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By: Rafael Coletti
One of the hardest things to find is a comfortable and powerful HTML editor (also featuring other related tecnologies like JavaScript, CSS and Applets) which simplifies your work creating web sites. However Homesite 3.0.1 is not a tool for newbies in HTML - if you are just starting you should instead try an easy to use (WYSIWYG) HTML editor such as Dreamweaver or FrontPage. This is because in order to create pages with Homesite, you'll need a good knowledge of HTML tags and their parameters.
Above: The Homesite user interface.
One of Homesite's best features is its flexibility. There are a multitude of different settings, which can save you a lot of time if you customise them well. The toolbar can be altered and rearranged however you like it, showing only the necessary buttons and in the place you want them to be. You can also create your own buttons.
Above: You can customise the toolbar, making Homesite very flexible.
You can put all the repetitive tags such as HTML, HEAD and BODY in the Default Template folder, so that every time you have a new page those tags appear as default. Neat, no more of that cut-and-paste madness!
Another great feature is the Style Sheet Wizard, which will help you along in creating CSS documents, embedding the Style Sheet in the page or inline, and saving you a lot of time.
Above: The Style Sheet Wizard helps you to create CSS documents.
There are many more useful features within Homesite. Document Weight will give the size of the whole page, including the images and linked documents, and the approximate download time for each type of modem.
Above: The Document Weight interface displays the download time of your page (including the images) in favourable conditions for different types of modems.
You can search for broken links within the page with the Verify Links feature and for HTML errors with Validate HTML. You can even make Homesite interact with Macromedia's Dreamweaver, which is great to speed up if you only have a short time to create a site. It also features an internal browser to preview your work, or you can use the browser of your choice.
Despite all of Allaire's good points, there are a few restrictions and improvements that could be made to the program. Using it is not as intuitive as the developer states; it takes a little while to learn the various workarounds that let you get the most out of Homesite. The JavaScript Library has some deficiencies at the moment, so Allaire needs to improve that feature a little bit further.
A minor annoyance is that the internal browser isn't reliable for viewing your work, especially if you're using Style Sheets and/or JavaScript. For better results you need to use the external browser of your preference.
Above: The internal browser can't handle CSS or JavaScript.
Finally, the Document Weight tool doesn't take into account linked style sheets, external JavaScript source files, or images which are loaded up using JavaScript code. This can make some of the predictions inaccurate, especially for complex sites.
Anybody that is getting serious in creating professional web sites (and that means knowing HTML, because it's the only way you have total control over the code) should give Homesite 3.0.1 a try. You can download an Evaluation Version from Allaire's Web site (www.allaire.com) with a 30 day trial. Homesite 4.0, the latest version of this program, is now available to buy too. For more details see Buying Homesite.
| Program Information | ||
|---|---|---|
| Price | US$79.00 | Minimum Requirements |
| Publisher | Allaire Corp. |
|
| Very useful for those who hand-code their pages but want to speed up the process. | ||
If you think Homesite might be the product for you, you can purchase the full version online from Beyond.com. After entering your credit card details, you can just download it (9MB) straight to your hard drive! Just click on the appropriate link below to jump to the order page.
I want to purchase and download Homesite 3.01
I want to purchase and download the new Homesite 4.0
Rafael Coletti is translating the irt.org site to Portuguese. If you are familiar with this language and are willing to help him with the task, contact him at rafael@irt.org so the translated site can be available sooner to Portuguese speaking visitors.