The most recent articles from Personal Computer World

Internet Explorer 8 Release Candidate 1 web browser

Tim Anderson — 2009-03-18T17:56:00.000Z

Tim Anderson, Personal Computer World, Wednesday 18 March 2009 at 17:56:00

Microsoft’s new browser is decent but faces vigorous competition

When Microsoft showed the first Internet Explorer 8 beta at the Mix 08 conference in Las Vegas, it was widely applauded for delivering a standards-compliant browser at last, successfully rendering the Acid 2 test page from the Web Standards Project. But is it too little, too late?

Progress seems slow: it’s a year since the 2008 Mix, and at the time of writing IE8 has only made it as far as Release Candidate 1. The Web Standards Project has moved on to Acid 3, a more demanding test that IE8 is nowhere near passing; when we tried it, it scored 13 per cent, then crashed the browser. Most other browsers fail Acid 3 as well, though not as badly. Even after IE8 is released, Microsoft will be behind in standards compliance.

That said, the standards compliance in IE8 is a leap forward from IE7, and includes Aria (Accessible Rich Internet Applications), CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) 2.1, HTML 5 Dom storage, enabling web applications to store data on the local machine, and native support for Json (Javascript Object Notation), widely used to manipulate data in web applications. These changes are mostly invisible to users, who just expect websites to work, but matter greatly to the web designers who have the responsibility to make it so, hence the applause at Mix.

Microsoft’s problem is that web authors now expect the quirky habits of previous versions, and deliver specially tweaked pages when they detect IE. These pages now break in IE8. The fix is a compatibility view that reverts to the old layout engine, enabled by clicking a button, or by code in the web page itself, or by inclusion on a list of sites maintained by Microsoft. Intranet sites use compatibility view by default. The compatibility tools work well, but it is unfortunate that Microsoft has had to devote so much energy to this rather than working on new features.

There are a few enhancements. Accelerators offer a handy right-click menu on any selected text, with items that call a web service to bring back further inf ormation in a pop-up preview. Accelerate a place name, for example, and you get a map. Web slices install into the Favourites bar, and show concise content from another website, such as the current top topics on Digg, in a dropdown preview. Private browsing, engaged from the Tools menu, lets you browse without storing browser history or temporary internet files, while private filtering blocks selected third-party sites from tracking your web movements.

Crash recovery attempts to isolate crashes to the current tab, rather than closing the entire browser. This worked with our Acid 3 crash, though IE8 insisted on trying to re-open the crashing page, causing a repeated error. New developer tools in IE8 are excellent for web authors tracing page layout bugs.

Web developers and designers will appreciate it, though it will be years before IE6 and IE7 disappear from view. IE8 is a memory hog, partly thanks to new compatibility and stability features. It is unlikely to win many back from Firefox or other browsers, since its new features are low key, its standards compliance still falls short, and the range of available add-ons is more limited. Internet Explorer does benefit from protected mode on Windows Vista and higher, which runs the browser with restricted permissions for better security, though this is also in IE7. Overall this is a decent upgrade and will be a must-have for users sticking with Microsoft’s browser.

Safari 4 Beta web browser

Orestis Bastounis — 2009-03-05T16:01:00.000Z

Orestis Bastounis, Personal Computer World, Thursday 5 March 2009 at 16:01:00

The latest version of Apple’s browser comes to the PC

Internet Explorer’s dominance is being seriously threatened by other web browsers such as Opera, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome. And with so much choice, it’s hard to imagine there’s room for yet another browser. But when the new arrival is as good as Safari 4, there’s clearly potential for one more.

Safari offers two features that instantly set it apart from other browsers. The first is raw speed. Pages load noticeably quicker than in Firefox or Internet Explorer, especially when there are plenty of images to render. This is partly down to Safari using Apple’s new Nitro engine to handle Javascript efficiently.

Don’t just take our word for it though – we compared the performance of Safari 4 with the latest beta of Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 3, Chrome and Opera, using the Acid 3 Test. Safari was the only browser to achieve the maximum score of 100, outpacing even Google’s Chrome, an impressive achievement given that Chrome was designed with performance in mind.

The second notable feature of Safari is the improved visual experience it brings to browsing the web. Managing bookmarks and viewing your history uses the same Cover Flow graphical interface found on other Apple software such as iTunes. Whereas on iTunes you flip through the cover art of your music to pick the next song, like pages in a book, Safari allows you to scroll through thumbnails of web pages, whether they are from your bookmarks or stored in your history.

