Akimbo Systems announced today that it is now shipping its Globetrotter Web Publisher package for Mac OS computers, the first third-generation web publishing product. Globetrotter, one of the "MacWEEK HOT Picks" from the August MacWorld Expo, has been anxiously awaited by web publishers and is shipping about a month ahead of schedule.

Revolutionary Product for World Wide Web

Globetrotter is a revolutionary product in an exciting market area. "Unlike all existing products for authoring content on the world wide web, Globetrotter was designed around the content, rather than designed around HTML," said Bruce Leban, Akimbo Systems' president. Globetrotter differentiates itself in two major areas: Globetrotter is a true publishing product rather than an HTML Editor, and Globetrotter is designed to publish web sites rather than web pages.

Until today, people who wanted to publish on the web were forced to learn HTML or hire an expert. HTML Editors helped a little, but users were still forced to understand HTML concepts and structure. HTML was never designed to be edited by hand. As a publishing product, Globetrotter shields users from HTML, just like the average word processor shields users from the PostScript needed to print a page. Globetrotter also automatically converts text, formatting, pictures and sounds to the formats necessary for display on the web. Globetrotter users can even create Java, ActiveX and other objects within their documents without typing HTML.

By going beyond the limits of HTML, Globetrotter is able to publish multiple pages from a single source document, provide page headers and footers on each page, automatically create a navigation bar and next and previous buttons, as well as automatically fix links when a document is republished. Navigation buttons may be published as text or in a graphical style chosen from a Button Library. When a user creates a form, Globetrotter will automatically name the form elements and create the CGI (Common Gateway Interface) script necessary to process the form on the server. These are all features that no competing program has, due to their overdependence on HTML.

In addition, Globetrotter is unique in its ability to automatically determine the appropriate format and options for publishing pictures, which are published as either GIF or JPEG format. Globetrotter creates pages which may be viewed in all browsers, ranging from Netscape to Internet Explorer to the character-based Lynx. Old versions of browsers, including browsers that don't support tables, ActiveX or JavaScript, are supported automatically without the need to publish multiple versions of pages, as users frequently need to do with competing programs.

"Globetrotter is a great leap for web publishing," said beta tester Scott Boyd, VP, Engineering at QKS, Inc., "Creating forms is amazingly easy and it was a tremendous help in quickly turning around high-quality Smalltalk Agents release documentation."

Globetrotter has a MSRP of $249, but will be available at an introductory internet-only promotional price of $99 for the first sixty days, through November 13th, 1996. Users may purchase and download the product directly through Akimbo's web site, which was created completely with Globetrotter.

 

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