Adobe Systems Incorporated announced a public beta program for Adobe®PageMill 2.0 Web authoring software. A free, pre-release version of PageMill 2.0 for the Macintosh is now available today from Adobe's Web site at with a pre-release version for Microsoft Windows®95 and NT expected to be available in September, 1996.

PageMill 2.0 provides both novice and expert customers with one of the most efficient and intuitive authoring tools for creating Web pages with the latest in graphic, multimedia and dynamic content. Featuring a user interface that is most like a Web browser, customers can use PageMill to create Web pages with the minimum number of steps while getting immediate visual feedback to speed the design process.

"PageMill established the category of personal Web publishing tools and made it possible for a broad range of customers, from average desktop computer users to Web professionals, to more quickly and easily create content for corporate Intranets and the World Wide Web," said Kevin Wandryk, Adobe's director of product management for the Internet Product Division. "Version 2.0 raises the bar once again for Web publishing tools, providing a single application that integrates ease of use with the most advanced HTML authoring features and strong support for dynamic Web media types, such as animation and video."

In addition, Adobe is working with a variety of third party developers, including Digital Comet, Inc., EveryWare Development Corporation, Maxum Development, Pacific Coast Software, Power Production Software and Web Broadcasting, to enable customers to easily add dynamic elements to Web pages, such as database connectivity, Java applets and CGI scripts. As result, novice Web designers will be able add advanced interactivity to their Web sites as simply as dragging and dropping from a third party application directly into a PageMill page.

"Using PageMill 2.0 to create Web pages is like the difference between using a word processor with a graphical user interface to create a document instead of a text editor ," said Bob Gatewood, Web designer, Media Lab, Boulder Colorado. "For example, the ability to easily add formatting to HTML pages through simple table and frames creation puts PageMill 2.0 at least a generation ahead of other HTML editors."

Key Features and Benefits

PageMill 2.0 offers several new enhancements that will enable novice customers to easily create content featuring the latest page and multimedia support while providing advanced options that can streamline content creation for Web professionals. Features such as an intuitive interface for creating HTML tables and frames will allow even novice users to create Web pages with advanced page layout without having to learn any complex HTML code. Advanced features such as HTML source editing will enable professional customers to easily switch between the easy-to-use PageMill interface to direct, source code mode and eliminates the need for multiple applications to do similar tasks.

Advanced Formatting Capabilities

PageMill 2.0 provides the most intuitive and complete user interface for designing Web pages with advanced formatting and page layout, including support for HTML tables and frames. As a result, both novice and professional customers can easily create sophisticated and unique Web pages without sacrificing a powerful level of control.

Unlike other applications that require an awkward series of dialog boxes, customers can easily create HTML frames directly within the PageMill 2.0 application window for immediate visual feedback. Customers can create multiple frames per page and target frame links with an intuitive graphic control. PageMill also supports easy creation of HTML tables, including advanced features such as nested tables, and easy copy-and-paste of tables from other applications such as Microsoft Excel. Additionally, the tables creation feature provides sophisticated page layout and design capabilities, such as the ability to join or split cells, insert and delete columns, specify border width, spacing and padding, and specify table dimension as either a percentage or in pixels.

Multimedia Data Support

Adobe PageMill 2.0 offers one of the simplest and most efficient ways to create Web pages that integrate animation, digital video and other multimedia content widely used on the Web. With version 2.0, customers can simply drag and drop a variety of multimedia data types, including PDF files, QuickTime movies, QuickTime VR, Shockwave and animated GIF files, directly into a PageMill page. Additionally, users can preview these files directly in PageMill for immediate review and re-size, right or left align, and automatically flow text around multimedia objects for the highest level of design control.

Familiar Wordprocessor Features

Customers can open and import text directly from word processors, easily control size and color, right or left align paragraphs, automatically wrap text around right or left aligned objects and PageMill 2.0 even includes a spell checker with custom dictionaries.

Additionally, PageMill 2.0 has advanced find and replace features, giving users the ability to find and replace both text and objects by simply dragging and dropping them into the Find/Replace dialog. For example, users can change all occurrences of an image with a different image with one command.

Flexibility for Advanced Users

Users can now switch between the WYSIWYG editor and the HTML source code allowing the user to work in either mode. Additionally, users can drag and drop objects and text into PageMill into either view.

Easily Create and Maintain Client Side Image Maps

PageMill 2.0 allows the Web authors to create images maps that are stored within the HTML page, bypassing the need for complex server configuration and uploading separate image map files to the server.

Support for Advanced Web Page Elements

Customers can use the Placeholders feature to easily extend PageMill 2.0 software's support for advanced Web page elements, such as the latest HTML extensions and interactive programs generated by third party development tools. Through the PageMill 2.0 Placeholders feature, customers can place any arbitrary code into an HTML page. As a result, customers can easily drag and drop dynamic Web elements, such as CGI scripts and Java applets, directly into the PageMill authoring environment. Adobe announced its intention to work with the following companies to support Placeholders:

·Digital Comet Inc. (www.digitalcomet.com) Digital Comet's CometPage and CometSite, expected to be available September 1, gives Web professionals over 60 CGI commands to add dynamic elements to Web pages and better manage commonly used Web page elements.

·EveryWare Development Corporation (www.everyware.com) EveryWare's Tango enables Webmasters to rapidly create dynamic Web-based solutions that interact with popular databases without writing CGI scripts. Tango connects Windows, UNIX®and Macintosh Web servers to industry standard databases such as, Oracle, Sybase, Microsoft SQL Server, FoxPro and FileMaker Pro.

·Maxum Development (www.maxum.com) Maxum's Tagbuilder will provide Webmasters with an easy way to integrate Maxum's NetCloak®and NetForms functionality with PageMill software. NetCloak gives Web designers the ability to customize their pages for individual users on-the-fly. NetForms allows Web masters to create interactive Web content such as discussion forums.

·Pacific Coast Software (www.pacific-coast.com) WebCatalog from Pacific Coast provides a fast and flexible search engine for data you wish to publish at your Web site. PhotoMill is an image cataloging and browsing application that supports most major file formats, and exports catalogs in HTML and automatically converts images to JPEG or GIF.

·Power Production Software (www.powerproduction.com) Power Production's Webburst enables Web authors to create interactive Java applets that include, sound, animation and movies without Java programming.

·Web Broadcasting (www.macweb.com) WebFM from Web Broadcasting is an industry leading Web interface tool for Claris Corporation's FileMaker Pro 3.0. WebFM 3.0, expected to be available in September provides FileMaker Pro customers with a faster and more efficient mechanism for linking their databases with Mac OS World Wide Web server software such as Quarterdeck's WebSTAR 1.3, WebSTAR/Lite or ResNova's Boulevard.

Download the PowerMac Version.

Download the 680x0 versio.

They both expire on October 1, 1996

 

Return to todayıs headlines