One Kind of Web Site

Your January issue was a bold statement of BYTE's vision of platform-independent, cross-platform computing in the future. It was a little disappointing then to read "8 Tools for Weaving Your Web Site," which reviewed eight Web-authoring programs -- for Windows 95 and NT. Where was the cross-plat form material here? Couldn't Unix and Mac users get a text box of possible options? Or do we have to wait for Java versions of the reviewed tools?

Jan Newmarch
jan@ise.canberra.edu.au

The article "8 Tools for Weaving Your Web Site" did not fairly portray Web Factory Pro Image 1.1. The reviewer used an early beta copy and did not mention that the $229 price included a free upgrade to Web Factory Pro Image 3.0. We would have supplied a prerelease copy of version 3.0 if given the chance. Web Factory Pro Image 3.0 shipped in November. It contains many things version 1.1 was criticized for lacking, notably site management, a GIF animator, and -- since January -- a price of $199. We also sell the $39 Web Factory Author, which has more features than reported in your review. Readers can decide for themselves with a free trial at http://www.tlco.com .

Stephen P. Gardner, President
Thunder & Lightning Co.
San Diego, CA

We reviewed the version that was available during our test period, and it is doubtful whether we could have substituted the version 3.0 upgrade. For the record, we omitted some features of the discontinued version 1.1 from our features table. The product did include Web-page templates, a graphics editor, and the ability to import multiple file formats. Also, as a 32-bit application, it did not run on Windows 3.1x, as we indicated.--David Essex, director of reviews