Rather than automatically updating the Cover Flow thumbnail with the latest version of the page, it appears how it was when you last visited it. So, if you’ve imported a set of bookmarks, all you’ll have to flick through is the black Apple placeholder image, until you visit that page in Safari. Once you select a page, it then closes the Cover Flow interface and loads the URL in the browser window; the next time you’re going through either your history or bookmarks, you’ll see an updated preview.

This feature is something you’ll either love or hate. While we find it’s a useful addition to two of the key aspects of browsing, it won’t be to everyone’s taste. It works best on Apple’s touch-sensitive hardware, where a small flick of your finger scrolls through the interface, but on the PC you browse using the middle mouse wheel.

Safari also borrows features from other browsers. As with Chrome, you can drag and drop browser tabs into new windows or merge them together, with the mouse pointer morphing into a preview of the web page while you are dragging the tab. Sensibly, Apple has chosen to use shortcuts that mimic other browsers under Windows, so Ctrl and T opens a new tab, Ctrl and D bookmarks a page, and so on. You can also enable private browsing, where your browsing history, cookies and cache aren’t stored on the hard disk – particularly useful when surfing on a public computer.

Safari’s eye candy comes at the cost of high memory usage. With just a single page open, Safari consumed approximately 50MB, already more than other browsers, but when we turned on the Cover Flow interface and opened another dozen tabs, this shot up to 200MB. Granted, this is only a beta, but it’s safe to assume Safari 4 won’t be intended for low spec PCs, which means many netbooks might be excluded.

If your PC is powerful enough, Safari is definitely worth trying at least once. Even if the pretty thumbnail previews don’t convince you to switch from your browser of choice, the lighting-quick page loading might.

Review: Apple Safari 3 Public Beta

Cliff Joseph — 2007-06-19T00:00:00.000Z

Cliff Joseph, Personal Computer World, Tuesday 19 June 2007 at 00:00:00

A challenger for Internet Explorer or a marketing aid for the iPhone?

It’s an odd time for Apple to kick off another round of the browser wars.

Apple is still waiting for Microsoft to release a ‘native’ version of Microsoft Office for the new generation of Intel-based Macs, and throwing this Windows version of the previously Mac-only Safari browser in Microsoft’s face hardly seems likely to foster good relations between the two companies. Still, that’s Apple for you.

Politics aside, Safari is certainly a well-designed browser – as you’d expect from Apple – even if it’s far from being an Explorer-killer. There aren’t any massive differences between Safari and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer – or, for that matter, other browsers, such as Opera or Firefox. The basic features are pretty much the same, although there are often differences in how particular features are implemented.

For instance, both Internet Explorer and Safari have a bookmarks bar, in which you can store your favourite bookmarks for quick access. However, Safari’s Bookmark Editor window makes it easier to group multiple bookmarks together on the bookmark bar – such as your main set of news sites – and then display this group of bookmarks as a pulldown menu so that you can quickly select one specific bookmark.

The Bookmark Editor also comes in handy when organising tabs. We like the option that tells Safari to open an entire set of bookmarks as a series of tabs, and also the ability to ‘pull’ a tab off the page with your mouse and open it up in an entirely new window, which wasn’t available in the earlier Mac version.

However, it’s a shame Safari doesn’t have a similar feature to IE7's Quick Tabs option, which creates a new page containing thumbnail previews of all open tabs.

One clever feature in Safari is its Find command. Most web browsers simply highlight words on a page when you use their Find tool, but this means it can still be hard to spot a single word on a long or particularly text-heavy page. To make it easier to spot the words you’re looking for, Safari 3 dims the entire page and then highlights the words so that they really stand out.

According to Apple CEO Steve Jobs, the biggest difference between Safari and Explorer is its sheer speed. Jobs’s demo at Apple’s recent Worldwide Developer Conference included a batch of statistics that claimed Safari is up to twice as fast as Explorer for tasks such as loading web pages or running Javascript.

However, this is the sort of claim that comes under the heading of ‘lies, damn lies, and statistics’. Apple’s test results may well be true – we wouldn’t suggest otherwise – but on a day-to-day basis, you’re unlikely to notice much difference between the two browsers.

We suspect Apple’s real motive is not to challenge Explorer, but to prepare the market for the arrival of the iPhone. Safari will also be installed on the iPhone, so a bit of extra market penetration for Safari on the Windows platform should make web developers more conscientious in ensuring their websites work properly with Safari (and, therefore, with the iPhone).

