PC Review: Roundup
December 13, 2000
The internet is the great equalizer, particularly when it comes to
creativity. Some companies have hundreds of employees; their
competitors may have a couple of people. In the end, the products
may be of equal quality.
That is why when I ran across a program called HTML Pro 2.4 this
past week, it did not come as a big surprise that it was programmed
by a 17-year-old, Jamie Bowman. Judging by the program, young Mr.
Bowman has a bright future in the software design business.
There is nothing particularly revolutionary about the program's
interface, but it is nicely done and presents itself in a clean
fashion. It offers all of the web-building necessities and options,
including an internal preview that does not require saving the
file before seeing the results. External previews require saving
the file before viewing.
Setup Wizard
Table Wizard
Frame Wizard
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Pro Shop is designed to make web building easy for anyone, taking
advantage of its many wizards to perform several tasks. Among the
wizards available are those for setup, tables, frames, styles, links,
fonts, lists, span, DIV, and image rollovers.
From the startup wizard on, the program offers little extras to make
working on sites better than the normal. Among the extras are:
- Colored HTML coding
- Auto save, with the user setting the time anywhere from 0-15
minutes
- Popup HTML help
- A time that shows the user how long it takes for a page to load
- The ability to strip HTML from a selected area
- A nice drop-down character inserter located in the top panel
Again, while none of those items are new to the world, their
presentation in the program is clean and easily accessed.
To further make the program more valuable to builders of varying
expertise, Pro Shop supports a number of programming languages,
including HTML, xHTML, XML, JavaScript, JS, VBScripts, ASP, TXT,
Perl, CGI, CSS, and PHP.
Files can easily be reached in the sidebar area, and when images
are inserted the program includes their dimensions to help make
pages load quicker.
Pro Shop comes with a dozen JavaScripts that can be found in a
drop-down box at the top of the page, and it also features a number
of ASP scripts.
In summary, this an excellent program, and for less than $35 becomes
even more impressive.
| What is it called again? HTML Pro Shop 2.4 |
| How big is the download? 4.4 MB |
| Where can I get it? http://hps.quickorbit.com/index.htm |
| What does it cost? $34.99 |
| Is it worth it? Most definitely. |
We have all seen web sites that look as though the creator was either
color blind or had stared into the face of a solar eclipse before
starting to work. It need not be that way, now that Color Schemer is
here.
This little program from Aaron Epstein of Digital Studios enables
users to select a color and then have 16 harmonious colors displayed
in the accompanying boxes.
Accepting both HEX and RGB color values, Schemer enables users to
keep their favorites in a side panel for easy access, save schemes
for later use, choose colors from anywhere on the screen, and make
colors web safe.
After users find a color scheme they like, they can also see it in
darker or lighter shades at the touch of a button from within the
program before saving their scheme.
While users can select colors from a 216-color web safe palette,
they can also use sliders to modify RGB values, copy HEX values to
the clipboard, and view colors on any background color.
Color Schemer is definitely a program to consider, particularly if
you spent time outdoors during the last eclipse.
| What is it called again? Color Schemer |
| How big is the download? 1.5 MB |
| How much does it cost? $25 |
| Where can I get it? http://www.colorschemer.com/ |
| Is it worth it? For far too many people, it is strongly recommended. |
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