with all the tools you need to create quality bitmap images from scratch or to edit and alter the provided clip-art. One feature definitely worth noting is it's digital watermarking. This is a means of attaching a copyright to any image you create in Picture Publisher. The watermark is invisible, but is made indelibly a part of the image pixels and survives most editing including format changes, cropping, filters, even scanning and printing. This way your copyright and contact details are always a part of the image and can be seen by anyone using a program (like Picture Publisher) that can read them. A surefire way to protect your original work on the Internet.

Probably the best way for Web designers to buy Picture Publisher is as part of the Webtricity suite, which includes: a massive collection of clip-art, photos, VRML2 3D art and animations intended for use on Web pages; Simply 3D 2.0, a simple but very effective 3D tool and great for creating flying text or logos and 3D scenes; Designer 7, a drawing/illustration program which offers some special Internet features for adding interactivity to your vector images; and Media Manager which lets you browse the hundreds of images and select, copy or export them for use.

Philip Moore

 

GIF Construction Set
URL: http://www.mindworkshop.com/alchemy/alchemy.html

Still the best of the shareware programs for creating GIF animations for your Web pages.

 

Ulead GIF Animator
URL: http://www.ulead.com/

The trial version of the Ulead GIF Animator, from one our favourite graphics packages, PhotoImpact.

 

Agile ColorWeb
URL: http://www.compware.demon.co.uk/
Registered price: $US10

Problem: Your Web pages' carefully designed colour scheme can appear a complete mess on someone else's PC if the colour palettes doesn't match. Solution: ColorWeb makes it easy to avoid this problem.

 

LiveImage
URL: http://www.mediatec.com
Register Price: $US25

Authoring tool that adds client-side image maps to your Web pages easily.

 

See also Paint Shop Pro in our Utilities Section
Authoring Utilities
Bandwidth Buster
URL: http://www.sausage.com/
Registered price: $US25

From the maker of HotDog, the Australian company Sausage Software, Bandwidth Buster will minimise the size of your web site files, and insert tags and features that will speed the rate that users are able to view your site.

 

HTML Powertools
URL: http://www.opposite.com
List price: $US60

Trial version of this powerful utility pack that will complement your HTML editor. It includes HTML validation and link checking, HTML rulebase editor for customising the validation, automatic find and repair of mismatched tag pairs, HTML-aware, site-wide search and replace, automatic insertion of width and height attributes for all IMG tags, insertion of ALT attributes for all IMG tags in a Website, automatic date stamp every page in your Website, HTML-to-text batch converter.

 

See also FTP programs in our Internet Essentials page
Interactivity Tools
Director 6.0
List price: $1,399 (Upgrade $625); Director Studio $1,599 (upgrade $799).
From: Firmware Design (047) 21 7211. Publisher: www.macromedia.com
System requirements: 486/66 processor or faster, Window 95, NT 4.0 or higher, 16 Mb RAM, CD-ROM drive, Sound-Blaster compatible sound card.
Value rating:

Trial version of the most popular authoring tool around, thanks to its versatility and power. More recently, its Shockwave technology is the closest thing to a standard for providing interactive multimedia on the Web and is now integrated into the whole range of Macromedia products as well as Director.

As a multimedia development tool, Director uses a cinematic metaphor. The `Cast' is where all your content is stored, a Stage is where all the action takes place, and a Score controls that action. A Director project is called a Movie while the finished executable is a Projector. It's key features are the tools it provides as an animation engine, and Lingo, it's built-in programming language and cross-platform compatibility with the Apple Mac.

There are a number of major productivity improvements to version 6.0. The Score was limited in versions 4 and 5 to 48 Channels, meaning you could have only 48 sprites (image objects) on screen at any one time. This seems like plenty, but once you start controlling these Channels through programming you need as many as you can get. Director 6 now offers 120 sprite channels.

The Score is no longer divided into a static grid of cells. Sprites now appear as a single resizable bar between keyframes. Creating tweens and making adjustments to an animation is now even easier. The Score is also scaleable so you can zoom out to get a birds eye view or right in close for fine editing; and you can have multiple instances of the Score window open. This kind of approach is used in the video programs reviewed above as well many other rich media tools. It is the best way to manipulate linear content (sound or vision) in a non-linear way and its good to see that Director has finally caught up.

Also new the concept of Behaviors. These are Lingo scripts or handlers that perform a special function, and they can be simply dragged and dropped onto a sprite object to add that behavior to it. Multiple Behaviors can be applied to an object. The Behavior Inspector will allow non-programmers to add interactivity easily without having to learn Lingo. Alongside this comes the Buttons Editor, which will allow you to add various kinds of buttons with Normal, Pressed and Rollover states defined. With this comes new Lingo commands like MouseEnter, MouseWitihn and MouseLeave, which mercifully replace the Rollover command from previous versions.

The Shockwave improvements are also impressive. The DCR file format has completely replaced the former protected DXR file type and will work on CD or Web. DCR files are now fully streaming, so they will start playback immediately the first frame arrives when run from the Web while the rest of the movie downloads in the background.

There are a range of new Lingo commands for playing and using external content off the Web, and these also help in creating hybrid CD+Internet applications. Director 6 now supports DirectDraw and DirectSound as well as MMX, which means any project created with Windows 95 or NT will support these technologies. The PC version runs under Windows 95 or NT 3.5.1 or later, though it can still create a 16 bit projector for Windows 3.1 end users.
Director 6 is a major improvement over version 5 and will keep Macromedia at the head of a very competitive game. It also comes in a studio bundle with XRes 3.0 their paint program, Extreme 3D for 3D graphics, and Sound Forge XP for WAV file editing. If you are not using Director for multimedia/Web production you should seriously consider it. If you are - upgrade immediately!

