Fusion

   I was wrong.
   I frankly never thought I would use any program other than Hot Dog to write HTML. I have a good knowledge of the language (all self-taught, of course) and can do pretty much what I want when I want to do it. However, when NetObjects Fusion arrived the other day, I decided a trial with one of these prefabricated web site programs was a must.
   It took less time to become very familiar (but not yet expert) with NetObjects Fusion than it did to larn rudimentary HTML. From that perspective, I was generating pages rather quickly from blank setups. Obviously, if one uses the built-in templates, it is easier still.
   And a major advantage to us was the ability to structure the web site with Fusion's site view. To be brutally honest, the thing which kept me from updating web pages as often as they should have been was the necessity to re-work the structure. Make a change here or there and you had to make a change in a bunch of places – and locate the pages to do it on.

   Although the screen shot on the left is but a small portion of the setup, you can see the entire layout of your web site with the site view. Zoom in and out. Move pages. Add pages. Delete pages. Move between pages. This view even gives you an opportunity to see, at a glance, whether the page is finished or not.
   To say the site view is a big help is quite an understatement.
   I think it is important that I explain the philosophy this ezine uses to review products. We do real projects. That is a great benefit to you. I recall the time, a number of years ago, when PCM got in a DAC Tape drive. The day

it showed up at our door was the day a leading computer publication arrived with a glowing review of this product as the answer to all the network backup problems people were experiencing.
   I hooked it up to my computer and it backed up my C: drive without a problem. So I turned it over to our technical editor to see what problems he would have backing up our Novell Network.
   Backed the whole network up, it did. The technical guy was impressed. I started thinking about how I was going to write the review when someone in the art department accidentally deleted a couple of files (!) and the techie guy told them "no problem," he's retrieve it from the backup.
   Wrong-O. Nothing could be restored. The techie spent the night in the office playing with the thing and discovered once you got past about 100 meg, the tape drive trashed the backup – even though it reported all was well.
   We called the company that made the drive. They admitted a problem. We reported it. Six or seven months later they came out with a drive that actually worked like it was supposed to.
   Well, that is the reason we test programs in real-life situations. And that is why we tested Fusion by actually creating an entire web site. You don't have to worry: in fact, it seems like the larger the site, the more easy it is for Fusion to operate.
   We downloaded a site of our own from the web with Fusion's import command and then went to work re-doing it. It took a day or so, not bad considering we were learning by doing.
   We got the full structure of the site set up for us when we downloaded it. We did move some things around, but, essentially, most of the time we spent with Fusion was in page view, were most of the editing and so on takes place.

   You may recognize this screen shot, since it is from a review on this site. It is illustrative, however, of several super things Fusion does for you.
   Note the bolder gray lines on the page. Those are borders, called MasterBorders by Fusion, which you can set to any size you wish. You can also place any elements in them you wish and then give them names. If you do that, you can use the same border setup over and over again to give your site a consistant look.
   The default setup for each page is whatever the setup is on that level of the site view outline. Just change it,

rename it, and you have a new layout setup.
   Inside the border is the layout area, which is different from one page to another. Here is where you put all the goodies: illustrations, text, JAVA applets – the works.
   I remember the first time I worked with Word for Windows. I had been a WordPerfect, DOS version, person and was pretty darn adept at manipulating text and having it come out right. All of a sudden, with Word, I could actually see what the page was going to look like. It was a revelation. So is Fusion.
   If you will forgive another reference to the past, this was very much like the day PageMaker came out. Hey, you just sit down and type. No <br>'s and <p>'s, no align commands and the like. Just drag it and drop it. nd you do it right on the page.
   That is what the purple stuff is in the illustration above: text. Its a text block.
   Want italics? Just press Control-I, like in a word processor. Same for bold. Underlines and strikeouts are available from a properties box, as well as a host of other formatting options.
   Or you can insert "regular" HTML code right into your text.

Such as the horizonal line above. While Fusion gives you the ability to place a horizonal line, there may be reasons you want to do this with HTML. And you can.

   Fusion comes with all sorts of templates, or schemes, for your web site. You can also create your own – either from scratch or using the supplies schemes as a starting point. To the right is one of the more colorful ones.
   Sure you can place your own objects directly on the page, but the advantage of using a template is the text is automatically placed in with the graphic. You can vary the text, too, between banners and buttons.
   This is hardly all. In fact, in terms of what you can place on the page with Fusion, it is just the beginning.

Consider that fusion has automatic placement for such things as:

	Automatic Tables: For nifty creations like this list featuring drag and drop sizing.
	A teriffic scrolling marquee. It is clickable, too, which means you can make your messages so that the user just clicks on the message and makes a hyperlink jump.
	An excellent shape drawing tool. Just draw the shape you want right on the page. Fills and the like are a click away. You can also place text inside drawn elements.
	Rotating picture galleries. You can have Fusion load in picturesor illustrations and rotate between them. These, too, are clickable for jumps.
	Time-based pictures, which display different pictures based on the time of day. Great for moons and suns.
	JAVA and Active-X controls. Just set 'em up! Rich media like sounds, Shockwave and video can be imported and placed, too.
	DynaButtons which change color, etc. when the cursor moves over them.
	The ability to crate site maps, message boards and forms. And, obviously, client-side image maps. All very cool.
	Data lists. You can set these up very easily.
	Element Scrips. When you want to do something special, you can attach code to a specific element.

   You can do your own things, too. Want to drop in an animated GIF file? Just do it as a picture. It works great.
   Once you have your page just the way you want, it is time to make sure everything is where it should be. So, there is also an Asset View that allows you to check to make sure all the files are in the right place, all the links are accounted for and the like.
   Fusion checks this for you and gives you a detailed listing of all your links and objects. From there, it is pretty easy to run things down if they are missing.
   And finally, it is time to compile your whole site. Before you do, you can "stage" it – either to your own computer, a site behind a firewall or a site elsewhere. Once you do that, you can click back and forth to make sure each part works OK.
   Then, finally, Fusion will upload your entire site, along with all the assets, to your home page directory. This is practically automatic, it has a built-in FTP client application.
   The bottom line is that Fusion is excellent, with only a modest learning curve. The things you can do, however, are pretty astounding.
   I said at the beginning of this review that I had doubted I would use any program other than Hot Dog for web authoring. Well, while I have changed my mind, I actually consider Fusion and Hot Dog to be an excellent combination. When you want to write direct HTML (and since Fusion lets you insert it onto your page) Hot Dog is the place to be. Fortunately, you can run both in the Win95 environment.

Link to INSO, Corp.'s Fusion web site.


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