Web authors don't usually create individual Web pages; instead, they create Web sites -- groups of linked pages that work together, much as the pages in a magazine work together to form a cohesive whole. When managing a site, you need tools that help with tasks such as efficiently placing documents on a server, updating multiple pages, and visualizing the relationships among pages on the site
Tonya Engst
Adobe SiteMill 1.0 incorporates the functionality of Adobe PageMill and adds site-management features to the mix. SiteMill displays a Web site in a window resembling a Finder list view. If you double-click on a file in this view, the file opens in an editing window that's identical to PageMill's. Dragging a file from the site view to an editing window automatically makes a link to that file.
Within the site view, you can move files from one folder to another without worrying about breaking hypertext links -- SiteMill automatically keeps all your links correct. You can also use the site view to get information on a site's structure -- it shows data on each file, including which pages point to it and which pages it points to.
Although SiteMill's site view may look like a Finder window, it doesn't always act like one. The most frustrating example of nonstandard behavior is the inability to select several files at once. Creating a new folder in your Web site's hierarchy and moving a slew of files into it should be a simple click-and-drag procedure, but SiteMill turns it into an interminable process, forcing you to drag one file at a time into the new folder. You also aren't allowed to move an entire folder.
SiteMill lets you see all the external URLs your pages point to and shows which pages point to which URLs. In this view, you can easily change every reference in your Web site if a URL changes, although you have to test for changes yourself; SiteMill cannot verify external URLs for you.
SiteMill would be a welcome addition to most any HTML collection, but not for the price, which is over $400 more than PageMill's. SiteMill has a few other drawbacks: It has trouble loading information about large sites and reports links to unloaded pages as errors if you load a small portion of a site. SiteMill also doesn't track which files have been changed and doesn't help you upload files to remote Web servers.
We mentioned GNNPress earlier as a WYSIWYG authoring tool, but it also offers site-management features. It can display a Web site as a "miniweb," which graphically displays the relationships among files on a Web site. Within a miniweb, you can create links or rename files, and GNNPress automatically updates files as needed, much as SiteMill does. GNNPress' Check Links command works like a slow spelling checker -- it pokes through documents or miniwebs, identifies bad links, and allows you to correct them as you go.
The miniwebs and site-management aspects of GNNPress would be far easier to use if the program offered window-management tools. GNNPress could also use a speed boost -- it's disappointingly slow, even on Power Macs.
Microsoft also has plans to enter the site-management game, with a Macintosh version of FrontPage, a product currently available only for Windows. FrontPage should match many of SiteMill's features and add the ability to set up CGIs, or Common Gateway Interface scripts, for elements such as forms and counters without any programming and for a variety of servers.
Adobe SiteMill 1.0
Despite some useful and unique site-management functions, SiteMill is derailed by its frustrating interface and high price tag.
GNNPress 1.1
Displaying a site as a "miniweb" gives GNNPress users a graphical overview of a Web site.