Philip Moore

 

Flash 2
List price: $299
From: Firmware Design (047) 21 7211. Publisher: www.macromedia.com
System requirements: 486 processor or faster, Window 95, NT 4.0 or higher, 16 Mb RAM, CD-ROM drive
Value rating:

Trial version of the latest addition to the Macromedia Shockwave gallery of tools. Flash 2 is a vector based animation tool for the Internet. As such it provides several features not possible with Macromedia Director. Key among these is that animations and graphics you create in Flash can be resized with no loss of quality. Because the art is vector, not raster (such as in GIF or JPG images) it can be scaled to any size and still look good. A Flash animation can be zoomed in and out from within your Web browser by choosing Zoom from a right-click menu. It will also automatically scale itself to the size of your browser window, rather than simply not fit as would happen with other kinds of embedded Web content..

In using the program you are presented with a view Window, several toolbars, and an animation timeline at the top. It offers most of tools you would find in a simple illustration program, with shapes and line draw, text, and fill colours; plus various object manipulation tools and menu options. There are several features to help automate the creation of animations for you, including motion control to add in-between frames, and spline paths that you can draw in and alter by moving the points around to quickly change the path of an animated object. New to this version is the ability to have colours on text and other objects cycle. This will animate changes in brightness and tint, perform fades, and nest color effects.

It will import many common graphic file formats including Windows Metafiles, Adobe Illustrator, DXF, JPG, GIF and BMP. There are several new features for handling bitmap files including a new command to automaticaly trace and convert them into a vector format, use them as gradient fills, or create masks.

Animations can be exported to an AVI file or image sequence. The one thing Flash cannot export, except to its own native file type, is any interaction you add to an image or animation. This interactive control is what sets it apart from other illustration or animation programs, and what makes it an excellent tool for the Internet. Adding interactivity to a Flash animation is also very easy, compared to the high-level scripting required by Director, for example. There are two basic methods of script-like control Flash animations offer: Buttons and Frame Actions.

Buttons are graphics objects that your end-user can click on to trigger an action, These can of course look like buttons, or can be icons or other graphics that function as hotspots. A vast library of button graphics are provided with the program. Several common actions are pre-defined, such as Goto, Play, Stop and Get URL. Frame Actions will trigger these actions automatically when a particular frame of an animation is reached. Rollover effects can be added, so objects will highlight or alter when the mouse cursor passes over them, and you can change HTML pages in other browser frames. This makes it possible to create a menu in Flash, for example, with highlighting buttons, which changes the content in a neighboring frame.

Another key attraction of Flash is its file size. You can create a complex image or animation and it may be no more that 10Kb all up. At the most a large zoomable map with lots of details, animations and interactive control would still come out no more than around 50Kb. Compared to doing a similar thing with Director, for example, this is remarkably small. Add to this the fact that Flash animations are streaming, so that they appear as soon as the first frame is downloaded, and you get brilliant graphic content that appears instantly on the end user's computer. And with this new version there is also support for sound. You can import WAV files to use as sound effects -- though these can add considerably to the overall file size so need to be kept short.

The interactivity offered is pretty basic, but certainly adequate to create a menu system that can control other animations, load HTML pages, or jump to a new URL. Anything more though and you reach the limits of the program. This is when you would turn to Director and its more powerful Lingo scripting language.
Flash will work within JavaScript, but does still require a plug-in for viewing. For simple, scaleable images, animations and menuing systems, Flash is a great choice. But for more complex interactive content you would need to look elsewhere.

Philip Moore

 

WebGenie Software
URL: http://www.wengenie.com
Registered Prices: Banner*Show $US29, CGI*StarPro $US99, Link*Launch free.

Goof-proof Web authoring utilities for adding powerful CGI server or JavaScript client features to your Web pages. Tools include: Trial versions of Banner*Show for creating rotating banners in Java or JavaScript, CGI*StarPro for creating interactive Web forms without programming. Plus the freeware Link*Launch for creating drop-down menu lists.

1stJava Bundle
From: Auscomp, http://www.auscomp.com.au/
List price: $65

Trial version of a very handy suite of Java-based tools from Australian company, Auscomp. These tools allow you to create tabs and trees to your web pages for easy navigation of your site -- with no Java or HTML programming. Note there's an update to one of the three tools, 1stJava Tab&Tree 2.0.

 

 

Windows 3.1x

QuickSite Lite
Registered Price: $100
Rating:
URL: www.deltapoint.com

This program is a cut-down version of QuickSite, the popular Web site creation tool. Unless you plan to set up as a Web designer however, this version is ample for creating and maintaining your own site, whether it's as a hobby, or for your small business- it even creates forms. Some of the many great features include: Wizards, to handle structure and links in your site; a library of templates to allow you to concentrate on the site's content rather than its format; create HTML files with a couple of clicks of your mouse. This new version of the program also features an enhanced table cell editor.

Angela Booth

 

GIF Construction Set
URL: http://www.mindworkshop.com/alchemy/alchemy.html

Still the best shareware program around for creating GIF animations for your Web pages.

 

See also Paint Shop Pro in our Utilities section and FTP tools in our Internet Essentials section.

 


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