HTML Editor Reviews - User Comments


[Reviews] [CMed] [EdWin] [FrontPage] [HotDog] [HoTMetaL Pro 2.0] [HTML Assistant]
[HTML Easy! Pro] [HTMLed] [HTMLed Pro] [HTML Writer]
[Incontext Spider][Live Markup]
[Macromedia Backstage] [NaviPress] [Navigator gold] [ReVol Web Worker] [SpiderPad] [Webber] [Web Edit] [WebMania!] [WebMedia Publisher] [Web Wizard -TDOU]

CMed Ver 1.03 - Chad Matheson

Found at: http://www.uwa.edu.au/student/cmathes/
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EdWin 2.1- Mike Sutton

Found: http://www.vantek.net/pages/msutton/edwin.htm


FrontPage -- Microsoft

Found:http://www.microsoft.com


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HotDog--Sausage Software

Found:http://www.sausage.com
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From: GertJan Kuiper  3-Apr-96
I nearly purchased HotMetalPro, but there was one big problem, which the 
online support couldn't solve. After downloading a page from the server, 
often the layout of the page was screwed. It turned out that Hot Dog Pro
couldn't handle the end of line character, which are different for Unix, 
Mac and Dos. And since both mac and Dos machine are used to edit the 
files on the server, I often found myself confronted with a continuous 
blur of text. Although the online support was very helpful, they 
admitted they couldn't help me with this.
From: JackTrades 12 December 1995 - On HotDog PRO
 It is one of the best HTML editors out there.  The help file alone is well worth
the download.

However, yes, it does suck system resources like crazy, and I've noticed
very quirky behavior during clip and paste operations.  Also, moving
between internal windows is better served by using Alt+F6, rather than
clicking on the bottom tab, as HotDog often reports that you are on a
different page, than the one indicated on the tab.

I've tried about 8 HTML editors, and for all it's quirks, HotDog was the
one I registered.

From: Jack Russell 01-Nov-95
First, regarding HotDog. A month and a half ago when I downloaded HotDog
and had a web page flying in an hour or so, I was a convert. Now, I'm
not so sure. First, my 30 day evaluation period lasted only 22 days. An
evaluation extension provided by Sausage Software was the culprit--it's
*expiry* date was 8 days before the normal 30 trial period was due to
end! More than 10 e-mail messages to Sausage regarding the
less-than-30-day evaluation and requesting another extension have all
gone unanswered (not unlike the user comments you have posted from one
HotDog user). There are a lot of similar stories and comments on the
news groups these days. Sausage is virtually *incommunicado* at this
point. Not a good move for a company trying to keep the lead in a very
competitive niche.
From: Robert Irwin 02-Nov-95
I downloaded hot Dog pro 2 weeks ago and sent a money order the next day.
The nag screen showed 14 days left at that time. I immediately wrote Hot
Dog requesting an extension of the expiry date. There has been no reply to
that e-mail or the 8 others I have sent to their various mailboxes since.
From: Gary Torrens 25-Jul-95
Just a note to let you know that I found your page while looking for HTML
Editors. I have tried most of the ones available (WebEdit,HTML Assisant etc.)

I think Hotdog is best of these. Yes it does have a few areas that I would like to see,
however, it very well designed. Unlike other software it has a VERY good
help file.
I did have one problem when I ran it in 256 colors and clicked on the small icons
(cut/paste/copy..etc). My video driver didn't care for it but it probably needs updating.
From: D. Widman 15-Aug-95
Hi.  Just a note.  I have been trying the HotDog HTML editor due to your review.  I,
however, have not had the same positive experience.  I have noticed some serious
resource leaks with the editor.  To the point that I can expect to lose about 10%
of my user resources every time I start the app.  Also, if I launce Netscape with
it to preview, I can almost guarantee a greater loss of user resources.  Just my
experiences.

HoTMetaL PRO 2.0 -- SoftQuad

Found: http://www.sq.com/
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From: Andrew Tubesing 14 December 1995
As far as the functionality is concerned, i found it very limiting in
that tags cannot be typed by hand (they are ignored) and tags that you
insert as the program intended are eternally attached to the text
within.  Sounds kind of nice, but what happens when you want to delete a
tag?  It deletes all of the tagged text.  (If you have a body tag in the
wrong place and select it for deletion, the entire document, up until the
end body tag, is selected.)

