How Easy Can It Get?

How Easy Can It Get?

by David Fiedler
Web pages in 10 minutes without HTML! Even a child can do it!
These kinds of advertising claims of simplified Web authoring tools may sound suspiciously like the spam messages we've all gotten in our e-mail boxes (with some reassuring return address like user204@cybersleaze.com), but they're real enough.
The first thing many experienced Web developers tend to think when reading this stuff is, to put it colloquially, "Yeah, right!", followed closely by "OK, so who cares anyway?". After all, if it's really so easy, how good could the results be?
Stop worrying, folks. Since you're the kind of extremely competent, highly intelligent person who reads Web Developer®, you have nothing to fear, professionally, from these programs. But you might benefit from them anyway.
Aren't there some clients out there who want more changes to their pages than you physically have time for? Aren't there a few who could do more on their own with just a little encouragement? Could you maybe make more money if you could turn out pretty decent-looking sites with only a few minutes' work (assuming nobody knew you were using a Newbie Tool, of course)? Do you have a child you might be able to put to work cranking out pages while you sip lemonade in the back yard? Hmm...
I'll Do Anything For An Article

Asymetrix Corporation makes a product called Web Publisher for Windows 95 and NT ($79), which carries the proud tagline "Dazzling Web Pages in Minutes". They even boast on the box that if you can't create a Web page in just 10 minutes using Web Publisher, they'll give you your money back. Pretty gutsy.
Well, I'm pretty gutsy too, and I also have a lot of foresight. Eighteen years ago, clearly foreseeing that I was one day destined to become Editor-in-Chief of a great metropolitan Web magazine, I got married. This was the beginning, not only of my family, but of my private test lab staff.
It was obvious that my wife, Susan, was perfectly suited to help me test Web Publisher. She knows her way around computers and the Web, of course, but when she first took a look at some actual HTML code, she rolled her eyes, stuck out her tongue, hissed, and otherwise indicated her displeasure. Not intuitive enough, I guess.

Sneaky, But It Worked

With this kind of reaction, I obviously couldn't just come out and ask her to test a Web authoring product, or she wouldn't have been properly motivated. Instead, I sneakily told her I would finally help her design the Web site she had been talking about for her new glass art business...did she have ten minutes? Once she caught on to my ulterior motive, she picked up the box and was just about to whap me with it, when she saw a sample Web page illustrated on the back of the box: "Art Glass for Sale." Danger averted. Whew!
I'm not sure which of us was more surprised when 8 1/2 minutes after installing the program, she really did have a complete, good-looking Web page (with a 3D title, yet). So, in an attempt to demonstrate my superior skills (i.e. show off), I figured I'd show her how to use Web Publisher to improve her basic page.
After 15 minutes of trying everything I could reasonably guess at, I gave up and actually read the instructions. They did not explain why there was seemingly no way to modify a previously created page without resorting to editing its HTML, so I finally contacted Asymetrix. It seems you can use Web Publisher to create a "Quick Page", which is fast but final, or you can decide to create a "Multi-page Project", which gives you more choices, as well as the opportunity to modify your pages in the future.
Very cute: they promised you can create a page in 10 minutes, but said nothing about being able to change it later! I was a bit cynical at this point, but we sat down together and started working on some Project pages.
Although I was expecting something far more complicated, it turned out that doing a Project was almost as simple as the Quick Page, and much more rewarding.

