Online Tools - March '98

Internet Explorer Netscape Communicator/Navigator  WebTurbo Powermarks Web Writer 98 Shockwave RealPlayer Acrobat Reader 

The final release of Internet Explorer 4 is finally here, but it's been worth the wait. IE 4.0 goes toe to toe with Netscape with this lineup: Explorer (the browser with integrated Webcasting), Outlook Express (integrated e-mail and newsgroups), NetMeeting (conferencing and collaboration), FrontPage Express (Web page authoring), and NetShow (broadcasting and streaming multimedia).

But IE 4 is more than a great suite of Internet tools. Through its Web Integrated Desktop, IE 4 offers a revolutionary development in the integration of the operating system (Windows 95) and the Internet: browsing your hard disk and browsing the Web become essentially the same experience.

On the whole, we feel that Internet Explorer 4.0 pips Communicator as an Internet suite, and, because it's free to everyone, it's even better value. Throw in desktop integration and you have a compelling case for all Windows 95 users, except perhaps Netscape devotees.

And now, just as we go to press, Microsoft has released a beta version of IE 4.0 for Windows 3.1, which appears to have all the major new Internet features of IE 4.0 for Win 95.

Naturally, there's a hardware hit with IE 4.0. Those of you who don't have at least a fast 486 with 16Mb of RAM can always use IE 3, which will provide many of the features of version 4, except of course the very latest and best.

If you want to find out more before you make the leap into IE 4.0 check out our Special
True Web Integration guide for Internet Explorer 4.0

By Rose Vines

List price: $108 for business users
From: Netscape 1800 650 199, http://www.netscape.com.au
Value rating:

Communicator 4 isn't just a browser -- it's a complete Internet suite. It gives us the latest version of Navigator (the browser itself), teamed with Messenger (e-mail), Collabra (newsgroup reader), Conference (collaboration), Composer (Web page authoring), Media Player (live broadcasting and streaming multimedia support) and Netcaster (Webcasting, the Web's equivalent of TV channels with information broadcast directly to your desktop).

It's an excellent suite of tools, certainly good enough for dedicated Navigator users to stick with Netscape.

However, bear in mind that for business users Communicator is free to try only for 90 days. Navigator 4 can be downloaded separately and is free to everyone. However, while it includes the browser and Netcaster, it's lacking all the other components including e-mail. As an alternative, Netscape is offering server-based e-mail -- users will have to connect remotely to a Netscape server if they want to use the browser to pick up their mail.

The good news is that Navigator 4 can get by with 8Mb (if you're patient). However, a better low-memory option for those who want e-mail but don't want all the new technologies such as Webcasting, is to stick to Navigator 3, which will still give you a rich Internet experience.

Rose Vines

Rating:

WebTurbo is a great freeware addition to the Netscape Navigator browser. It provides a separate window in which you can search using the major search engines; when you choose a site, WebTurbo will provide an expandable outline of the entire site, with information on what each page contains. This saves you a lot of wasted time, because you no longer have to look at each page individually.
This update contains several new features, expanding on ways in which you can save the information that you've found.

Rating:

This program contains everything that you need to create your Web site. Included with the program is a project manager, HTML editor, thumbnails browser, clickable image map creator, an FTP client and much more. An excellent feature of Alchemica Webworks is that it's completely graphical: you can see exactly where you are in your work at any time -- this is an immense benefit to keep track of tasks related to your site. However, the main benefit of the program is that you can create a single project and simultaneously publish it to a World Wide Web server, an Intranet server, a CD-ROM or an HTML help application. In other words, rather than focusing on any single element of a Web site or similar project, Alchemica Webworks gives you a complete overview and allows you to pull elements from many places together into a new project.

To get you started, and to show you how the program works, there's a sample project, as well as a good Help file.

This program is for Win95 users only

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Powermarks is a simple but powerful utility which offers a solution to the Internet bookmarks problem. It works with both Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer. You add your bookmarks with a Fast Add option, which saves the current page, or an Add and edit option, which allows you to fill in various fields. When you want to retrieve a bookmark, just type a few letters of the name, and the appropriate bookmark appears.

This program is for Win95 or Windows NT users only

Rating:

Web Writer 98 is an HTML editor that functions much like WordPad, except that it inserts HTML code. It's very handy for creating additions or alterations to your Web pages on-the-fly. Features include: toolbars for single-button HTML tag insertion, automatic HTML colour syntaxing, as well as unlimited undo/redo functions.

HTML Index Generator is a simple program, but very handy if you're trying to organise GIF and JPG files for your Web site. The program scans any directory you nominate, and presents any GIF and/or JPG files as thumbnails. You cannot save any indexes, however, they are quickly generated, and the thumbnails are a good viewable size. Click on a filename if you want to see the file full size.

The original Shockwave plug-in, which can add incredible animation, sound and interactivity to Web pages, are created using Macromedia Director. The new ShockWave Flash plug-in plays the fast, small vector-based animations, graphics and buttons created by Macromedia Flash.

The plug-in provided here includes players for both Director and Flash Shockwave.

The latest version of the RealAudio and RealVideo Web plug-in that gives you live streaming Audio and video over the Net with your browser.

You'll find many documents on the Net in Adobe Acrobat's PDF format, making this reader an essential part of your toolkit.