This caused me a major problem and rendered the program useless because I
am working with documents created in a text editor.  When you import such
a file into hotmetal, it turns it into a "hotmetal file" (similar to how
word would change a text file into a word document).  This wouldnt be so
bad, but since it is opening a non-hotmetal document, it assumes that it
has to insert its own head and body tags.  The result is a document with
two of each (the ones you originally put there, and the ones hotmetal
added).  It conveniently recognises this as invalid HTML and refuses to
let you edit the document unless you turn off the rules checking feature.
 So you turn off rules checking and try to delete the exreaneous tags,
and what happens? -- you can't select just a tag, only a tag and its
contents.  So the only solution is to either delete the entire body and
retype it, or to GET ANOTHER EDITOR.

The no-user-customizaton aspect is unacceptable in a $200 application.
This program is more expensive than microsoft word!  At twice the cost of
any other editor, i would seriously think twice about Hotmetal Pro unless
you're willing to sacrifice a lot of cash and useability for a
dictionary.

HTML Assistant V1.4 -- H. Harawitz

Found: http://fox.nstn.ca/~harawitz/index.html
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HTML Easy! Pro Ver. 1.3 -- Basic Concepts Studio

Found: http:/www.seed.net.tw/~Emilkylin
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HTMLed Pro version 1.0 -- Internet Software Technologies

Found: http://www.ist.ca
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HTMLed -- Internet Software Technologies

Found: ftp://tenb.mta.ca/pub/HTMLed/
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HTML Writer 0.9 Beta 4a -- Kris Nosack.

Found: http://lal.cs.byu.edu/people/nosack
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From: Ron MacKinnon 9-Jun-95
A big advantage of HTML Writer is the ability of
editing large files.  Try editing a HTML file of 150
KB with the others!  It would be a useful feature to
include  the largest file that can be edited by each of the
editors.


Incontext Spider 1.01 -- AccuSoft

Found: http://www.incontext.ca/
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From: BRainone   11 Dec 1995
i agree that the table function in Spider is a bit awkward.  i spoke to the
people from InContext at Comdex and they said they are including, in the next
upgrade, a more user friendly table editor (sort of like a Microsoft Word drop
down table box).

the features that i like most about spider are (1) its interaction with the
browser (with this interaction it is very simple to drop in your links - you
don't have to copy and paste or hand key in the URL.  it is also very easy to
insert a graphic.

The product also lets you download any page into the editor and use it as your
own template.  also, as it downloads the page it checks for any HTML errors and
cleans them up for you.

one other good feature about spider is that it doesn't let the user create any
invalid HTML documents.

Live Markup 0.95B3

Found: http://www.mediatec.com/mediatech/
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From: Drdave 26-Dec-95
I've been playing with the Live Markup editor ever since I saw a favourable write-up on it in
 one of the big PC magazines.  Your assessment of the performance is, unfortunately, right on target.
  I'm running Live Markup under OS/2 Warp as a seamless Windows session on a 486-DX2-50 with 20MB,
 and the performance gets unacceptably slow very quickly, especially when you start adding lists.  It seems
 to want to incessantly redraw the screen.  And long text entries get slower the longer they get.  Methinks
 there's some shabby stack handling somewhere in the code.

Otherwise, Live Markup ran reasonably well under OS/2 Warp.  It does have a tendency to crash every hour
 on the hour, mostly GPFs, but Warp was able to keep it quarantined fairly well.  Only once in two weeks did
 Live Markup crash badly enough to hose OS/2.

As a rank amateur, Live Markup's lack of HTML 3.0 and Netscape extensions wasn't a huge problem,
 but I'm ready for more now.  The complete WYSIWYG approach didn't do much for my understanding of
HTML, so while I initially shied away from HotMeTaL, I think I'm going to go with that one in the future.

After a lot of use, even the near-WYSIWYG approach started wearing down.  I ended up opening Web
Explorer and using it to test it after all, since Live Markup wasn't quite close enough to really gauge what
was going on.


From: Bill Rhodes 18-Sep-95
LiveMarkup was far and away the easiest to use, as it insulated me from HTML
completely. But with this comes a price: I still don't know how to
(effectively) create a HTML document with a text editor, and LiveMarkup's
limitations were immediately apperent.

