Beat those hand coding bluesToday's WYSIWYG Web site authoring programs can save you time and hassle -- and they can open up the intranet to new content developers.By Jackie Dove
SummaryWhile nothing beats expert hand coding for precision and flexibility in creating Web pages, the time and expertise needed to create a corporate intranet entirely by hand could make you think twice about discounting authoring programs. In this roundup of three popular WYSIWYG programs -- Claris Home Page 3.0, Adobe Page Mill 2.0, and GoLive CyberStudio 2.0 -- we outline some of the main time- and hassle-saving features now available in authoring software. (2,600 words) |
 December 1997    |
 here's
no doubt that companies need professional, precise development
for their external Web presence -- who wants to visit a
corporate site that looks like it was thrown together by someone just
learning HTML? Traditionally, Webmasters for professional sites have
laboriously hand coded pages and eschewed help from HTML authoring
programs as being more trouble than the limited results were worth.
But that was an old breed of authoring programs (not to mention Webmasters),
and today's corporate technology manager faces a new challenge: creating
internal content for a company's intranet. Authoring tools,
especially WSYWYG (what you see is what you get) programs, can help solve
a number of Web-authoring problems.
While many external sites need extensive applet, media and database development -- consider the demands of an e-commerce site, for example -- much of the content on a corporate intranet is far simpler. Production calendars, human resources information and forms, employee directories, financial updates, and other internal productivity information can be displayed with relatively simple HTML functions like tables, graphics, and good old text. Unfortunately, hand coding even these simple elements is a time consuming task -- and a daunting one for anyone without solid HTML skills. This little hurdle has kept many Webmasters and IS folks busy coding intranet sites that really ought to be built by department managers or administrative assistants. After all, the manufacturing manager knows the ins and outs of the manufacturing schedule far better than the IS temp drafted to code it. WSIWYG authoring tools can provide HTML novices with enough help to build internal Web pages. They can also go a long way towards helping you set standards for intranet pages, by using templates and establishing settings or simple rules for those crafting the pages. Armed with one of these programs, non-techie content gurus can take a load off of beleaguered IS folks and leave the hand coding for a corporation's critical external site. The idea of WYSIWYG HTML programs is to allow you to create Web pages by adding and formatting elements as you would like them to appear on the page -- the software converts the elements to proper HTML code for you. Today's WYSIWYG programs allow you to hand code any piece of the page you want, and they all provide a source-code view in which you can add and edit actual code. WYSIWYG programs now allow point-and-click or drag-and-drop insertion of multimedia elements into your design, and some even allow you to preview sound, video, and Java applets within the authoring program, (rather than switching back and forth between the program and the browser). Moreover, some of these programs offer design fine-tuning similar to page layout programs like PageMaker and QuarkXPress, allowing you to adjust the position of objects according to a grid. Some of the newer programs will let you link your site to a database as well, creating custom pages on the fly. With these newer additions and a smoother interface, authoring programs can prove a boon to intranet content development. We'll run through three of the better ones -- Claris Home Page 3.0, Adobe PageMill, and GoLive Cyberstudio 2.0 -- to give you an idea of what you can expect.
Adobe PageMill In PageMill, you can enter text directly onto the page or cut and paste it from another application. You can cut and paste spreadsheet and database formats as well as comma-delimited files into the application as well. You can also type directly onto the page. If you want to insert custom HTML into your document, you can use a Placeholder object, available through the Inspector floating palette, which tells the program not to touch the HTML within the comment tags it creates. Adding background images is also a simple drag-and-drop procedure, as PageMill converts all images to GIF or JPEG. Drag-and-drop placement is easy for multimedia elements, as long as you have the proper plug-in installed. And you can preview QuickTime movies and sound files directly in the program, rather than having to switch to the browser. PageMill's linking conventions prove to be another timesaver. Once you save a page, a small page icon appears on the upper left corner of the screen; simply drag and drop to other pages and elements to form a link. You can also drag and drop any linked text or graphic to another page or another place on the same page. Thereafter, you can change the copy without altering the link. Moreover, with both PageMill and Netscape Navigator open, click-and-drag linking can be established between programs directly in the link bar on the bottom of the page or on the page itself. Within the intuitive frames function, you can create a framed document by simply holding down the Option key and dragging from a window margin -- no special page set-up is required. You can also split the page horizontally or vertically from the Edit menu. After the frame is created, it is simply a matter of click and drag to re-size it. To add a frame target to a link, just select the link by triple clicking, then click and hold the mouse until you see a pop-up menu to select the target page. To create tables, simply drag and drop from the tool bar or double click to set the width and height of the cells. You can also drag and drop a range of cells from Excel, automatically creating a table. You can easily re-size and re-color tables and paste objects inside of them. To address Web site management needs, Pagemill for the Mac now includes SiteMill, a site management program. An upgrade for the Windows version will include SiteMill, and should be available in early 1998, according to Adobe. Pagemill also includes Photoshop LE, a stripped-down version of the image editing behemoth. The program comes with more than 1,000 free images, audio clips, Java applets, Shockwave animations, sample pages, and templates. SiteMill's management functions include link repair, site view, error view, and external references view. The program repairs links whenever you paste, rename a file, or move a file between folders. It automatically repairs links to external sites as well. The site view includes link pop-ups, which display incoming and outgoing links among pages, letting you see the entire pattern of links on your site. SiteMill detects existing Web sites, automatically finds errors, and displays them in the error view. An external references view lets you see all links to pages outside your Web site. This is handy for correcting changes in Web page URLs or e-mail addresses. The site uploader delivers the files to the remote server. Adobe PageMill 2.0 (including Adobe SiteMill 2.0 for the Mac), is priced at $149. It runs on Macintosh, Windows 95, or NT 4.0 or later and requires a CD-ROM drive. Adobe Systems Inc. http://www.adobe.com
