Mac

Windows

Evaluation version

Although you maintain absolute control over the code and its formatting in your document, AceHTML helps out by automating many of the time consuming or awkward tasks involved in site development. For example, the often tiresome job of creating tables is made very simple with a tool that lets you draw out the table and quickly define attributes such as cell widths, borders, padding, colours and so forth.

Because the package automates small, specific tasks (insert an image, create a form, etc.) rather than the whole page design process, you don't need to worry about it producing overly complex and cumbersome code. The software does exactly what a good developer would do, only quicker.

You can use the internal preview browser to check your pages quickly on the fly, or automatically launch them in an external browser to get a better idea of how they look. Internet Explorer 4.01 or later is required for use as the internal browser.

The software features built in libraries of ASP, PHP and WML commands which can be inserted automatically into your pages. If you're just starting out with one of these languages, a package such as AceHTML can be a useful learning aid, since it's easy to check syntax avoids silly errors. AceHTML supports XHTML and includes a Style Sheet editor.

See the magazine review for more information.

Web link: www.visicommedia.com

Free

This is a cut down and free version of the very popular CoffeeCup HTML Editor (see below). It still has great features and is ideal for the novice Web page builder.

Web link: www.coffeecup.com

30-day trial

WebMenu Studio lets you create DHTML pop-up menu systems easily. Put together a good navigation system and people will have a far more rewarding time while on your Web site. The menu structure is designed using a hierarchical tree view, and the live Preview window shows each change instantly. The compiled JavaScript source code is separated into individual browser compatible files which are loaded dynamically, so each visitor downloads only the relevant code for their browser.

Web link: www.coalesys.com

30-day trial

Oxygen is an XML editor written entirely in Java that creates XML, XSL, TXT, XSD and DTD documents. Being a Java application, it is available for most major platforms. The slick looking interface has all the tools you'd want in a modern Integrated Development Environment (IDE) including XML, XSL, DTD validation, tag auto completion, syntax highlighting and Code Insight which helps you write valid code. Code Insight also allows the program to generate DTDs from a sample XML document, cutting down development time. It has Unicode support and the interface messages are translated in English, French, German, Italian and Romanian.

You must have Java Virtual Machine 1.4 or later installed.

Web link: http://oxygen.sync.ro

30-day trial – new version

This utility lets you build Java or Flash navigation buttons for your site. The tabbed interface contains easy-to-use controls for your button properties and a live preview that lets you check your work as you go. For each button, you can define an image, colour, font and text label. You can set up triggers based on user actions such as button clicks or mouseovers. URLs can be defined that optionally link to target frames. You can even have buttons play custom WAV or AU audio files, or MP3 in Flash. 1 Cool Button Tool automatically generates the required Flash, Java and HTML code, and collects all the required images and sounds into a build folder. You can then test the finished project in your default browser.

Requires MS Internet Explorer 4 or later. The unregistered trial version places a watermark on files you create. This latest version includes a 'Quick Start Wizard'.

Web link: www.buttontool.com

30-day trial

Flash MX brings a whole new approach to building Macromedia Flash content and applications – it is much more than just an upgrade to Flash 5.

There is new native support for video playback and dynamic loading of JPEG and MP3 files at runtime. Work more efficientlly and faster with the new Free Transform tool and pixel-level snapping control. Color Mixer enhancements make creating, editing, and using colours and gradients easier than before, with consistent colour selection models and interfaces.

Flash MX offers a complete environment for developing data-driven Web applications and you can integrate your Flash applications with any application server that uses URL-encoded or XML data.

User interface enhancements include collapsible panels and a new context-sensitive Property Inspector. With named anchors, Flash MX content can now be bookmarked, allowing for the use of the browser Back and Forward buttons. Macromedia Flash Player 6 (included in the Flash MX package) now supports technologies such as screen readers through support of Microsoft Active Accessibility. In addition, Flash MX now integrates tools for creating accessible content. To add descriptive text to animations and user interface elements, select an item and enter the appropriate description – users with disabilities will be able to experience your content.

Accelerate development with a core set of pre-built, customisable components for common application interfaces, including scrollbars, rich text fields, input buttons, radio buttons and check boxes, and list and combo boxes.

Although Flash MX will run on a machine with a minimum of 64Mb RAM, you are advised to have at least 128Mb of RAM.