Various security flaws have been discovered, but this is beta software so it’s hardly surprising.

The bottom line is that Safari is a very nice browser, with a cleaner-looking interface than its Microsoft counterpart. But it doesn’t have any features that deliver a knockout blow to Internet Explorer. The Public Beta version of the software is available to download from Apple’s website, so you’re free to try it out for yourself.

Review: My Active Desktop

Emil Larsen — 2006-12-27T00:00:00.000Z

Emil Larsen, Personal Computer World, Wednesday 27 December 2006 at 00:00:00

An expensive online home for your bookmarks and calendar entries

At first, we could see a target audience of people who travelled a lot but would need access to specific links and a calendar wherever they where. In practice, however, we weren't impressed with this application.

Once signed in, it looks and feels extremely basic. The homepage consists of three panels – Personal Links, Shared Links and Aid Memoirs. Shared links, as you’d expect, can be accessed by your friends, but they’ll need to be My Active Desktop subscribers.

Navigation is poor. Every time you select a different link or add a calendar entry it opens a new browser window, which soon results in a cluttered Desktop.

The biggest problem for My Active Desktop is that there are plenty of free alternatives available. Google’s customisable homepage service instantly springs to mind and, at its most basic, offers an add-free homepage with exactly the same features.

If you spend a little time with Google (RSS feeds, widgets and games are all available), it completely wipes out any sort of competition from My Active Desktop. Windows Live search is another website offering almost identical functions to Google's.

With these free tools readily available, £35 is a lot to pay. Worse still, it’s an annual subscription, so you’ll be shelling out a fair amount of cash over the years. Even if there was no free competition around, we’d expect to pay a one-off fee of under £10 for this sort of application.

As a result, we find it hard to recommend My Active Home to anyone – head for the free services of Google or Windows Live instead.

Review: Internet Explorer 7 web browser

Tim Smith — 2006-10-25T00:00:00.000Z

Tim Smith, Personal Computer World, Wednesday 25 October 2006 at 00:00:00

After a long period of silence, Microsoft updates its internet browser

Since Microsoft's Internet Explorer is still the browser favoured by the vast majority of internet users, this new version is going to send waves around the web for some time.

Most of those who use alternatives, such as Opera, Firefox and Safari, will no doubt bemoan the lack of anything obviously original compared to their browser of choice.

Starting the browser for the first time prompts whether or not to change the default search engine from the standard Viewpoint search. Six other web search providers are listed and it is possible to add your own.

Other optional settings include the Phishing Filter and whether or not you want to be involved in the Microsoft Customer Experience Improvement Program.

The interface hasn't changed from the Beta with the menu bar removed (though it can be restored) and the new tabs. Existing Internet Explorer icons are kept from the previous version.

Web pages can now be shrunk to fit onto a page of A4 when printing; it seems remarkable that this has taken so long to include but at least shrink to fit is now the default action.

The popularity of RSS feeds is highlighted by Microsoft deciding to show them in a human-friendly format. RSS feeds can also be subscribed to as part of the Internet Favourites section, while the Feed view has a search box that dynamically hides individual posts as the search terms are met.

A very welcome addition is the support for add-ons. As has been learnt with Firefox, offering users the choice of adding extra features is hugely popular, and something that's still lacking in Opera.

There are plenty of add-ons already available for Internet Explorer but, unlike with Firefox, they're not all free. An example of a free add-on is Bloglines, which allows an RSS subscription to be added with a single click.

If you want to view the page source code, it still appears in notepad. It seems Microsoft isn't impressed by the colour-coded source viewer of Firefox or the way Opera reloads the page with changes made in the source code.

Anyone interested in more depth may find the developer blog a worthwhile addition to their RSS feeds.

There is no doubt that Internet Explorer 7 is a vast improvement over previous versions. It also must be said that many of the features missing compared to Firefox and Opera, such as the source code viewer, are of more interest to web developers than ordinary users.

Also consider:

Mozilla Firefox 2

Although lacking some features compared to Opera, it makes up for this with extensions and ease of use

Browzar

Protect your web surfing with this privacy conscious browser

Flock

A quality browser with extra features for bloggers

Review: Mozilla Firefox 2

Tim Smith — 2006-09-19T00:00:00.000Z

Tim Smith, Personal Computer World, Tuesday 19 September 2006 at 00:00:00

Will the second version of the internet-changing browser live up to expectations?

