Web Authoring Software Programs

Microsoft FrontPage 2003 If you want to tap into the power of Web publishing without staying up nights learning HTML, try Microsoft FrontPage 2003. With its intuitive interface (especially if you've already done time with other Microsoft applications), you can soon be creating hyper-linked pages to your heart's content. Formatting, inserting graphics or sounds, and keeping track of all your pages is push-button simple--experiment all you want, and retreat when necessary (some color schemes can induce nausea).

The integration between Office software, new with the 2000 edition, means you can easily publish information stored in an Access database or Excel spreadsheet without suffering through the nightmare of cutting, pasting, and reformatting. Whatever your mission online, Microsoft FrontPage 2003 will help you present yourself in the best possible light. Platform: Windows 95 / 98 / NT / 2000 / Me - Media: CD-ROM  

Features:

• Allows users to easily create Web sites exactly the way they want
• Makes site management easy
• Updates sites quickly
• Works together with Microsoft Office 
• New photo gallery
• PowerPoint-like drawing tools
• Usage-analysis reports
• Database Interface Wizard
• SharePoint Team Services allows you to quickly set up a team Web site for intranet or Internet users 

Microsoft FrontPage 2003 is a Web site creation-and-management solution that gives you the tools you need to create and control professional-quality Web sites. FrontPage version 2002 has been designed so you can create exactly the site you want. You can use new PowerPoint-like drawing tools and automatic web content to make your Web site more exciting and dynamic. If you're familiar with HTML editing, you can also use FrontPage to save time with the new paste options smart tag, a new streamlined user interface, and new optional HTML and XML reformatting. You can also manage your Internet or intranet Web site more effectively by using the new usage-analysis tools, top 10 lists, and enhanced reporting capabilities. And you can use the new technology in the SharePoint Team Services team Web-site solution to create customized team Web sites to store, find, and communicate information. Platform: Windows 95 / 98 / NT / 2000 / Me -  Media: CD-ROM 

Note: If you currently own Microsoft FrontPage 2000 and are looking to upgrade to 2003 functionality, you can purchase the upgrade software for $82.99 by clicking here.  

Macromedia's Dreamweaver MX is a topflight Web editor for dynamic sites as well as static pages. Dreamweaver's excellent visual tools generate code that works across all the leading Web browsers, winning it the respect of professionals. Its availability on the Mac as well as Windows is another strong feature for designers. The product is also extensible, with a huge range of third-party add-ons available from Macromedia's Web site, many of them free of charge. There is great support for Internet standards, including cascading style sheets, XHTML, and accessibility features. Built-in validating mechanisms make it easy to check a page, and everything is highly configurable so you can specify the standards you want to support. 

This is a visual editor, which means you can create and edit a Web page by selecting items such as tables, forms, and images from a tabbed palette. The Properties panel lets you specify details such as borders, styles, and hyperlinks, and you can also use the visual editor for frames and layers. Many designers also like to edit the underlying HTML, and this is where Dreamweaver MX comes into its own. It supports either a pure code view or a split view that lets you click seamlessly between the code and visual editors. A lot of the features previously found in HomeSite, Macromedia's text-based Web editor, are now integrated into Dreamweaver, including pop-up code hints, a snippets panel that lets you keep handy pieces of code for reuse, and a tag chooser that lets you grab the right tag from a list. An O'Reilly tag reference is built in. 

Dreamweaver's template support deserves special mention. Templates give you a quick start with a number of predesigned pages. In Dreamweaver MX, they can also be used to lock down areas of the page, so that contributors can create and edit a story without disturbing the design. Templates can be nested so that changes to an underlying template ripple through the pages that use it for powerful site-wide updates. 

Macromedia used to market a product called Dreamweaver UltraDev, which allowed for rapid development of Web applications featuring online databases, member login, and other server-side elements. In Dreamweaver MX, this capability is built in. It has also been extended, adding support for ASP.NET and PHP as well as ColdFusion, JavaServer pages, and traditional ASP. Nonspecialists will find themselves able to build rich dynamic pages, while the integrated code editor makes this a capable development product as well. In fact, Dreamweaver MX has also replaced ColdFusion Studio as the primary development tool for ColdFusion MX. It is a uniquely flexible package. 

Overall, it's hard to find fault with Dreamweaver MX. It's true that its complexity and professional features make it harder to pick up than some rival products. The abundance of panels and options can be confusing, and a high-resolution screen is required. In addition, the Studio MX products, which include Dreamweaver, are a better value for those who need more than one of the MX series. However, this takes nothing away from the excellence of Dreamweaver as the first-choice tool for professionals. --Tim Anderson