Review of eight Web authoring tools Network World, 9/8/97 Which Web authoring tool is right for you? Network World, 7/21/97 Vendor info: Catalyst Development Web site (800) 766-3818 SocketTools Standard Edition $247 Microsoft Web site (425) 882-8080 Visual SourceSafe 5.0; FrontPage 98 $499; $149 NetObjects Web site (650) 482-3200 NetObjects Fusion 2.0.2 $195 Trellix Web site (781) 788-9400 Trellix 1.0 $99 Back to the Intranet page

Authoring guidelines Select products that match user skill levels. Train users as much as necessary but no more. Don't let users get over involved with authoring. Ensure you retain control of what is and can be produced.

By Mark Gibbs
Network World, 2/23/98

1. Allow for multiple authoring tools.

Web authoring tools offer WYSIWYG and tag editing. While WYSIWYG editing tools approximate how the document will appear in a browser, tag editing provides direct access to HTML code.

Allowing departmental users to manipulate HTML code is generally pointless since even the simplest Web page is complex at the tag level. Given this, there's a good chance the general user population will make mistakes when writing HTML code and waste time on endless minor adjustments.

What's more, you don't want to scare off users. Editing or even just seeing raw HTML is enough to persuade most people not to become intranet publishers.

So pick a WYSIWYG authoring tool for your general user base and a tag editor for more sophisticated users capable of dealing with the HTML code. Any word processor with an HTML export function, such as Word for Windows or Corel WordPerfect, makes operational and financial sense for WYSIWYG editing. If you don't have such a word processor, check out Elemental Software's DrumBeat, the only purely WYSIWYG product; NetObjects, Inc.'s NetObjects Fusion, an outstanding WYSIWYG tool that also allows access to the underlying HTML code; and Microsoft Corp.'s FrontPage 98.

2. Pick a tool that helps users visualize and analyze content.

During the past year, about half of the vendors in the authoring tools market added features that allow the creation and exploration of "maps" of Web content. These maps range from simple inverted trees showing which pages link to which other pages to linkage diagrams that can be rotated and manipulated to provide more detailed views.

Even more important than these visualization capabilities are the new analysis features that these latest wares offer. The features allow users to find broken links to content, determine whether the target content exists and identify missing images and other page elements.

FrontPage 98 and NetObjects Fusion are among the products that offer mapping, link validation and management features, and SoftQuad, Inc.'s HoTMetaL Pro has a powerful visualization feature.

3. Look for tools that support templates and wizards.

Many packages, such as NetObjects Fusion and FrontPage 98, now offer a template facility or wizards that make creating and enforcing document layout and format standards easy. Templates are fixed prototypes that have no conditional architecture. Wizards, on the other hand, ask questions and assemble Web pages based on a user's responses.

4. Look for publishing tools that support multiple users and have or can integrate with a version control system.

Support for multiple users becomes imperative as workgroups get more ambitious and their publishing needs become more complex. And when multiple users are involved, the authoring tool has to offer access controls so only authorized users can modify content.

In addition, authors need to be able to check out a document and modify it while it's under their control. They also need a version control system that ensures that different iterations of the document can be retrieved as needed.

A few vendors have integrated version control packages with their authoring tools. For example, Microsoft has integrated its version control software, called Visual SourceSafe, in FrontPage 98. FrontPage 98 also offers author control and document checkout, as does NetObjects Fusion.

5. Consider building your own authoring tool.

This might sound daunting, but homegrown packages might fit the bill nicely in a number of environments.

I'm not advocating developing a full-fledged editor, but rather building simple forms that are consistent with other data entry tasks and that generate HTML documents as output. Building your own tool might prove more cost-effective than bringing in a commercial product and having to train a large number of staff in the ins and outs of it.

To do so, you could modify a much-used existing package, such as Microsoft's Word for Windows. You might build a Word macro, for example, that prompts for data input to fill templates that are saved as HTML documents.

Or, you could use a basic application such as Visual Basic to create a simple catalog that doesn't warrant a custom database on the server. This would allow users to create and modify highly structured catalog pages without errors. Such a program would simply fill fixed fields in a template with validated user input and export formatted HTML documents. Using a development tool kit with VBX or ActiveX components, you could extend the program so it uploads and downloads Web pages via the File Transfer Protocol.

Along this line, Catalyst Development Corp. offers Visual Basic with Catalyst SocketTools, which includes VBX and 16- and 32-bit ActiveX versions.