There are few software programs that have had such an impact as the Firefox internet browser. It brought advanced features such as tabbed browsing to the mainstream, so the upcoming new version has a lot to live up to.

It is a mark of how well designed Mozilla Firefox was that there appears to be very little different in this new release. The icons have been given the once over and look more modern but it essentially appears much as it has done.

Howver, appearances can be deceiving and it would be wrong to think that this is just a new theme pack. The majority of changes may have happened under the bonnet but they are no less significant, such as the support for JavaScript 1.7 and a new Windows installer.

Tabbed browsing has been improved significantly, with links opening in a new tab rather than a new window and a close button for each tab.

The Opera browser still has the edge with the tab preview however unlike Opera, Firefox tabs have a minimum size, large enough to read the title. A session of tabs can be saved and loaded the next time – it would be better if this was the default option.

RSS feeds still appear as live bookmarks rather than the more common email-like interface. Firefox 2 comes with integration for several online RSS readers such as Bloglines. It is a shame that this has not been taken further for bookmarks and photos, as Flickr has done.

Phishing protection is either provided by a downloaded list or by checking each page. The latter service is provided by Google; in order to use this service the URL is passed to Google and logged.

Although Google states that it will not collect any personal data, it is still possible that personal information may be inadvertently collected via cookies. This is not ideal but at some point you have to trust somebody online or make your own decisions.

One interesting variation on Live Bookmarks innovation is microsummaries for websites. These are brief descriptions of a website that are used instead of the site name for the bookmark.

An example is the BBC news site where the latest headline is shown rather than just BBC News.

This is a clever and convenient idea but it will need support from websites and maybe other browsers. Still, if the adoption of other ideas featured in Firefox is anything to go by, this may not be a problem.

Also consider:

Opera

Flock

Review: Browzar web browser

Marc Delehanty — 2006-08-31T00:00:00.000Z

Marc Delehanty, Personal Computer World, Thursday 31 August 2006 at 00:00:00

Protect your web surfing with this privacy conscious browser

The Browzar web browser is aimed at users who share computers or have privacy concerns regarding their activity on the internet.

Modern browsers are teeming with features so can often hog system resources and memory. Internet Explorer 7 is currently in the beta testing stage and will have a whole range of new functionality that will bloat its size.

In the face of this competition, Browzar has adopted a minimalist approach. The browser is a lightweight download at only 264KB, but isn’t standalone software; it relies on you running Windows and uses Internet Explorer as a base application.

You don’t need to install Browzar, instead you run the downloaded executable file directly. This means you can run it from a USB memory key and hide it from other users of your computer.

With such a clean interface, Browzar is quite simple to use. Only a few features are configurable and it makes a refreshing change to see such a bare toolbar.

By not saving cookies, keeping browsing history or the storing details you type into online forms, Browzar does a good job of protecting your privacy.

What it doesn’t do is remove traces of your tracks on the web servers you visit. For this you would have to disguise your IP address by using an anonymous proxy server. Browzar will not, therefore, shield a computer’s identity when visiting illegal websites or conducting criminal activity online.

While we understand Browzar’s functionality is necessarily limited and that it’s not intended to be a full-time replacement for IE or Firefox, there are still some glaring omissions.

For instance, there are no right-click context menus. Given that Browzar doesn’t cache data as you surf there’s no way to save image files from websites you visit.

This lack of caching can also make browsing incredibly painful on slower internet connections as each page and its associated images reload when you hit the back or forward buttons.

Browzar is distributed for free but its creator Ajaz Ahmed, founder of Freeserve, will hope to generate significant revenue from its default homepage.

The homepage is a search page run by Browzar that delivers targeted advertisements in place of proper search results. The sneaky aspect of this is that you cannot change the homepage or the default search engine for the search box on the toolbar.

Computer-savvy internet users will already know Firefox has many privacy related extensions that emulate all the functionality of Browzar in a fully featured browser.

But for others, this nifty little program will take the hassle out of maintaining privacy on your local computer.

Note: Value for money is always a tricky one when it comes to free products, but we decided that since all other browsers are free and Browzar is essentially IE with a load of features stripped out, it only deserves 2 out of 5.

