HTML tool focuses on designing an Internet site; other packages emphasize building individual pages

Web page design tools have evolved considerably over the past few years, and NetObjects Inc.'s Fusion product line is no exception.

While some Web designers still swear by coding in raw HTML, most of us have moved on to graphical tools that generate the HTML for us - after we've arranged our text and graphics on screen.

What appeals to me most about Net-Objects Fusion is that the design model is totally top-down. The emphasis is on designing a Web site, and then populating it with pages. Other packages that I've evaluated over the years, including Adobe Systems Inc.'s PageMill, Claris Corp.'s HomePage and Symantec Corp.'s Visual Page, have some of the same features, but focus much more on creating individual pages, then putting them together later.

NetObjects has versions of Fusion for both Mac and Windows. The latest Windows release is 4.0, so it has a few more bells and whistles than the 3.0 version for Mac that I'm covering here. If you run a multi- platform shop, you may also want to download the trial version of the latest Windows version from www.netobjects.com.

I initially took Fusion through its paces with the lengthy tutorial provided in the 150-page Getting Started guide. This is the only hard- copy documentation provided, other than a reference card for keyboard shortcuts and an installation booklet.

The 500+ page User Guide is on the CD-ROM in Portable Document Format (.pdf), but this is next to useless. It's too cumbersome to go through online, and no one in their right mind would use up a toner cartridge printing it.

I chose to order the hard copy manual from the company. This set me back US$29.95 plus GST, but I wouldn't have been able to complete this review effectively without it. In situations like this, my advice to vendors is to raise the price if you have to, but include a real manual. Is saving a tree worth losing a customer?

That minor annoyance aside, the tutorial is very well presented and is enough to get you comfortable with the program. In the course of completing it, you actually build a commercial Web site for a micro brewery from scratch, with minimal use of "canned" components.

With that bit of training, I started over, with a resource centre for investors in Internet stocks.

Once again, the basic infrastructure came together very quickly. I created the hierarchy of pages, selected a "style" that seemed appropriate to the theme, and started filling in the content. It's still a work in progress, but I was amazed at how I was able to create an attractive and useful site in hours, that looks like someone has spent weeks on it.

The biggest letdown in the evaluation was not being able to get "FileMaker Pro integration" to work as promised. This feature wasn't covered in the tutorial, but NetObjects promises "drag and drop" conversion of FileMaker Pro databases into "stacked" Web pages.

This would be ideal for such applications as online catalogues. Rather than go to the effort and expense of developing CGI scripts to have your Web site and your database talk to each other, you could (potentially) just update a set of static web pages with new information on an "as needed" basis.

In essence, you'd be creating a table of contents, where clicking on each item would take you to a page of details - all extracted from your FileMaker database.

As appealing as this sounds, I ran into repeated program crashes and freezes in the Filemaker-to-Fusion conversion process, even though my test database was quite simple. I'll be pursuing this further, but for now I couldn't recommend purchasing Fusion for this particular feature alone.

That aside, I am especially impressed with the attention that NetObjects has paid to keeping the user interface simple. Fusion gives you just five buttons at the top that lead you to different views of your document, plus a couple of navigational controls.

The contrast with other applications in this regard is so striking, that your first impression might be that something's wrong, or that this is a Mickey Mouse product. Not so.

The detailed functionality unfolds as a series of context-sensitive pop-up control windows that vary with the "view" on your screen.

There's a Page view for laying out the contents of each page, but you're advised to start with the Site view which lets you lay out your Web site using graphics that look much like an organizational chart. In Page view you're basically creating a structure for your site, without filling in pages.

The Style view is where you choose an overall "look-and-feel" for your site. You can choose from dozens of styles provided or create your own and add it to the set. Each style is essentially a theme, within which all banners, buttons and icons epitomize that theme.

One style ("Joe's Diner"), for instance, has all of the elements for a coffee shop Web site, from checkered tablecloths, to plates of bacon and eggs and salt shakers.

Once you select your style, it is applied to every page in your Web site. There is no need to reinsert individual graphics from page to page to achieve this level consistency.

You probably won't need the Assets view much. It's basically an inventory of all your files, links, data objects and variables and is mainly useful for garbage collection.

The fifth view is Publish. Again you're faced with a list of all of your files, but this time you're ready to upload your site to your remote Web hosting service or your local Web server.

One thing that's unique about NetObjects' approach is that no HTML is ever generated until this point (unless you elect to preview your site earlier). Other products like PageMill and HomePage create HTML on the fly, so that you can flip back and forth between layout view and HTML code if you wish. That means that the execution of the Publish function is slow, but it also means that all other aspects of the program are lightning fast.

A few other features are worth mentioning.

With ImportSite, you can rapidly convert your previous work to Fusion's way of doing things without having to start from scratch using NetObjects' proprietary file system. With AutoFrames you can convert a frameless Web site to one with frames at the click of the mouse.

With EveryWhere HTML you can selectively optimize your site for one or more of the various versions of Netscape or Microsoft browsers, without changing anything in your original design efforts.

There's lots of dynamic HTML support, and a range of menu selectable Java and JavaScript components to add even more richness to your site without programming. For example, there's a SiteMapper, which will automatically create a site map page for your site. There's also a Form Handler and built-in routines to move and rotate pictures. Beyond that, you can download the NetObjects Component Development kit free of charge.

It's this component-oriented approach that makes NetObjects Fusion a design package that you can grow with. You can wait for NetObjects (or other third-parties) to add components, or, if you can't wait, you can build your own.

NetObjects Fusion 3.0 for Mac

System Requirements: Power Macintosh with 32MB of RAM, 70MB of free disk space, System 7.6.1 or later

List Price: US$199

Hits: Top-down design model makes building an entire site much more efficient. Component approach greatly facilitates adding Java andJavaScript functionality without programming.

Misses: No hard copy user guide. FileMaker Pro integration is not as straightforward as indicated. Future development and support for the Mac platform is unclear.

Verdict: NetObjects Fusion manages to provide a complete, fully- integrated. set of page design, site management and Web site publishing tools through a remarkably effective user interface.

Contact: NetObjects Inc; Phone: 1-888-888-8993; Web site: www.netobjects.com

COPYRIGHT 1999 Plesman Publications
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