HTML Editor Reviews

Web Media's Publisher 2.5

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Web Media Publisher -- Web Media

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

Overview:

• MS-Windows editor
• stand alone program
• Text-style
• NO HTML Checking
• Very stable
• Price:
• Score = B+
• Screen Shot
• User Comments

Nice features found in this package include:

Good Browser Interface to Netscape

To preview documents the editor includes options to load, reload, or update the information in the browser. Many editors will launch a new browser each time you preview, so this is a nice feature. I prefer to switch manually between the browser and editor (and click reload in the browser). However, for those who like this feature, Publisher does it well .

Tags are color coded

The tags can be displayed in another color to provide contrast. However, this feature can easily become confused.

Support Netscape 2.0 and Internet Explorer

Menu items are found for the IE specific tags and attributes. Also, the new Netscape extensions for JAVA and Frames are present. Unfortunatly, the help file doesn't contain any HTML help on these new extensions (or any HTML for that matter).

Table editor

This package includes some simple dialogs for inserting tables into a document. Using the table editor, you can define the size, properties, and actually fill the values into a "spreadsheet". The entire table is then inserted into the document. Like many other packages which have table insertion dialogs, this package lacks the ability to easily edit tables that are already in a document..

"Web" timer for professional authors

The package includes a unique tool to measure the amount of time spent editting pages. This would be useful for professionals who need to keep track of the time spent for billing purposes.

Missing/Poorly Implemented Features:

Dialogs for attributes require typing

The package fails to provide scroll boxes of choices when appropriate and requires the user to type values even when there are few possible choices. For example, the align dialog specifically says "Enter ALIGN value LEFT, CENTER, or RIGHT" and offers a standard input box. It is unreasonable for a package in it's second version (2.5) to contain the type of dialogs I would expect in an alpha package. This is surprising since the package includes some nice dialogs for frames and backgrounds.

Conclusion:

Web Media's Publisher is a basic HTML editor. Though the package seems geared toward professionals (with the web timer for instance and limited HTML help), it lacks many of the features I would expect to improve productivity and accuracy (customizable toolbars, user definable tags, etc). However, Publisher is one of the first out (review date: 02/08/96) with support for frames and JAVA (and one of the few supporting IE). Overall, a basic editor with a solid foundation, but more needs to be implemented before I can get excited.

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