One-Button Publishing

First, you pick one of 22 pre-designed "themes" (including motifs such as Business, Jungle, Kids, Space, and Sports) which are previewed for you in miniature (see Figure 1). Then, you select a name for your project and an e-mail address for feedback.
The next step is to pick a page style. This is the greatest weakness of Web Publisher, because your choices are essentially one graphic and one text element, wrapped or not; or text as a bulleted list. Also, once you've picked a style for a particular page, you can't change it later without deleting that page and starting over (although that's not a particularly difficult process, especially if you're working with text files, so that you don't have to retype much). You can rearrange the order of your pages at any time, though.
Once this big decision has been made for a page, the rest is almost fun. You enter the page title (which can be displayed as regular text, a 3D graphic, or an imported graphic file); the graphic element of your page (any of .bmp, .gif, or .jpg formats, and which can have a hyperlink); and the text. You can either enter the text from the keyboard, or import it from an ASCII or RTF (Rich Text Format) file. You can select text with the cursor for adding hyperlinks, and you can spellcheck, resize, embolden, italicize, center, and justify it as well.
The last step is simply deciding whether or not you want to use Java-enabled buttons (which glow when selected), then click an on-screen button and generate your entire Web site. If your project has more than one page, links between them are generated automatically. You can launch your browser for preview, then publish your entire project with another click via FTP, or directly to an intranet server.
As promised, it's simple to go back to your project at any time, make some changes, and regenerate your pages for re-publishing. While the pages aren't very complex, they do look nice (see Figure 2), and the amount of actual work is minimal. Asymetrix has already released some new themes for free customer download from their Web site, and it takes just one button to get there from Web Publisher. Asymetrix Corporation, Bellevue, WA Phone 800-448-6543, 206-462-0501, FAX 206-455-3071 URL http://webpub.asymetrix.com/
OK, How easy can it really get?
I get all kinds of wild press releases in the mail, but this particular one really got to me. Vividus claimed that their Web Workshop program ($29.95 for Windows or Mac) was so easy to use that even a seven-year-old could create Web pages with it!
Well, it just so happens that eight years ago, my wife and I decided to have a child, so now here we are with a seven-year-old boy, perfectly suited for product testing. How could I pass up this opportunity? So I loaded Web Workshop up on our Macintosh, and sat Scott down in front of it.
Scott had his own 286 computer and knew what Web pages were, but had never even seen a Macintosh and by the way, couldn't even read very much at the time. He certainly seems to have Web genes, however, because with only the barest minimum of help from me (mostly reading the menu choices to him), he was soon off designing pages and even adding links. If I hadn't stopped him after about an hour or so, he might have reinvented Yahoo or something (see Figure 3).
Web Workshop, as you might imagine, is highly visual. Users can enter text and select backgrounds, graphics, and preconfigured links from thumbnails and place them anywhere on a page. While it's clearly oriented towards children, the simplicity of the interface makes Web Workshop ideal for anyone who's the least bit computer-phobic, or perhaps who can't read or write English well. Vividus Corporation, Palo Alto, CA Phone 888-4-VIVIDUS, 415-321-2221 FAX 415-321-2282 URL www.vividus.com/WW/WW.html
No Kidding, Now, How Easy Can It REALLY, Truly, Get?
One day, a company called Caere sent me a package with its OmniPage Pro 7.0 for Windows 95 product ($499 list). New OCR technology? So what, I thought, I don't even own a scanner. The very next week, a PR person calls and asks if I want to test the new UMAX Vista S6E scanner (under $300 street price). OK, that's major serendipity, but what would I do with all this? Then I remembered that OmniPage Pro had a single-button OCR wizard and an HTML output option...
Well, three years ago, we had decided to have yet another child. So now all I had to do was load a page in the scanner, show Steven which button to press, and then I could say that even a 2-year-old...
But it couldn't really be that easy, could it? Yup. Both these products installed like a dream, and you can see the results in Figure 4 for yourself. On the top, a fragment of the original page. On the right, a browser-eye-view of the same portion of the HTML file that OmniPage Pro created, with HTML untouched by human hands (or even cute little baby hands).
While OCR isn't perfect, and OmniPage Pro's HTML formatting capabilities are fairly basic (i.e. it can't create tables and columns), this method could be a lifesaver in many situations where original word processing files can't be found, but you have clean paper output to work from.
Caere Corporation, Los Gatos, CA
Phone 800-535-7226 x110, 408-395-7000, FAX 408-354-2743
URL http://www.caere.com/live/content/products/omnipage/op7_mac.htm

UMAX Technologies, Fremont, CA
Phone 800-562-0311, 510-651-4000, FAX 510-651-8834
URL www.umax.com
So next time you're tempted to take the easy way out on a Web site design, remember...your next competitors could be in elementary school!

David Fiedler may be Editor-in-Chief of Web Developer®, but he's just plain "Daddy" around the house.

Reprinted from Web Developer® magazine, Vol. 3 No.1 Jan/Feb. 1997 (c) 1997 internet.com Corporation. All rights reserved.
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