easy WYSIWYG Web site creation (01/02/2007)
Whatever your skills are like when it comes to putting Web sites together, it's to the credit of NetObjects Fusion 10 that there's likely to be something it can offer that'll help you out.
This is the latest version of the popular WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) Web creation package, which at its heart is designed to allow anyone, with no programming knowledge whatsoever, to put a site together, although it's easy to access the code underneath if you can't help yourself. The developers, over time, have become more savvy, to the point where the software represents an ambitious and largely successful union of expert and beginners' tools.
From the off, it's a straightforward package to get the hang of. A series of templates are on offer to help you put the building blocks of your site in place, and from there it's easy to quickly insert text and images as and where you need them. The program's far more than a tool for just creating an HTML page or two, though; in Fusion 10's armoury is the ability to manage an entire site on your behalf.
For example, you can leave it to handle navigational tools automatically, confining the curse of dead links to the recycle bin, and the structure of your site is also well looked after, to the point where adding an extra page is the breeze it should be. Even the job of publishing the site is pretty much done on your behalf, as the program happily lifts several tedious jobs away from you.
A mistake that many such packages make is to compromise to the point that the finished sites lack sophistication, but thanks to the ability to drop in modules, that's not the case here. It's staggeringly simple to pull in, for instance, the likes of Flash and RSS support, and there's an awful lot of functionality at your fingertips should you choose to employ it.
Ultimately, NetObjects Fusion 10 is a hard package to knock, simply because it works so well. Advanced users may quarrel that it occasionally simplifies things a little more than they'd like, while at the other end of the spectrum, the price - while entirely fair - may deter the casual Web builder from taking a punt. But the bottom line remains that this is excellent software which has matured nicely into a capable tenth iteration. It lives up to what it says it can do, and then packs in a Hell of a lot that you didn't know it could.
A genuinely capable Web creation tool that should easily satisfy the vast majority of users the vast majority of the time.
Buy NetObjects Fusion 10 securely online at a bargain price
£120 inc. VAT
NetObjects: 01752 895100
