HTML Editor Reviews

WebMania!

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WebMania! 1.2 - Q&D Software Development

Found: http://www.q-d.com/

Overview:

• Windows 3.1
• Stand alone program
• Text Style
• No HTML checking
• Very Stable
• Score = C (as an general purpose editor, this is a great forms tool however)
• Shareware: Standard USD$ 34.95, Pro $49.95
• Screen Shot
• User Comments

Nice features found in this package include:

Impressive form support

This package includes a very extensive "wizard" for developing forms. There is a learning curve; but once you've mastered the tool, you can easily maintain a number of forms and reuse elements between them. WebMania also includes a tool for reading responses from email (basic form created by WebMania sets up an action which posts using mailto:) and storing them. This will be valuable to users who do not have access to CGI on their systems (or provider doesn't offer it), but need structured information from readers. This feature is unique, and authors with CGI might find the storage and archiving capabilities enough reason to give this package a try.

Highly customizable button bars

The package provides MANY buttons for the user to add their own tags or text.

Frame and table editors (professional version)

The package includes table and frame dialogs to simplify adding these elements.

Missing/Poorly Implemented Features:

Very basic editing features

The package includes very little support for tags and attributes. For example, most of the basic paragraph style elements are missing. The link dialog is minimal and the you will find few HTML 3.0 tags except for the table editor. The package seems to be targeted at people who need to create forms. However, the package will generate the JavaScript code for a scrolling status bar message.

Wastes screen real-estate

The package wastes a large amount of screen area on over-sized buttons. Also, the package either shows, or completely removes the user-definable buttons. Since there are SO many buttons to customize, showing only the defined ones would save space on the screen.

Conclusion:

As an HTML editor, WebMania! is poor. The package lacks support for even some basic HTML 2.0 elements. It embraces some of the latest ideas (frames and tables), but fails to follow through and give an author a full suite of tools to create and maintain a web page. However, as a form processing tool (creating, reading, and archiving), WebMania! is a unique and useful package. If you need to create and keep control over many forms, this might be the package for you. For general purpose HTML editing, look elsewhere.

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