Re: Web page (Intranet) dev tools
Well, for one, they claim:1. Dreamweaver
2. Just use HTML
You might also check out CSE HTML Validator
(http://www.htmlvalidator.com). It's very similar to HomeSite, but
much cheaper.
9. AuthorIT
10. FrontPage
I don't know Nvu, so I can't comment on it. Definitely do not use
FrontPage: it stinks on ice. My experience with AuthorIT is not much
better; the product does not do what it claims and their support, though
friendly, is not great.
I don't know Nvu either, although I've seen a lot of folks recommend
it lately. I never liked FrontPage, but that's a personal preference.
What does AIT not do that it claims to do? I use it a lot for printed
docs, online Help files, and Web sites (my site uses AIT with custom
HTML templates). Their support (definitely friendly) has been a bit
hit-or-miss lately from what I've heard...however, the user's group
tends to be pretty accurate.
/"... AuthorIT provides a powerful importer that makes data
migration easy and painless."
/(http://www.authorit.com/index.mv?different)
<http://www.authorit.com/index.mv?different>
In my experience, this was not true. I evaluated AuthorIT by migrating an existing project. My source code was HTML that I had written using TextPad and was squeaky clean; there were no missing tags and all pages validated correctly using HTML and CSS validators. Also, it was not a large project: maybe 100 HTML files and 100 image files (mostly in PNG format).
The migration process was easy, but it was by no means painless.
* Some images did not migrate at all. Others showed a placeholder
with a red cross. The staff at AuthorIT had a copy of my source
files to review and could not effectively explain why this
happened. They kept talking about embedding images in Word
documents. Hello? There were no Word documents!
* When converting to PDF and Word, I saw problems with tables
extending off the right of the page. (I used the templates
supplied by AuthorIT and made no changes to them.) I thought the
templates would have already resolved these types of issues.
* I found out that AuthorIT cannot read anchor IDs, so the internal
links of the HTML pages. This results in AuthorIT exporting
heading to word as:
Heading Title(ID=)
* I also saw the problem where some text appears not to import with
the correct styles. On one source page there is a Heading 2 titled
<h2>XYZ</h2>, followed by paragraph text. When imported to the
library, the Heading 2 text is imported as Special Bold, and the
text in the following paragraph is imported as Heading 2.
The result of all of these problems produced documents that did not resemble the original project created outside of AuthorIT. The folk at AuthorIT did acknowledge that "some tweaking" was needed. Given the number of projects we needed to convert, the amount of time "tweaking" needed would be huge and certainly not cost-effective.
Maybe at some point in the future we will reconsider buying their product, but for what you get for the price they ask, it is currently not worth it.
You may want to consider another software title: Adobe (Macromedia)
Homesite 5.5 <http://www.macromedia.com/software/homesite/>. I've used
it for several simple Web sites and have found it helpful. The full
price is only $99, plus you can evaluate it for 30 days before you buy.
I used HomeSite for years, and loved it. However, I always got it as
part of Dreamweaver (well, after they bought Allaire)...maybe they
didn't sell it standalone when I was purchasing it? I switched to CSE
HTML Validator last year and stopped installing HomeSite...CSE gets
updated on a regular basis, and part of the updates include validation
against the latest W3C specs.
I've also been using Homesite since the days when Allaire owned it. It does what it does well.
Char James-Tanny ~ JTF Associates, Inc. ~ http://www.helpstuff.comRegards
----------------------------------------------------------
Frank.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
WebWorks ePublisher Pro for Word features support for every major Help
format plus PDF, HTML and more. Flexible, precise, and efficient content delivery. Try it today!. http://www.webworks.com/techwr-l
Doc-To-Help includes a one-click RoboHelp project converter. It's that easy. Watch the demo at http://www.DocToHelp.com/TechwrlList
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References:
Web page (intranet) dev tools: From: Clare Turner
Re: Web page (Intranet) dev tools: From: Frank
Re: Web page (Intranet) dev tools: From: Char James-Tanny
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