Product Reviews

NetObjects Fusion is the first HTML editor to address the drawback inherent in Web design that most upsets designers used to other media: things won't stay put when you change the size of the browser's window.

NetObjects gets around this problem by employing a couple of tricks known to most Web designers: collapsing columns, which are arrays of tables that can be re-sized with pixel-perfect precision, and one-pixel invisible GIFs, which act as invisible stansions, holding the whole page together - or apart, rather, as their actual task is to stop Netscape from filling up their space.

So NetObjects Fusion is, in effect, a true WYSIWYG Web design tool: you grab an image, drag it across the screen, and it will appear exactly where you put it when you hit preview and the page is loaded into Netscape. In fact, so tight is the union between Fusion's table code and Netscape Navigator that you can dispense with proofing your site altogether much of the time: it simply does look exactly like that.

This level of control will have sold the product already to most frustrated Web designers, but there's more. Not only does NetObjects Fusion give you positional control, it actually promises to handle your site structure as well, inserting and deleting links as required.

What's more, it can be connected to an OLE-compliant database to create automatically generated data-publishing projects, such as catalogues or membership lists. Just run the program, export everything, and you're done.

Fusion sounds like exactly what the Web has been waiting for. Indeed, it has been described as the 'PageMaker of the Web'. Unfortunately, it's not quite as simple as that. The main problem with Fusion is in the way the program is structured. When you launch it for the first time you have to name your first site, and Fusion asks which template you want to work from. You're given a list of about 10 site templates and 20 page templates to choose from. You don't have to stick to the template layout, as you can re-organise

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pages hierarchically at any time. Fusion maintains the links between pages as you do so.

However, the model does lock you into a top-down hierarchy, with one page acting as an index page for several pages. Cross-linking is discouraged, which in turn ensures that your site will be of the type where the information you want is buried several layers deep.

The second irritating inflexibility is in the way the pages themselves are structured. The tables work fine, but NetObjects insists on treating every page as more or less identical in layout. Each page has to have a header, some copy in the middle, and a footer.

At first glance, this is quite charming: Fusion automatically creates header graphics with the page title from its store of high-quality clip art. The footer always contains the links to other pages, where they are separated from their context.

But if you want to structure something more creatively, you're still forced to regard the page in the three panels that are reserved for each category of page information. This is a major problem. Although it makes it very easy to make Web pages that look stunning, after a while you get bored of the uniform look. And don't forget, everyone else with a copy of Fusion is going to be producing sites based on the same format.

Fusion gamely tries to integrate advanced Web technology, such as Java and Shockwave. (There is an ActiveX tool as well, but clicking this just produces a dialog box telling you that ActiveX has not been implemented for the Mac OS yet.) The Java and Shockwave clip media included are again of high quality, but placing them on the page is hampered by the fact that no sizes are given for them, and making them fit within the page involves some degree of trial and error.

This is not the program's fault: neither technology embeds this information in the file as graphic formats do, but the handbook could have come with the relevant information.

And Fusion completely ducks the issue when it comes to frames. Frames, you are told usefully, are available through NetFusion's scripting tool: in other words, you have to write the HTML yourself, including sizing. The manual does go on to point out that you shouldn't need frames, since Fusion enables you to manage your links more effectively, but this is missing the point by a mile.

Fusion is far from being the box of tricks it was being touted as at Macworld. At best it's a trick in a box (along with some groovy clip art). If you need to get a corporate site up fast then this is for you: if you want to be creative as well, forget it.