The program got me started, which is a big step for someone who has not even
the first clue what HTML is, but after about a half an hour, I was hoping
for more. I wanted buttons. Nope, can't have 'em. I wanted forms.

If you go to my page, you see a list of links. But only the first item in the list is
numbered. I have tried *everything* within LiveMarkup's program to change
it, and I can't. I had to re-type the list twice. (Which is another real big
problem: you can cut and paste, but the program will destroy any links that
are pasted, i.e., you have to re-type all the links for text that you cut
and paste.) I also wanted to put bullets on my list items. Can't do it, at
least not without making every bullet a seperate inline graphic, which makes
the program even slower. Also, it gives a GPF fault about every hour or so,
usually when you have several HTML pages open (or even minimized). So I save
alot. And yes, it is slow, but I've found that it's usually only very slow
when you have large blocks of text (if you type text seperated by carriage
returns, instead of clicking the "text block" button, you soon have a large,
single box on the left side of the screen; when you try to type new text at
the bottom, it takes literally *forever* for the text to appear on the
screen). So if you keep each block of text (each paragraph, say) in it's own
"text box", then it doesn't seem very slow. The user has no way of knowing
this, however, and trial-and-error are the only recourse.

Backstage Designer -- Macromedia

Found: http://www.macromedia.com/


NaviPress Ver 1.01 -- NaviSoft

Found at: http://www.navisoft.com

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From: Stew Stryker 11 December 1995
NaviPress - They've released V1.1, so I'd say it's time for a new
review.  You'd reviewed V1.01.  Your comments also totally ignored what I
think is the most important feature of this product!  Miniwebs!  This gives
you a graphical representation of all the files in your directories, and
which HTML files call what other files.  This is *REALLY* powerful when
you're trying to make changes across a bunch of files, or check out all the
links between your files.  That feature helped me find a bunch of boo-boos
in a set of ~30 HTML files that I'd built into my web site
(http://www.sover.net/~vass - thanks for asking  :^).

On the down side, NaviPress is very cranky about any HTML errors you may
have in your files.  I found some non-obvious errors which caused it to
crash totally!  For example, '' without anything in between kills
it.  Pretty lame in that respect, if you ask me.  I also didn't like that
it expects to be connected with their NaviService system, and you can't
seem to turn that off.  So it causes problems unless you like to edit your
pages while online.

Netscape Navigator Gold Beta 1 -- Netscape Corp.

Found at: http://www.netscape.com/

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ReVol Web Worker 1.2

Found at: http://www.webzone1.co.uk/www/jlister/revol.htm

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SpiderPad 0.9A - Six Legged Software

Found: http://www.sixlegs.com/

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Webber 1.1 -- CSD Corp

Found:http://www.csdcorp.com/webber.htm

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WebEdit 1.2 -- KnowledgeWorks Inc.

Found: http://www.nesbitt.com/
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From: DANIEL DILL  10-Apr-96 
I am not associated with Nesbitt in any capacity other than as a customer.  I 
recently had to choose an HTML editor(s) for a major project.  I tried all of 
the shareware ones I could find and loved WebEdit.  The new release 2.0 beta 2 
addresses many of the shortcomings which you found in 1.4.

From: Bob Sanderson 2-Jun-95 (WebEdit V1.0)
A few comments ... I agree with most of your review
of WebEdit.  However, I have had _numerous_ crashes with it.
 When it does crash I frequently have to get out of Windows to recover.
 It also bears mentioning that they want $100 bucks for it (OK, $99.95).
 It's a great editor but not for that price, especially being as unstable as it is.

From: "S. Lunsford and T. O'Reilly" 2-Jun-95 (WebEdit V1.0)
I really loved WebEdit - it's the best package I've
used. I especially liked the body menu option, which took the
guesswork and/or calculations out of text colors. Unfortunately,
after 4 crashes,I gave up on it. It generally threw a fit when I
closed one document and went to open another one. I was starting
to think that my hard drive was having trouble, but the minute I
stopped using WebEdit all of my problems disappeared.

WebMania! 1.2 - Q&D Software Development

Found: http://www.q-d.com/
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Web Media Publisher -- Web Media

Found:http://www.wbmedia.com/


Web Wizard - The Duke of URL version 1.2 -- ARTA Software Group

Found: http://www.halcyon.com/webwizard
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Last Updated: April 19, 1996