Web link: www.macromedia.com

Evaluation version

Astrosell is an e-commerce package for setting up straight-forward shop fronts to sell your products online. Astrosell does this in a similar way to a product featured on the Intenret Magazine cover CD a number of times in the past – Actinic.

You give your shop a basic design (for which some templates are provided), define the products and pricing, specify the postage and shipping settings and so on, then you upload the information to your Web space. See the magazine review and visit the Web site for more details.

Note: to publish and run your site on the Internet, you will need the ability to install and run your own PERL 5 scripts.

Web link: www.astrosell.com

30-day trial version

PHP Master Editor is a program for editing PHP scripts. The slick interface has all the tools you need to help you develop dynamic Web sites, including syntax highlighting, an internal browser, script debugger, built-in FTP client, customisable code templates and good error reporting to help you fix problems in your code. A basic HTML editor is thrown in for good measure as well as support for UNIX and MAC file types.

Web link: http://ka-software.hypermart.net

31-day trial version

The makers of Style Master now bring you an all-round Web design application – Layout Master. It helps you develop Web page layouts using CSS2 and HTML/XHTML. Each element of the page can be selected and positioned according to your preferences. Layout Master uses drag-and-drop and properties editors to let you easily create the pages that you want. If your favourite HTML editor isn't so hot on page layout, Layout Master could be a great complement if used in tandem. The program contains a user-configurable grid, rulers and guides to make working with Web page layouts easy.

Web link: www.westciv.com

Free

For large static sites, a site map is essential to help visitors get to your information quickly. Creating site maps can be a chore, which is where eXactMapper comes in. Each time you add or delete pages from your site, you can generate a fresh site map with the click of a button. A wizard starts you off and lets you select your local index file, then eXactMapper scans the files and produces a single site map in HTML format ready for upload. You can choose from three site map styles: bulleted list, static tree or alphabetised list. A preview option displays your site map before final output. eXactMapper generates cross-browser compatible DHTML.

Web link: www.exacttrend.com

HTML Shrinker Pro
v2.5
(W9x/ME/2000/NT/XP)
Evaluation version

This handy utility can speed up your site by reducing the size of your HTML files. The two-paned interface lets you browse your local files and view the results of the optimisation. The program works by removing all unnecessary bytes within HTML files including unnecessary end of lines, quotes within tags, spaces, shift spaces, tabs, comments and all unnecessary bytes within scripts and JavaScript tags. A number of other options are available for controlling the optimisation level. The program can create backups of all files shrunk, so you can roll-back to the original versions with the click of a button.

The Pro version is faster and more effective and offers a number of useful features not available in the Light version.

Web link: The Plugin Site

Recently updated

This HTML editor's many features include Expresso FTP for uploading and downloading, an image gallery with quick-linking images, handy Flash text and effects wizards, automatic image sizing and highlighted tags. It comes with loads of graphics, icons, photos and animated GIFs, as well as many JavaScript scripts. 'Live Preview' supports JavaScript, StyleSheets and DHTML.

CoffeeCup HTML Editor gives you a frame designer, a table designer, a font designer and an HTML code cleaner. There are so many features you will just have to try it and see.

Web link: www.coffeecup.com

Mac OS

NOTE: The Mac programs are mostly in archived 'HQX' (BinHex) files – they can be extracted with several applications, including Stuffit Expander (which is on the CD...). Clicking on the links below should set the process in motion. You may receive a message that the file cannot be loaded into Simple Text — if so, start Stuffit and then open the HQX file you want from within Stuffit.

30-day trial

Oxygen is an XML editor written entirely in Java that creates XML, XSL, TXT, XSD and DTD documents. Being a Java application, it is available for most major platforms. The slick looking interface has all the tools you'd want in a modern Integrated Development Environment (IDE) including XML, XSL, DTD validation, tag auto completion, syntax highlighting and Code Insight which helps you write valid code. Code Insight also allows the program to generate DTDs from a sample XML document, cutting down development time. It has Unicode support and the interface messages are translated in English, French, German, Italian and Romanian.

You must have Java Virtual Machine 1.4 or later installed.

Web link: http://oxygen.sync.ro

30-day trial – new version

HTML Creator makes the task of creating Web pages easier through its built in assistants. The program's powerful editing tools make it suitable for professional users as well as novices.

This update includes the ability to open and save pages on FTP servers, modify Meta Tags through the built in Meta Tag Assistant and convert email address to entities, as well as some performance improvements and minor bug fixes.