Related reviews:

Interne Explorer 7 beta review

A range of new features brings this browser up to speed with its rivals

Review: Flock web browser

Tim Smith — 2006-07-18T00:00:00.000Z

Tim Smith, Personal Computer World, Tuesday 18 July 2006 at 00:00:00

A quality browser with extra features for bloggers

With the rise of blogs, photo sharing and RSS news feeds, much has been said about Web 2.0. Flock is a browser built on top of Mozilla Firefox with all of these technologies in mind.

Setup is easy and Flock will take all of the settings from Firefox, including page history and cookies. This makes the transition the most painless of all browser upgrades, although this will not help those moving from Internet Explorer or Opera.

The interface is similar to most browsers, although the most recent browsing history is revealed by right-clicking on the Back button rather than there being a discrete menu.

It does feel a little hidden, but is convenient once discovered. On a more favourable note, it is possible to add icons for the blogging, photo and news tools.

A search box in the toolbar is nothing new, but the extra twist from Flock is that it searches dynamically as text is entered. The results vary depending on the words but it is a much faster way of searching.

Flock is an ideal tool for anyone who wants to record their web experiences on a blog. Simply select an area of text or even an image, and then select the Blog This option. An editor appears with both a Wysiwyg editor and a source editor.

It is compatible with Blogger, Typepad and other popular blogging tools. You can see some demo posts at http://ano pensource.wordpress.com.

A shortcut button can be added to the toolbar for creating blog posts without external content. This is not a complicated tool but it makes creating blog posts really easy. If you like blogging, Flock is well worth downloading just for this feature.

Of course, blogging is a two-way process and Flock comes with a handy RSS news feed reader. Blogs are organised in folders, each with its own summary; a summary page of the entire collection can also be viewed.

Images are not forgotten with a Photobar that can be shown at the top of the screen for moving images in and out of online spaces such as Flickr, Myspace and Ebay.

Although it doesn't have as many Extensions (add-ons) as Firefox, Flock is a decent browser with good blogging features and an excellent search tool.

Related reviews:

Opera 9

A host of new features added to an already excellent browser

Review: Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2

Tim Smith — 2006-04-27T00:00:00.000Z

Tim Smith, Personal Computer World, Thursday 27 April 2006 at 00:00:00

A range of new features brings this browser up to speed with its rivals

Microsoft's release of Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) brings with it plenty of new features.

With a revision of the basic code of Internet Explorer, this new beta offers better security as well as the more obvious, and long-awaited, addition of tabs and RSS feed integration.

The most important improvement is undoubtedly security. The golden padlock has been moved to a more visual slot right next to the address bar. Clicking on it reveals more information about the security of the site and whether it should be trusted.

Unsecure content on mixed pages is now blocked and ActiveX options are disabled by default.

IE7 now always shows the address bar - although it is markedly smaller in some pop-up windows. This is a definite improvement as, without the address bar, it's hard to tell if a pop up is from a different site to its parent.

Opera can already do this, but the address is hidden by default.

Tabbed browsing is now an integral part of IE and it has been implemented well. The new tab button is always visible and IE can be set to open addresses in new tabs rather than windows.

A useful feature is the Quick Tabs view. At the press of a button, a thumbnail preview of all open tabs is displayed. The size of the thumbnails depends on the number of pages open.

The user-defined homepage also benefits from tabs. It's now possible to set your home page to be a selection of sites rather than just one.

The interface as a whole has been completely changed. Gone are the familiar dropdown menus, while the various buttons have been redesigned.

We feel it's a vast improvement on previous versions and gives other browsers a run for their money. The dropdown menus can be re-enabled, but it's unlikely that you will want to do this.

The installation process shouldn't cause any problems. You'll need to run the Windows Genuine Advantage Validation Tool, but this is only a problem for those off the straight and narrow. The new IE7 shortcut icon appears on the desktop once you've restarted your PC.

This is a complete upgrade and it is not possible to run the old version at the same time. For this reason it should only be installed on computers where the loss of IE6 will not present a serious problem.

It's true that many of the new features have been done before by other browsers and some, such as the security notification to the address bar and the tabs, are long overdue. One feature that's notable by its absence is mouse gestures.

However, Microsoft has done a good job of implementing the various changes within IE7 and it's dominance of the browser market looks set to continue.

Take a closer look at IE7 in our image gallery .

System requirements:

Windows XP or later

Internet Connection

Databecker Web to Date 2

Tim Smith — 2006-03-09T00:00:00.000Z

Tim Smith, Personal Computer World, Thursday 9 March 2006 at 00:00:00

An easy to use tool for managing constantly updating sites

Web to Date 2 is different from many other web design software because it works as a content management system (CMS). This makes it suitable for maintaining websites with content that changes on a regular basis.

