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Making a Good Web Site Isn't As Easy As Software Manufacturers Claim, But Some Do it Better Than Others Some people never plan to design the technical details and maintain their web site. Thus, this editor discussion can be ignored. However, many people eventually decide that they want to maintain some of their web site, especially if they are computer literate. Some want to maintain their site but recognize that generating the first crucial pages and structure is best left to an expert. These people select a "turn key" option where they get the site developed, then they run it themselves, using the expert in a consulting role. Some decide that they want to do it all from the start. However, unless you are an Internet marketing and design expert, beware. Industry data indicates that 95-percent of nonprofessionally designed web sites fail to produce enough income to return their software and hosting investment. Unless you are an expert, we advise business people to think about a "turn key" option that gets your site up with professionally designed pages . After it is professionally designed, installed and registered, you then take over its operation and expansion. At that time, we will recommend an editor that meets the needs you have specified for your site. The editor may not even cost you anything. Sometimes a freeware editor is the best solution. Rarely does this fail to produce a positive return on your investment. In the interest of helping our customers, we have evaluated several commercial editors and accumulated comments from our many customers. The results of these analyses are contained within these pages. In addition, we have generated a link to Yahoo's heading on the subject . The links to the test pages below were each generated using the editor described. Additional review details and the generated page results are shown on the specified link. A general summary discussion of each reviewed product is shown on this page. The criteria for creating these pages were:
Page Mill is an excellent editor. While it leaves out some fancy features, it is far less likely than many other editors to mislead you into creating a web site that generates problems for some of your visitors. It is relatively unassuming and does not require a person to use many special features to obtain web design benefits. It does not have cascading style sheets available within it as a menu option yet, but as not that many people are using browsers with this capability, at present, this is not a significant point (we assume an update will change this soon). Adobe generated pages are very likely to be correctly visible on most systems that a visitor may use. This is our second choice editor. We often suggest this editor for those that are intimidated by some of the complexities of the Internet. This package makes it much easier to do good work on your web site. Click here to examine our entry web page as created with Page Mill Claris Home Page is a program with a lot of promise. However, it falls short when compared to the other products available. Most notable is its failure to show the image very well when placing an image map, and preference towards fixed tables. However, with added work on the part of the program operator, Adobe generated pages are very likely to be correctly visible on most systems that a visitor may use. Its ability to examine the page at various resolutions is unique and extremely helpful for the novice with only one computer. Click here to examine our entry web page as created with Claris Home Page FrontPage TM has done a lot to make people comfortable editing web sites. Unfortunately, it also generates a lot of problems for many people. The software seems to expound the attitude, "do it my way." If you don't- even when it is the correct thing to do- FrontPage TM will insist. Most professionals term its behavior as "bullying" the user and an apparent attempt to scare them into using a Microsoft only solution (e.g., FrontPage TM server extensions, ADO, ASP, COM, etc.). Very few truly professional sites are completely designed with FrontPage TM and placed on a FrontPage TM extension site. However, many are designed on FrontPage TM and then modified to fit on a non-FrontPage TM extension site. Most professionals will steer far clear of the 98 version as it "hardcodes" the display resolution you are using during design into the site. Thus, it is just too troublesome and time-consuming to correct its products. We recommend you avoid this software unless you have a medium level of experience with textual editing of the code so you can make it work. FrontPage TM 97 has fewer compatibility problems than FrontPage TM 98, but does not generate Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and may not produce Active Server Pages (ASP) as compatible as the business owner may need. The FrontPage TM Express editor that comes with the complete package of Internet Explorer 4.x is basically FrontPage TM 97. It is an excellent choice for many and should be considered if you have the ability to edit the resulting html, It drops much of the "hotbots" capacity, which makes it a pretty fair editor that is relatively compatible. The resulting sample page created by FrontPage TM 98 editor required us to resort to manual text editing to correct a couple of problems which would have negated the usefulness of the site and created several broken links. (Editing within FrontPage TM was not possible as it kept changing the edited results to suit itself.) Once the textual editing was done, use of FrontPage TM did not appear to change the manually performed edits and allowed them to remain in subsequent use of FrontPage TM . This is the only product tested in this review that required use of a text editor in a manual edit to make the page work correctly. Click here to examine our entry web page as created with FrontPage TM 98 Norton Visual Page has a new release and it seems to do the great job and has many features. At present, it receives our second to the top recommendation. The problem with this editor is that it generates code that is not properly viewable on anything below the latest browsers. If it were not for this feature, it would receive a high recommendation. We have also had a few times that it crashed and took the file that we were editing with it. For ease of use, variety of options, implementation of new features and support, it may be your best choice. We also believe it has the ability to keep up with you as you become a more expert Internet programmer. If you are concerned about stability, you may wish to select Adobe Page Mill as your editor. It is stable and a new release is expected soon. Even without the stability issue, if it were not for its insistence on writing