Web link: http://tmdc.org/aramk

31-day trial version

The makers of Style Master now bring you an all-round Web design application – Layout Master. It helps you develop Web page layouts using CSS2 and HTML/XHTML. Each element of the page can be selected and positioned according to your preferences. Layout Master uses drag-and-drop and properties editors to let you easily create the pages that you want. If your favourite HTML editor isn't so hot on page layout, Layout Master could be a great complement if used in tandem. The program contains a user-configurable grid, rulers and guides to make working with Web page layouts easy.

Web link: www.westciv.com

Demo version

WebDesign is an HTML editor with many helpful features. The interface has a tools palette, main editor window and properties palette. The editor window features advanced syntax colouring, syntax checking and optimisation controls. There is a handful of HTML wizards that output HTML code or XHTML code. The tools palette lets you drag and drop HTML elements onto the editor including links, tables, form controls and so on. The context sensitive properties palette then allows you to tweak the attributes of the selected element.

Other features include a find-and-replace tool, a built-in FTP client for transferring files to your Web server, plug-in support to extend WebDesign's functionality, and more. WebDesign supports XHTML, CSS and JavaScript.

Web link: www.ragesw.com

Latest update – 21-day trial

Note: needs CarbonLib 1.5 or later (downloadable from Apple) if not using OS X.

PageSpinner is a powerful HTML editor designed to allow novices as well as experts to create good looking Web pages. More experienced users can enter HTML code manually, or PageSpinner's built-in tools can be used to build the page automatically. It also features an updated Database Publishing Kit with support for AppleWorks 6 databases, QuickTime tags compatibility with Internet Explorer 5.5 and 6.0 for Windows, improved linking of MS Office files, a floating Preferences palette, and preference support for the Edit Tag Appearance plug-in from Cyrk.

This latest update features a new insert menu to simplify insertion of frequently used HTML tags and contents, a new text tools menu, an updated table assistant, scripts that can create simple photo albums and file lists, plus bug fixes.

Web link: www.optima-system.com

30-day trial version

Note: needs CarbonLib 1.2.5 or later if not using OS X.

Flash MX brings a whole new approach to building Macromedia Flash content and applications – it is much more than just an upgrade to Flash 5.

There is new native support for video playback and dynamic loading of JPEG and MP3 files at runtime. Work more efficientlly and faster with the new Free Transform tool and pixel-level snapping control. Color Mixer enhancements make creating, editing, and using colours and gradients easier than before, with consistent colour selection models and interfaces.

Flash MX offers a complete environment for developing data-driven Web applications and you can integrate your Flash applications with any application server that uses URL-encoded or XML data.

User interface enhancements include collapsible panels and a new context-sensitive Property Inspector. With named anchors, Flash MX content can now be bookmarked, allowing for the use of the browser Back and Forward buttons. Macromedia Flash Player 6 (included in the Flash MX package) now supports technologies such as screen readers. In addition, Flash MX now integrates tools for creating accessible content. To add descriptive text to animations and user interface elements, select an item and enter the appropriate description – users with disabilities will be able to experience your content.

Accelerate development with a core set of pre-built, customisable components for common application interfaces, including scrollbars, rich text fields, input buttons, radio buttons and check boxes, and list and combo boxes.

Although Flash MX will run on a machine with a minimum of 64Mb RAM, you are advised to have at least 128Mb of RAM.

Web link: www.macromedia.com

Recently updated – 25-use trial

HTML Optimizer is a tool designed to streamline your Web site and allow quicker access to its pages. It checks your Web pages for broken links and dangling tags, and optimises both text and graphic files.

HTML Optimizer allows you to optimise HTML code by removing unnecessary characters and tags, which results in the faster loading of your pages in your client's browser; check the so-called tagged pairs, such as the tags that always have to appear together with their end tags; check the validity of the internal hyperlinks, eight levels deep; mark dangling tags and missing attributes to find and fix them quickly; and convert special characters to the HTML entity notation.

This version repairs a memory leak that could crash the application when handling a very large Web folder.

Web link: www.tonbrand.nl

30-day trial – lastest version

JaneBUILDER from See Jane Code allows you to build complex PHP pages simply with menus and your mouse. The files created are native PHP (text) files (that can be opened by any HTML tool or text editor) and uploaded to your Web server for deployment. JaneBUILDER also comes with a variety of PHP tools, JOIN support, a Mini SQL browser, variable support, and live MySQL database access.

This update includes various fixes and enhancements.

Web link: www.seejanecode.com