With this in mind, the design of the website is kept separate from the actual content and the manual warns early on that this is not a Wysiwyg editor. While this isn't necessarily a bad thing, it does leave you at the mercy of the supplied page layouts.

Starting a new site is simple, with a wide selection of templates provided. Some are fully formed and others can have the colour changed.

You can leave other aspects of the design well alone or alternatively get involved in more detailed editing.

The concept behind Web to Date 2 is a home page leading to a number of master pages. Articles are added to a master page, these can either be complete stories or teasers to another page.

Uploading can be performed direct from the Web to Date 2 interface - it will automatically remove articles that are out of date. If you're publishing time-sensitive articles, start and finish dates can also be set.

CMS is nothing new, but most other popular alternatives are wholly web based. Web to Date 2 has the advantage of only needing a basic web host without the requirement for PHP or MySQL, which keeps costs down.

However the flip side of this is, because it's not web-based, it's only possible to edit the site from a single computer.

Web to Date 2 is a good package for any individual or small business whose site is administered by one person and does not want the complication of web-based CMS systems.

But its simplicity will put off those looking for a more control over the content of their site.

System requirements:

Pentium II 300MHz

64MB of Ram

60MB hard disk

Windows 2000/XP

CMSimple

Tim Smith — 2006-02-22T00:00:00.000Z

Tim Smith, Personal Computer World, Wednesday 22 February 2006 at 00:00:00

Quickly create impressive looking sites using your web browser

Content Management Systems (CMS) have mostly been the preserve of large websites where many articles are posted and ranked on a daily basis - www.pcw.co.uk being a prime example.

CMSimple is a little different, as it is written with smaller websites in mind with far lower requirements.

The hosting site must be running PHP and there is no need for a database such as MySQL, which can often increase the costs.

Setting up is very simple. You download the zip file from the CMSimple site and upload the contents to your web server.

Some files and folders need their permissions changed, but you're guided through the process.

All editing is performed using the built-in web editor - this works on both Internet Explorer and Mozilla. It's something of a disappointment the popular alternative Opera isn't supported.

The editor can work in a layout mode as well as raw html. Separate pages are used for uploading images and files for download.

Images can then be inserted into pages using a quick menu. Internal links and files for download are also included in a separate menu.

CMSimple avoids the need for a database by storing all the text of the site in one long html document.

It uses the heading tags to divide it into sections, subsections and individual pages. The result is a simple, but good-looking site.

There are plenty of free templates available from dotcomwebdesign.com to spice up your site.

Applying these templates is extremely easy and it's possible to edit stylesheets directly for more advanced tweaking.

Third party plugins are available for photo galleries, calendars, RSS integration, guest books and more.

CMsimple is free to use so long as a link to their homepage is kept on your site.

You must also be willing to share any changes to the templates under the AGPL license. Prices start from £60 to remove these restrictions.

System requirements:

PHP 4.0.4 or higher

Internet Explorer or Mozilla

Recommended for sites under 1,000 pages in size

Website Pro Net Objects Fusion

Clive Akass — 2004-11-22T12:49:58.000Z

Clive Akass, Personal Computer World, Monday 22 November 2004 at 12:49:58

A low-cost package with all you need to set up shop on the web

Net Objects Fusion was one of the first website design and creation packages to offer professional-class what-you-see-is-what-you-get editing (in as much as you can predict how a page is going to display on a variety of platforms). But it has focused increasingly on helping inexperienced users to create sites.

This trend has continued with version 8.0 to the extent that the profusion of help features tends to obscure the power of the package, which contains everything you need to set up shop on the web.

When first installed it presents you with a screen offering to take you through a selection of tasks, from setting up a complete site to adding a page to an existing one.

One option is a wizard that guides you through setting up a site in just three steps. It opens with a screen of 16 sample sites, each with a choice of styles for small businesses, clubs and individuals.

The sample pages even include boilerplate text, so in theory all you would need to do to set up a company site is add pictures and change contact and product details.

In practice you're unlikely to find it that simple, but the examples will serve at least to make you think about what you need to put into a site, and playing with them will help you understand how to build one from scratch.

Net Objects makes this quite straightforward. A site view allows you to add, name and link pages easily to create your broad structure. You can also choose from a selection of styles to create a common look for features such as buttons; there are over 150 new styles in version 8.0 and more are available online.