only 3.x html code, it would receive a very good recommendation. Click here to examine our entry web page as created with Norton Visual Page We originally reviewed this program in February 1999 and it won in all our categories reviewed. It continues to be our top recommendation. Dreamweaver has a new release and it is the best editor we have seen in a long while. It creates clean code, allows easy installation of active components, and has the most features. It is available in a bundle with an excellent graphic editor or other features. You don't need to know how to generate most elements, but if you do, it allows you to edit them directly. It has a few difficulties about its interface, but they are not that troubling. The only problem with this editor is that it is pricey (nearly $300 for the single and $400 for the bundle). However, we think it is worth it. We began creating web sites with text editors... In 1993, there was not another choice. Then came the revolution - with a lot of editors! Each had their problems, as well as good points. Hot Metal TM allowed a person to create a site to exact specifications but did not allow you to add new features without purchasing a new release. GNN Press TM and Orlando TM were great editors that are still around, but didn't catch on as much as the ones from some of the big name software companies-- who could afford to really market their product. HotDog TM allows you to create code in a text mode and install code in the correct syntax very easily. Thus, for many experts, it became the software of choice. It still is for many experts and has many features for the beginner as well. Unfortunately, until version 5, HotDog TM never seemed to implement a good spell check option. We still use HotDog TM to this day and are glad they finally fixed their most serious shortcoming. Firstpage 2000 or html4 freeware are a couple of free editors that some are really liking as of late. Both are free on the web, and have good review for those who have some coding experience. In general, we do not suggest people use any of these other editors unless they are or plan to be Internet professionals. Most people eventually determine that taking orders on-line would be of a benefit to their customers. The choice of editing package can sharply affect this choice and the cost of performing secure transactions. Most of our customers have had problems with their code interactions with the coding required to do secure transmissions. The most severe problems have been related to the Microsoft FrontPage TM products. This particular product has a habit of "disconnecting" or just not allowing the activity to work. If FrontPage TM server extensions are installed and the web site is developed using that editor, the web site owner has made the commitment in expense and effort to remain a FrontPage TM site. We rarely would recommend you change from a FrontPage TM interconnected solution after going to this expense. (Recently, Microsoft and other vendors have been adding FrontPage TM specific e-commerce solutions to address this problem. In time, these may overcome the difficulties we have noticed to date. If you are currently using FrontPage TM contact us for details to address your specific situation . FrontPage 2000 addresses many of these issues, PROVIDED, you do not use the extensions and make some special settings. However, if you are starting out, better options are present. Select one of these other web site editors. Setting up secure access is not a problem with these. In brief, all of them. Each professional web site designer has their preferences. Until recently, we found that the use of one to three packages for each page is the most common practice. In this scenario, we used Norton Visual Page TM, Adobe Page Mill TM , FrontPage TM , HotDog TM , and/or a text editor. With the advent of Dreamweaver TM , we find that this single editor, in combination with a text editor called Ultra Edit, is becoming our combination of choice. Why would you use so many editors for a single page? We used several editors because it lowers the cost of professional page production for our clients. For example, creating an initial template with FrontPage reduced the amount of time required to generate the initial web site "look and feel." It has very good tools for that purpose. Taking the effort over to Page Mill TM or Visual Page TM allows us to create compatible additional options while still keeping your visitors download time down. Completing the final editing in a more manual effort, usually with HotDog TM or a simple text editor, allows us to complete the fully professional page development. This combination allows us to get a fully professional page developed at the least cost for the customer. It also allows us to keep the results attractively directed at more than 98 percent of the visitors that could be expected to visit. When we revisit an edit of a page, it may be with any of these products. Again, the latest product from MacroMedia is changing this. An example of the multiple product activity is the design of this page. The initial layout was designed with Dreamweaver TM (for ease of visual layout), it was then edited with Adobe Page Mill TM (ease of image mapping), Ultra Edit and NotePad Plus (a powerful text editor that allowed us to add some features without battling an interface), and finally completed with Norton Visual Page TM (ease of use and ability to check download speed at various connection speeds). If we had to select only one -- Dreamweaver TM would probably be most of our programmers' choice. The latest version removes the need to use most other products, with the exception of Ultra Edit Graphics Graphics need to be turned into gif or jpg format. The gif format is best for simple art work and should be optimized for color display and download time. The 89A format allows you to make transparent backgrounds. This makes the page look much more professional. The jpg is intended for photos or similar images. Compress the jpg as much as you can without losing quality. With rare exceptions, the size of an image should never exceed 500 pixels wide and 360 high. This is the maximum view one can see in one screen in WebTV. If you have navigation bars, reduce the size accordingly. The file size of the graphics strongly affects the download time. Keep the image below 30 kilobytes if possible. Less is better. Anything above 50 kilobytes is probably going to give your visitor incentive to leave your site. The more images you have, the heavier the download. The entire page, text, graphics, and all should stay below 60 kilobytes. Ready to edit? You need a graphic editor. We like Corel Paint. Other excellent products are Paint Shop Pro and Adobe PhotoShop .
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