Four More for the Web

SkiSoft's Web Publisher 1.1 accepts word processing, HTML, or FrameMaker documents that can contain images, tables, and OLE objects. It will automatically convert any image into GIF, build Netscape tables, create tables of contents with links to headings, interpret word-processing-style information, convert numbered and bulleted lists, and place signatures, mail-to uniform resource locators (URLs), and corporate in-line images in documents. Web Publisher will also convert multiple documents in a single pass.

Quadralay's WebWorks Publisher and Harlequin's WebMaker 2.2 take FrameMaker documents and convert them into HTML. These tools let you design and maintain, in a single master, a complete documentation base that can produce both high-quality print media and electronic hypermedia tailored to Web distribution, including on-line help system s. HTML output from FrameMaker documents retains all the generated cross-document and hypertext links, table of contents, and index navigation markers of the original.

Both WebWorks Publisher and WebMaker give you broad creative freedom to design layout styles. You can apply styles automatically with the click of a button. Both products take full advantage of FrameMaker's layout styles and let you define specialized layouts for Web publishing.

Fusion 1.0, from NetObjects, is an object-oriented authoring tool that integrates six components: SiteStructure, which creates a hierarchical map for designing and editing a site; PageDraw, a WYSIWYG page editor; SiteStyles Manager, a style-sheet editor; AutoSites, a library of dozens of professional designs; an asset manager, for referencing content o bjects and connecting to external databases; and a publishing engine, which gathers content and pages and converts them into complete Web sites.

Though our testers found Fusion a gem among authoring tools, it was very slow in staging and publishing Web pages before previewing. Designing the preview process a little more creatively would eliminate the problem. Fusion runs under Windows 95 and NT, and a Mac version should now be out.