To edit any page, you simply double-click its icon. You create a layout much as you do with a desktop publishing package, dragging out boxes to contain text or an image, and context-sensitive dialogue boxes allow you to control all aspects of each item. A new feature is that this control extends to pictures, with the aid of a built-in image editor.

This is too clumsy, as it stands, for anything but reducing resolutions for the web. Resizing selection frames is slow, and an action prompt keeps popping up before you are ready. The most common need is to crop a picture and then adjust its pixel dimensions to those of the container box. You can do this within Net Objects, but the editor behaves so capriciously that you are likely find it easier to use a dedicated third-party editor.

Another floating box gives a Windows Explorer-style tree view of the site, allowing you to switch easily between different pages. A new Component Manager box allows you to use more advanced features, such as a ticker-tape, on your site.

There are also links to third-party plug-in facilities and services. One plug-in, costing about £12, lets you create on-screen forms to capture details of customers and other users. The results can be written to a text file for further processing, or sent as an email, or you can process the data using a cgi script.

There are powerful features for populating a page with information from ODBC- and ADODB-compliant databases, though you will need plug-ins to access more advanced features.

An HTML view lets you tweak page code directly, and you can import HTML, or reference an external HTML file, or use ActiveX controls and Java applets. But you don't need to know about any of this technology to be able to use Net Objects Fusion effectively, any more than you need to know Postscript to use a desktop publishing package. You design your site and the software does all the coding for you.

An asset manager allows you to keep track of your site's use of pictures, links and form-field variables. Sites, and updates to sites, can be published directly from within Net Objects using ftp, sftp, or Webdav.

A final new feature of version 8.0 is links to a choice of e-commerce engines, including Paypal, that allow you to sell directly from your site. You can switch product catalogues from one service to another, so Net Objects does not lock you into a particular provider.

RRP: £149.99 (£127.55 ex VAT)

Best price: www.pcw.co.uk/bestprices

Contact: Avanquest 020 7221 1611

www.avanquest.co.uk

System requirements:

166MHz processor
Windows 98 or later
280MB disk space
800 x 600 resolution screen with 256 colours
128MB Ram
32bit ODBC drivers for database links

Macromedia Contribute 3

Cliff Joseph — 2004-10-27T15:41:42.000Z

Cliff Joseph, Personal Computer World, Wednesday 27 October 2004 at 15:41:42

Website maintenance software aimed at non-technical users

It's always been a bit difficult to explain how Contribute works. It's a web page editor of sorts, but rather than creating and designing websites from scratch, Contribute concentrates on updating and maintaining the pages within an existing site.

The idea is that you get a professional web designer or team to do all the hard work for you. They set up the main site, using specialised web design tools such as Dreamweaver or Indesign. Once the site has been set up, non-professional users, such as marketing or sales staff, can then use Contribute to make routine changes, such as updating price lists or adding information about new products.

Of course, you could just give all your staff their own copy of Dreamweaver, but at more than £300 per head that would soon become extremely expensive. Contribute costs just £99 and you can buy a six-user package for just £469, so it's a cost-effective way of giving basic web editing tools to larger groups of people.

With this in mind, previous versions of Contribute have concentrated on providing simple editing tools that could easily be used by people who didn't have any special training in web design. This upgrade does provide some new editing tools, but its emphasis is much more on administration and many of the new features are aimed at the professional design and IT staff who will be supervising other Contribute users.

On the editing side, there's improved support for cascading style sheets, as well as the ability for administrators to specify which styles can be used to edit web pages. There's also support for Macromedia's 'Flashpaper 2' format, which is a kind of Acrobat pdf clone. It allows you to convert any existing document, such as an Excel spreadsheet, into a Flashpaper file that can be inserted into a web page.

It goes one step further than pdf though, as it allows you to insert video, animations or any type of content supported by the Flash (.swf) file format.

Macromedia has also thrown in a small group of image-editing controls that allow you to crop or rotate an image, or alter its brightness and contrast. But that's pretty much it as far as new editing and design features go.

The rest of the new features concentrate on administration and collaboration. The first one you'll notice is the new 'Send For Review' button that appears at the top of the main editing window. When you've finished working on a web page you can hit this button to send a draft of the new page to a colleague for their comments or approval.

When you use this option, or make any other changes to your website, Contribute creates an 'audit trail' that lists all the work you've done on your project. You can view your own audit trail within your personal copy of the program, but Contribute is now accompanied by a second program called Contribute Publishing Services (CPS). This acts as a central administation program that allows the main administrator to monitor and control everyone on the network that is using Contribute to edit the website.

