The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group HoTMetal PRO 6.0 Bernadette Houghton   bernieh@iaccess.com.au

HoTMetal Pro is a Web authoring tool aimed at designers who prefer to wallow in HTML. With an extensive range of built-in tools, HoTMetal supports rapid Web page development while making redundant much of the drudgery involved in direct coding.

Truly a complete Web design package, HoTMetal includes everything you'll need, from clipart to graphic programs to browsers to a desktop server, inside the box. You'll also find FTP software, various plug-ins, and HTML and JavaScript self-study courses.

Interface

HoTMetal offers four authoring environments and you can switch back and forth among them at will:

• HTML Source. As the name implies, this is where you get down and dirty with HTML. You can enter code as you would in a text editor, or insert tags and attributes using the menu or toolbars. Alternatively, you can use the Element List and Attribute Inspector. Tags are colour-coded, and you can configure various display properties, such as font, colours, word wrapping and so on.
  
• Tags On. A cross between HTML and WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) environments, Tags On displays HTML tags in little boxes, with fonts, images and other elements displayed graphically. Code creation is similar to that of HTML Source, except that you can't type in tags directly. Extra features in Tags On view include the ability to collapse or expand sections of code, and tag tips which appear whenever your cursor hovers over a tag. Each time you click a tag, HoTMetal also selects the corresponding tag, along with all the content in between, so it's much quicker and easier to review your code.
  
• WYSIWYG is self-explanatory and includes the same editing tools as in Tags On view.
  
• WYSIWYG Frames is similar to plain WYSIWYG, except that you use it when working with frames.

Validation takes place on the fly, and each time you open or save a document You can turn off on-the-fly validation, however. HoTMetal presents a summary of all validation errors found, and you simply click on a specific error to jump to the right place in your page. While HoTMetal attempts to fix errors quietly wherever possible, if it can't, it starts up the HTML Wizard to guide you through the process. Another useful tool is Accessibility Checking, which warns you of problems that may prevent visitors from viewing a page properly in certain circumstances, e.g. sight-impaired viewers or text-based browsers.

HoTMetal's ability to open multiple documents simultaneously makes it easier to work on several pages and to drag and drop objects from one page to another. It monitors links and automatically pops up the Site Doctor each time you perform an action that will result in broken links. The Database Import Wizard simplifies the process of incorporating databases or spreadsheet files in your Web pages, and the Site Maker offers a large variety of business and personal templates on which you can base your own Web site.

Project Management

If you're developing a project over multiple sites, HoTMetal's FTP capabilities enable you to work on files located remotely virtually seamlessly. Alternatively, you can upload or download files between remote computers within HoTMetal. When you've finished working on a file, HoTMetal automatically saves remote files back in their original location. The synchronisation feature ensures that HoTMetal stores the most current version of a file at all locations, and HoTMetal also tracks which files you unload to the server.

Asset Management

HoTMetal ships with a goodly range of assets - images, sounds, code snippets and so on, all of which are `housed' in the Resource Manager, along with the files on your local and remote drives. When you drag an asset from the Resource Manager onto a page, HoTMetal is intelligent enough to understand what you want to do. For instance, if you drag an image from the Background assets, HoTMetal inserts the image as a background rather than an ordinary image, and also copies the image to the appropriate Web folder. Among the assets is an extensive range of intelligent utilities such as Button Maker, Calendar Builder, Dynamic Buttons (rollovers) and Forms. And a lot more. Dynamic HTML assets include useful scripts that you can configure and drag into your pages e.g. browser sniffer, hit counter, cookie setter. You can create your own assets and assets types, although the latter requires knowledge of JScript/JavaScript.

Assessment

I'm impressed with HoTMetal, its large range of tools and its extensive assets. There are plenty of templates to choose from, and the Site Maker makes it easy to build a site quickly from scratch. Tags On view makes it much easier to create clean HTML code, and the help resources are pretty good. HoTMetal also supports most of the current Internet technologies, including Cascading Style Sheets, JavaScript, VBScript, COM, DOM, Perl and Python; although not XML.

HoTMetal doesn't have as many bells and whistles in HTML Source view as does HomeSite/ColdFusion which I reviewed recently (PC Update, March 2000). However, HoTMetal's Tags On view is a very workable alternative to typing code directly, and certainly simplifies code analysis. HoTMetal's project support also isn't in ColdFusion's league, and while it might do very well in a development spread across two or three sites, it probably isn't the most suitable package for large corporate projects spread amongst several locations.

HoTMetal is most suitable for experienced users who want direct access to HTML code yet need much more than a glorified text editor.

Cost and Availability

$169; upgrades from $99. Available from Sustence, ph (05) 0085 8687, fax (05) 0085 8600, e-mail kmiachel@sustance.com. Download an evaluation copy from http://www sustance.com.

Minimum System Requirements

Pentium-compatible processor, Windows 95 or Windows NT 4.0, 32 MB RAM, 256-colour display CD-ROM, 50 MB free hard disk space.

Reprinted from the June 2000 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

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