HIT: Pagemill

[Madeline Buchanan <mlbuchan@SCOTT.NET>]

I received quite a few replies to my question about Pagemill, both for and
against the program.  There are some limitations to Pagemill 1.0 but my
dealer said that a new version should be out shortly which would take care
of those problems.  Some of the limitations to the program are as follows:

        Crashes upon exiting the program or switching to another application
                while Pagemill is open.
        Some UNIX servers do not translate some of the "strange" or
                extraneous characters that may be put into the user's file
                by Pagemill requiring rewriting and recoding before the
                file works properly.
        The program cannot do tables.  Lists have to be reformated to get the
                alignment to display correctly with Netscape.
        Image files may have to be renamed since Pagemill automatically
                includes directory information for the hard drive in the URL.
        There may be problems with graphics resizing.
        The manual is pretty bad but the people at Technical Support were
                very helpful.
        Version 1.0 is restricted to HTML 1.0 programming.
        Only one line of text can be written next to a picture.

Advantages of the program include:

        No knowledge of HTML required.
        Adding graphics or links is very easy to do.

Several respondents indicated that they would rather use WebWeaver and put
in their own HTML tags.  One said he would do a page using Pagemill and
then open it up in WebWeaver to see if everything would work out.

In my opinion, if a person has no prior knowledge or no experience in using
HTML, the Pagemill is the easiest and less frustrating way to go.  At
$99.95, it is hard to go wrong.  However, before purchasing the program it
would be wise to wait until the new version comes out.  If a person is
already experienced in using HTML tags, it might be better at this time to
keep on doing so until the bugs are worked out of Pagemill.

Since I am familiar with HTML commands and have been using WebWeaver for a
year now, I think I'll wait until comments are more favorable.  The August,
1996 issue of "MacUser" compares web tools, including Pagemill.



     Madeline L. Buchanan            W. J. Christian School
     Library Media Specialist        Birmingham, Alabama  35206
     mlbuchan@scott.net              Voice:  (205) 838-7620 or (205) 838-7666
     dems105@uabdpo.dpo.uab.edu      Fax:  (205) 838-7622
     buchanml@aol.com                http://www.scott.net/~mlbuchan/

     Exercise develops your body.  Reading develops your mind.