CREATING WORLD WIDE WEB pages just got a lot easier, thanks to Adobe PageMill, which lets you create Web pages without having to master the ins and outs of the HyperText Markup Language (HTML). Even Web experts will find PageMill a useful addition to their authoring toolboxes, since it simplifies and streamlines Web-page-building tasks that are difficult to do with raw HTML.
Web Processor
In its edit mode, PageMill looks like a word processor specifically geared to the creation of Web pages. You can type, drag, or paste text into PageMill's window and, using the menu bar or the floating Attributes Inspector palette, apply a variety of HTML-supported styles to selected text. You don't have to use -- or even see -- the ugly HTML style tags you'd use if you were creating your Web page with raw HTML.
To create a hypertext link, you simply select the text for the link, press the Enter key on your keyboard, and type or paste in a URL (Uniform Resource Locator). Linking to HTML documents on your hard disk is even easier: Drag and drop a page's document icon onto the selected text, and PageMill automatically creates the hypertext link.
PageMill can work with graphics in Web-standard GIF and JPEG formats and will automatically convert PICT images you place in its documents to GIF format. Double-clicking on a placed image opens another window, in which you can make your image's background transparent, save the image in interlaced format so it will appear more quickly on-screen, and even create hot spots and embed hypertext links within the image. You'd have to use several applications to match PageMill's functionality.
Creating text-entry fields, pop-up menus, and other interactive features for a Web page can be quite complicated if you use raw HTML, but it's easy with PageMill. The buttons on PageMill's button bar allow you to place editable interactive fields and buttons anywhere in your document. Keep in mind that putting interactive fields and buttons into a Web page is just a first step: You also have to set up your Web server to process the information that the fields collect, a complex task with which PageMill can't help you.
You can see how your HTML document will look as a Web page by clicking a large button in the upper right corner of the PageMill window. In this preview mode, clicking on hypertext links will take you to other HTML documents on your hard disk.
By One Browser Alone
The look of a Web page can vary widely, depending on which Web browser your Web-page visitors are using. So although PageMill's graphical nature might lead you to believe that what you see is the same as what your visitors will see, that isn't necessarily the case. PageMill utilizes some Netscape Navigator-specific tags that aren't supported by other Web browsers. As a result, although your Web pages might look fine when viewed with Navigator, they could look entirely different when viewed with TradeWave's MacWeb or America Online's Web client software.
With HTML itself changing as quickly as Web browsers become more sophisticated, it's not surprising that PageMill doesn't support many commonly used HTML tags. It's too bad you can't configure or redefine the HTML tags in PageMill's functions. As a way around this limitation, PageMill does let you use the Raw HTML style, which lets you write HTML tags when its own functions fall short. Even so, you have to be careful, because PageMill strips out certain HTML tags every time it opens an HTML document it didn't create. For instance, it removes tags that wrap text around images and replaces the commonly used paragraph tag with a pair of line-break tags. As a result, you can't easily use PageMill to edit HTML documents that contain these types of tags. If you have HTML documents with such tags or if you're just picky in general about which tags you use, you'll have to do some editing in a text editor.
In addition, PageMill doesn't support HTML tables, a design feature that's gaining popularity but that's difficult to create. Web authors desperately need a table-creation tool, but PageMill can't help them.
Unfortunately, PageMill lacks even the most rudimentary text-handling features, such as search-and-replace. Furthermore, the application's pasteboard, from which you can drag items for use later, is all but unusable because of its own screen-redraw problems.
Another shortcoming is that PageMill does not provide you with a way of uploading finished HTML documents to a Web server via FTP. If your Web server is not on a local network, you'll still have to upload all your HTML documents by using an FTP-client program such as Anarchie or Fetch.
The Bottom Line
PageMill is a wonderful authoring tool for those who want to create and publish Web pages but who don't have the time necessary to become well versed in HTML. Despite its lack of support for some HTML tags and basic text-handling features, even expert Web authors will find PageMill a powerful tool for streamlining Web-page design.
Price: $99 (list). Company: Adobe Systems, Mountain View, CA; 800-623-2320 or 415-961-4400. Reader Service: Circle #402.
Setting up hypertext links to other Web pages within Adobe PageMill is extraordinarily easy, as is creating interactive fields, such as pop-up menus or Submit buttons.