Claris Home Page 3.0 Using a FileMaker Pro Connection Assistant, users will be able to connect any existing FileMaker Pro database to their Web site without CGI scripting or software. Version 3.0 will include built-in templates for setting up a shopping cart, guest book, and employee database. For advanced users, the FileMaker Pro Connection Libraries offer custom controls for building dynamic sites. While the 2.0 version supports most HTML 3.2 tags, CHP 3.0 will be fully compatible with HTML 3.2. HTML novices will appreciate the inclusion of eight "Assistants," designed to guide new developers through site creation. CHP 2.0 makes common Web design tasks easy and intuitive. A point-and-click tool bar, used in conjunction with pull-down menus and a set of object editors, makes it easy to create any combination of linking, anchoring, resizing images and tables, and inserting applets, sound, and video files. A shortcut forms palette is very useful for trying outforms directly on the page. While you can preview text on the page, applets and multimedia must be previewed in the browser, easily accessible from the tool bar. From the design point of view, it is easy to create, place, and manipulate tables, images, image maps, form buttons, and even transparencies. Page layout can get somewhat tricky, however, as the image drag and drop in version 2.0 is sometimes cranky, forcing you to cut and paste images for more precise placement. Also, handling type inversion in 2.0 can be somewhat less than precise, as the preview in the browser can look significantly different than the page in edit mode. The new version promises easier handling of tables, text-wrap around images and tables, and multiple browser preview. Version 3.0 will also contain a new frame assistant with automated frame layouts, allowing designers to view frames within the application. That will be a vast improvement over the setup in version 2.0. CHP 3.0 will also provide more than 45 site templates and 18 professionally designed site styles. A handy library of over 2,000 clip art images (of good quality and broad range) completes the application. One badly needed element that will be also addressed in the 3.0 upgrade is site management. At present, you can't view all the pages in your site or how all the pages relate to each other or their links. A new site editor in version 3.0 will help users organize their sites with a view of all files. It will include link-checking for broken links, global text search-and-replace, and auto consolidation of all image files and media types for upload, including Java, GIF, JPEG, and QuickTime. Let's hope that the new version will also provide better documentation than the previous version, particularly in the area of multimedia. Claris Home Page 3.0 will be available from Claris. It runs on Macintosh, Windows 95, and NT, and needs a CD- ROM drive for installation. It is priced at $99 for new users or $49 to upgrade from 1.0 or 2.0. Claris Corp. http://www.claris.com
GoLive Cyberstudio 2.0 Cyberstudio opens up to a screen onto which you can drag what looks like an old-fashioned piece of graphing paper. This allows impressive precision in placing text, images, tables, animations, and other elements. A series of horizontally stacked layout grids combine with HTML for design flexibility. The grid, which adds weight to the file size, is easily expendable if you don't require pixel-perfect placement. There are several ways to move elements in CyberStudio. For example, if you want to place elements on the page with or without using the grid, you simply drag an element from your desktop onto the page and it appears. You can also drag an icon representing your insert from the floating palette onto the page and then navigate to the file and place it. Or you can use the context-sensitive Inspector function to navigate to the element and place it that way. The Inspector also lets you set exact dimensions, placement, and other attributes for images, tables, frames, links, and multimedia elements. The drag-and-drop color palette is especially handy for quick, on-screen color experiments, and doesn't require you to take your eye off of the page. One of the seven color palettes consists of the 216 browser-safe colors, so you never have to guess which colors will dither online. You can view Java applets, ActiveX controls, and multimedia elements directly from within the application, and it includes advanced features such as JavaScript editing. CyberStudio's design capabilities let you work visually from the top down, starting with your Welcome page, by allowing you to create placeholder pages for all of your planned documents before you add the actual content. If you change your mind or want to remove or re-deploy a page, no problem. In the site view window, you can view your site on screen in a hierarchal tree structure. Thus, you can block out the structure of your entire site first, or design the individual pages and then switch back and forth between them. A separate project window acts as a drag-and-drop library where you can store references to pages, URLs, and media elements, creating another way to manipulate page content. As with most WYSIWYG programs, you have the option to work in source code. But CyberStudio takes it a step further, adding an HTML Outline Editor, which allows you to hide and expand certain areas of the code, while a separate tag database lets you drop pre-built tags into the code. You'll need a higher-end Macintosh system to run CyberStudio. It also helps to have a larger design monitor so that you can see the Inspector, Palette, and site windows as needed. It's worth noting that certain operations crashed my Power Mac, such as the insertion of multimedia elements and switching between modes. Also, certain files (such as my QuickTime audiofile), if dragged directly onto the page, landed as a straight line that had to be lengthened and then stretched for no apparent reason. Setting the dimensions in the Inspector beforehand takes care of that problem. CyberStudio has some unique attributes, and for artistic fine-tuning, it offers the capability for creating a high-end product. It should be noted, however, that it does require a bit more of a learning curve and more advanced programming knowledge than the other WYSIWYG applications discussed in this article. CyberStudio 2.0, priced at $349, is available from GoLive Systems Inc.. It runs only on the Macintosh and requires a CD-ROM drive.
GoLive Systems Inc. http://www.golive.com
|
About the author
Jackie Dove is a journalist in San Francisco who
specializes in the Internet, electronic art, and graphic design.
Reach Jackie at jackie.dove@ne-dev.com.
![[(c) Copyright 1997 ITworld.com Inc., an IDG Communications company]](/ned-icons/b-copyright97.gif){kind=icon}
If you have problems with this magazine, contact
webmaster@ne-dev.com
URL: http://www.ne-dev.com/ned-12-1997/ned-12-htmlauthor.html
Last modified: Saturday, November 20, 1999
HYIP Monitor