The CPS program does provide great control for administrators, such as the ability to set up email notifications whenever users make certain types of changes to the site. However, it does suggest that Macromedia is now concentrating on the corporate market and is less interested in some of the smaller businesses and organisations that also use Contribute.

The program doesn't make any great strides as an HTML editing tool either, so users in smaller businesses may well feel that this isn't a 'must-have' upgrade. However, the improved administration tools will make it much more attractive for larger organisations that have lots of people using the program.

Our one big criticism is that the documentation and online Help files provided by Macromedia are pretty poor. They're peppered with marketing waffle - leverage this, deploy that - and have the annoying habit of merely listing features without giving you any real idea of how those features work. Macromedia really needs to write a proper user manual rather than just bombarding people with marketing hype.

Contact: Macromedia 0131 458 6766

www.macromedia.com/uk

System requirements:

300MHz processor
Windows 98 SE or later
128MB of Ram
120MB hard disk space for full installation

Net2roam Netaway

Chris Cain — 2004-09-23T10:34:24.000Z

Chris Cain, Personal Computer World, Thursday 23 September 2004 at 10:34:24

Worldwide net access at local call rates.

Cheaper notebooks mean more of us can enjoy computing on the move, but getting online when abroad can still prove awkward. Wifi is great, but only if you can find a local access point, while Internet cafes are usually crowded and force you to use someone else's system, and dialling back to an ISP in the UK is expensive.

With a pay-as-you-go service that works across 105 countries, Netaway provides dial-up Internet access at 8p per minute. You pay for the local call to the ISP, but in most cases it will still be far cheaper than dialling home. You use your own system, software and email accounts - just install the dialler and change the name of your outgoing email server. You don't even need to change it back when you return.

The initial package price includes five hours of online credit, which can be topped up online or over the phone. The minimum top-up is 150 minutes for £12 and the credit sits on your account until you use it. Buying time in bulk reduces costs to 6p per minute.

Following a few teething troubles with busy signals and connection breaks, everything worked as advertised during tests in Belgium and France. But it's surprising how quickly five hours of surfing and emailing goes with a 56K connection. The hassle and cost of international phone adapters should also be factored in.

Although we'd obviously like an even cheaper service, the convenience of Netaway makes it a handy tool. The service can also be used with a PDA or Mac.

Contact: Net2roam 08707 511 111

www.netaway.com

System requirements:

Windows 98/NT/2000/ME/XP
486 processor or higher
8MB of Ram
CD-Rom drive
12MB hard disk space
Internet-compatible modem and cable
Modem and power adapters for specific countries

On Instant On4

Kelvyn Taylor — 2004-09-20T11:44:49.000Z

Kelvyn Taylor, Personal Computer World, Monday 20 September 2004 at 11:44:49

Make free calls over the Internet.

On4 is the latest voice over IP (VOIP) service from relatively new company On Instant. If you've heard of Skype, you'll be familiar with the idea - using secure peer-to-peer Internet connections to talk to (or send voicemail or text messages to) other On4 users.

The free download is around 6MB and registration only requires basic personal details. After installing and logging on, you are presented with the main On4 screen, which is uncluttered and self-explanatory. From here you can search for contacts worldwide or send emails to friends to get them to join up. You can set your privacy level so only the contacts in your address book can call you, or you can let any On4 user get in touch.

Audio setup is implemented poorly at the moment - there's no built-in audio wizard or online help to tell you how to do it - but On Instant told us it is rectifying this. On4 works with any microphone/speaker setup or USB handset, but we had to fiddle about with Windows' audio settings to get our USB handset to co-exist with our PC's speakers. A human operator is always on hand to help.

Voice quality is superb, with little discernible lag and none of the cracks and pops usually associated with VOIP traffic. Video calls aren't offered, but you can add a photo to your caller ID.

On4 in its current incarnation is an interim release. Version 2 is imminent, with a totally revised client and extra services such as conference calling and eventually the ability to call landlines or mobile phones. But as it's free, try it and see what you think.

Contact: On Instant 01534 746 533

www.on4.com

System requirements:

Windows 2000/XP Home/Pro
128MB
5MB hard disk space
DirectX 8 or later
Soundcard
Headset, speakers/microphone or USB hand/headset

Price:

RRP: Free download.